Tag: students

Health

Filipino-American faculty college students’ psychological well being suffered throughout Covid

Post author By
Post date August 20, 2021

When Covid-19 cases soared nationwide during the first few months of the pandemic, Amelia Catacutan said that her mental health was at an “all-time low.”

Catacutan, a Filipino-American college student entering her sophomore year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it was hard to cope with the social isolation, virtual learning environment and anxiety over her family’s well-being plus the rise in anti-Asian hate during the pandemic.

As she adapted to this new reality, Catacutan said she felt like she was being crushed by more and more stress and anxiety piling on top of her, making it difficult to express her emotions and go about her daily life.

Amelia Catacunan, a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Source: Ciboney Reglos

Catacutan was not alone in experiencing mental health struggles. Nearly half (46%) of Asian-Americans reported anxiety during the pandemic and 15% reported depressive symptoms, according to a Stop AAPI Hate survey.

But another survey conducted by the UC Davis Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies during the first half of 2020 indicates that the pandemic may have had a higher impact on the mental health of Filipino-Americans in particular.

The Filipinx Count Survey found that 81% of Filipino-Americans reported anxiety during the pandemic and 73% experienced depression.

For Filipino-American college students, there were a lot of factors that took a toll on their mental health.

“The pandemic was just a recipe for disaster for so many Filipino-American students,” said Christine Catipon, a licensed clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, who works with college students. “They had to balance family duties and working on top of a more rigorous learning environment, like every student did, but also had stressors like moving back into a multigenerational household with intergenerational conflict, cultural pressures, fears about their family’s well-being as health workers and more,” Catipon said.

Family members on the front lines

Catipon said many of her clients had heightened anxiety about family members who were health-care or essential workers during the pandemic. She noted that they had a “constant fear” of those front-line family members contracting the virus.

This was true for Catacutan. She said one of the major sources of her mental health struggles during the pandemic was having parents who worked as health-care workers in the Covid units of their respective hospitals.

Filipinos make up a large portion of the health-care industry in the U.S., with 4% of registered nurses nationwide being Filipino, according to a 2020 report from National Nurses United. During the pandemic, nearly 32% of registered nurses in the nation who have died of Covid-19 and related complications were Filipino, the report said.

More from College Voices:
College graduates are struggling to make up for the ‘lost year’ created by the coronavirus pandemic
Why Black and Latinx women are more likely to struggle with impostor syndrome—and how to overcome it
Women in STEM: 3 Challenges we face ̶ and how to overcome them

Catacutan said this disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Filipino health workers brought her a substantial amount of stress and anxiety. With her parents working on the frontline, she said she worried tirelessly about their safety, was left to take over household responsibilities and even decided to quit her part-time job at a local restaurant.

“I had to put a lot of things on hold, like my job, just to make sure that I wasn’t risking their safety even more and that I could take care of the house,” Catacutan said.

But Catacutan said her decision to quit her part-time job was also due to heightened anxiety over the rise in hate towards Asian-Americans and Pacific Islanders, or AAPI, during the pandemic.

Racism targeting Asian-Americans is nothing new in the U.S. There were actually federal policies that barred immigration from Asia until 1965. But inflammatory political rhetoric about the coronavirus, such as the term “China virus,” prompted a surge in hate crimes against AAPI during the pandemic, according to Stop AAPI Hate.

For example, Anti-Asian hate crimes in 16 of America’s largest cities increased by nearly 150% in 2020, according to data collected by the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. The data also indicated that the first spike occurred in March and April, the outset of the Covid pandemic when the harmful rhetoric first proliferated.

Catacutan said the rise in AAPI hate stoked anxiety about her own safety, which played a role in her decision to quit her part-time job.

“I had people who refused to touch me when I worked because they were scared that I carried the virus. It was really hurtful and felt really, really othering,” Catacutan said. “I ended up quitting, partly because the industry was a bit slow, but also because I was starting to receive racial remarks. I didn’t feel safe.”

