Years

I must say although I understand the pragmatic reason of directly recruiting supposedly outstanding school children to the second year of medical study, the argument for this policy is weak.

To put it simply: How many years do it take to train up an ordinary doctor? Most of us had five and we do well. Our friends in America have four, and they are not bad. (Well, most of them.) It is good, and probably a luxury, to have six years, but it is not necessary.

However, the problem at hand is not how many years do we need, but how many are we (the medical school) given? The inconvenient truth is, if we have two groups of students, one doing five years and the other six, that extra year for the latter group must be rather useless, irrespective to what kind of window-dressing you use. In other words, the sentiment is not whether the former group could have a satisfactory training in 5 years (invariable they would), but the old Chinese sayings: The problem is not poverty, but inequality (不患寡而患不均).