The stress of moving back home

Catipon, who works with college students, noted that many of her Filipino-American clients experienced a decline in their mental health after moving back home with their family during the pandemic.

Catipon said when students go home, they may encounter intergenerational conflict with their immigrant parents, which refers to a disparity in values between different generations.

For example, some Filipino immigrant parents may have differing beliefs about racial issues, an over-emphasis on academics, or may be prone to unsolicited comments about their child’s appearance and life, she said.

This was the case for Carolene Ulep, a rising fifth year at Texas Tech University, who said her mental health worsened after sheltering at home with her family during the pandemic.

Ulep pointed to “toxic” Filipino family dynamics, recounting a time when her dad made unsolicited comments about her appearance. While Ulep said her dad did not intend to hurt her, she said his comments stuck with her long after.

“When he makes those kinds of comments, or when my mom makes comments about things I should be doing when I already have so much on my plate, I start thinking that I can do so much more. But in reality, I can’t,” Ulep said. “So, it’s difficult because I feel pressure to please my parents about these things, but at the same time, I know it’s my life.”

Carolene Ulep, a fifth year student at Texas Tech University

Source: Ashley Parker

Ulep added that Filipino family dynamics also include showing the utmost respect to elders, which leaves her unable to correct her parents when they make hurtful comments.

Roy Taggueg, the author of the Filipinx Count Survey and a Ph.D. student at UC Davis, also underscored the academic pressures that Filipino-American college students face when they move back home, and how it impacts their mental health.

“The pandemic puts students under really intense scrutiny of their parents when it comes to school since many had to go back home,” Taggueg said. “Students get stressed trying to meet their parents’ expectations to do well, and it goes back to the whole idea of ‘utang na loob.’”

“Utang na loob” is a Filipino cultural value that translates to “debt of gratitude.” Taggueg said it describes when Filipinos feel a sense of debt towards their family members who have made sacrifices for them, such as bringing them to the U.S. from the Philippines, raising them and supporting them throughout their lives.

Catacutan said she felt this pressure to excel academically and to “make her parents proud.” She said it caused her to push herself to the extreme when it came to school and increased her mental stress as a result.

“My parents are both immigrants and they both came here from the bottom up. A big part of the pressure comes from feeling so grateful for them so that you feel like you have to spend all of your time accomplishing just so you can pay them back for everything – all the opportunities that they gave you,” Catacutan said.

“And it’s a constant drive from both them and myself to keep going and going. And I never really learned how to take a break, I just get too busy trying to attain the most,” Catacutan continued.

“Sometimes we think that’s what’s healthy for us and it’s not at all.”

No social outlet

Catacutan also said the pandemic left her with “no outlets” to relieve the heightened mental stress from school, pointing to the lack of social interaction.

This was a trend that Catipon, who works with college students, noticed among her own Filipino-American clients. She said for many students, socializing and spending time with peers served as a “respite” from stressors in their lives.

When pandemic shutdowns across the nation cut off the social lives of students, Catipon said their mental health issues were amplified and they were left with no way to cope with new stressors from the pandemic, such as the rise in AAPI hate and fears about their health-care worker parents contracting the virus.

This was true for Jolene Soriano, a rising junior at the University of Michigan, who said social isolation led to a decline in her mental health.

“The pandemic forced me to be in my room alone with my own thoughts a lot,” Soriano said. “I found that to be a very scary thing, because a lot of thoughts were not the greatest and the pandemic really brought out my feelings about the stressful things in my life.”

Jolene Soriano, a junior at the University of Michigan

Source: Kristina Mallabo

“There were plenty of moments during my second semester where I was so overwhelmed with everything,” Soriano continued. “Sometimes I would set off into a crying fit, or I’d start hyperventilating, and then it would feel like a downward spiral.”

Like Soriano, Ulep said her mental health reached a “low point” during pandemic shutdowns that left her unable to socialize with her peers.

She said social isolation led to loneliness and a significant loss in motivation, which became detrimental to her academic performance.

“I was so used to seeing my classmates and friends during school. Being in lockdown just made me really, really sad and unmotivated,” Ulep said. “I just had no sense of responsibility and I didn’t try my best or get the best grades.”

Prioritizing mental health

While Soriano’s mental health undoubtedly took a hit during the pandemic, she said she now feels “more in tune with it” as she prepares to return to in-person classes in the fall.

“As opposed to just ignoring the problems like I did before, the pandemic has forced me to really look at and prioritize my mental health,” Soriano said. “And as we go back to some sense of normalcy, I’m definitely more aware of it, and trying to make sure I’m taking care of myself in that regard.”

This represents the broader change that Taggueg said needs to occur within the Filipino-American diaspora.

Taggueg said many Filipino-Americans and Filpinos still don’t regard mental health as an issue.

“We have been categorized to be a quote-unquote ‘perfect’ migrant in the U.S. that doesn’t cause problems, that adapts to hardships and does what’s needed because we want to work hard,” Taggueg said.

“That outlook has been shaped by the history of colonialism in the Philippines and has been used by generations of Filipinos to make sense of the world. And when it comes to mental health, it doesn’t fit into that world,” he continued.

However, Taggueg said organizations like the Bulosan Center are making progress in researching and raising awareness about mental health issues among Filipino-Americans.

Resources to help

There are several resources available for Filipino-Americans struggling with their mental health, including the Asian American Psychological Association’s Division on Filipinx Americans. The organization promotes awareness of Filipino-American mental health and provides services such as therapy referrals.

The Filipino Mental Health Initiative of San Francisco is another resource that provides services for Filipino-Americans and aims to destigmatize mental health issues. While they are based in Northern California, they provide resources such as a free suicide hotline with trained and experienced counselors, in-person or virtual wellness workshops and “Mental Health First Aid” training in English and Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines.

Catipon recommended that college students of all backgrounds who are struggling with their mental health utilize the resources available on college campuses, such as counseling centers.

For those who are apprehensive about seeking counseling or therapy, Catipon encouraged attending workshops or peer mentoring groups within their local community.

Catacunan said that she is hoping to re-establish her “boundaries surrounding school” and focus on balancing her wants and needs.

“As stressful as school and navigating my professional life is, it isn’t everything. I want to reinvigorate my love for myself, my hobbies and the people and places around me,” Catacunan said, adding that it is important for college students to prioritize their mental health.

“There’s a reason students are considered ‘part-time’ or ‘full-time’ — being a student is a physically, mentally and emotionally draining job and sometimes we gloss over the fact that we are doing our best, especially in this altered society,” Catacunan said.

“You know your needs better than anyone else and listening to them is so important for your well-being,” she continued. “People tend to think of mental health as being one big entity when the reality is that it isn’t. It’s a multitude of little things that we neglect and that truly add up. So it’s important to take things step by step in order to thrive in the stressful conditions of academia.”

CNBC’s “College Voices″ is a series written by CNBC interns from universities across the country about getting their college education, managing their own money and launching their careers during these extraordinary times. Annika Kim Constantino is a senior at the University of California, Berkeley, studying media studies, music and journalism. She is an intern on CNBC’s politics desk. Her mentor is Dawn Kopecki. The series is edited by Cindy Perman.

Tags College, Covid, FilipinoAmerican, health, mental, students, Suffered

Health

Federal decide guidelines that Indiana College can require Covid vaccines for college kids

Post author By
Post date July 19, 2021

A medical worker will receive the Covid-19 vaccine on April 7, 2021 at Sun Yat-sen University’s First Affiliated Hospital in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China.

Southern image | Visual China Group | Getty Images

A federal judge ruled Sunday that Indiana University may require its students to be vaccinated against Covid-19 in the first decision to maintain an educational institution’s vaccine mandate.

Judge Damon R. Leichty of the U.S. District Court for Northern Indiana denied a restraining order that would have prevented the school from getting vaccinated by most students, faculty, and staff at least two weeks before the fall semester.

Students who fail to get vaccinated and who are not given a waiver will not be able to go to campus or use university email accounts. Your campus access cards will be deactivated, the judge wrote.

Eight students sued the school shortly after the policy was announced in May on the grounds that the mandate violated their physical autonomy and medical privacy. They also argued against mask requirements and Covid tests, but the judge also denied these requests, saying: “There is no basic constitutional right not to wear a mask”.

“They are asking the court to issue an injunction – an extraordinary remedy that requires strong evidence that they are likely to succeed on the merits, that they will suffer irreparable harm, and that the balance of the harms and the public interest this favor a remedy “, it said in the opinion of the judge.” The court now rejects your application. “

The lawsuit could have wider implications for other schools. Hundreds of higher education institutions, including the state and city university systems in New York and California, mandated vaccines for students this fall.

“Recognizing the substantial freedom that students have to opt out of undesirable medical treatment, the Fourteenth Amendment allows Indiana University to pursue adequate and proper vaccination procedures in the legitimate public health interests of its students, faculties, and staff,” the judge wrote in his 101st Amendment -side opinion.

The New York Times reported that James Bopp Jr., who represented the students, announced that he would appeal to the US Supreme Court. He said America’s frontline doctors – a conservative group that has protested multiple public health measures for Covid-19, including vaccines – will cover the costs, according to the Times.

Tags Covid, federal, Indiana, Judge, Require, Rules, students, University, vaccines

World News

Uni withdraws pupil’s provide over racist abuse of England trio

Post author By
Post date July 18, 2021

England striker Jadon Sancho (C) is comforted by his teammates after missing a penalty in the UEFA EURO 2020 final between Italy and England at Wembley Stadium in London on July 11, 2021.

Laurence Griffiths | AFP | Getty Images

A university withdrew an offer from a student after racist abuse against English players after the EURO 2020 final.

Video footage from a Snapchat group chat was circulating on Instagram in which a person was heard using racist language to Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka, who each missed penalties in the shooting at Wembley Stadium.

A spokesman for Nottingham Trent University said: “This allegation does not apply to an NTU student. We do not tolerate any form of discrimination, including racism.

“We dealt with this matter immediately and withdrew an offer from an applicant.”

CDC says totally vaccinated academics and college students needn’t put on masks indoors in up to date steering

Post author By
Post date July 9, 2021

Students wearing masks listen to teacher Dorene Scala during third grade summer school at Hooper Avenue School on June 23, 2021, in Los Angeles.

Carolyn Cole | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its public health guidance for schools Friday, saying fully vaccinated teachers and students don’t need to wear masks inside school buildings.

The CDC’s new guidance comes about two months after federal health officials permitted the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine for kids ages 12 to 15, allowing middle and high school students to get the shots ahead of the fall school semester.

Teachers and students who are not vaccinated should still continue to wear masks indoors, the U.S. agency said, adding the practice is especially important when inside and in crowded settings, when social distancing cannot be maintained.

The agency also said it still recommends that students remain at least 3 feet apart in classrooms, combined with indoor mask wearing by people who are not fully vaccinated, to reduce the risk of transmission of the virus.

“When it is not possible to maintain a physical distance of at least 3 feet, such as when schools cannot fully re-open while maintaining these distances, it is especially important to layer multiple other prevention strategies, such as indoor masking,” the CDC wrote in its guidance.

The CDC’s recommendation will likely have no impact on students under 12, who are currently ineligible to get a Covid vaccine in the U.S.

The updated guidance comes as several states across the U.S. have largely done away with their mask requirements, social distancing and other pandemic-related restrictions because the Covid vaccines have helped drive down the number of new infections and deaths.

In mid-May, the CDC said fully vaccinated people didn’t need to wear masks in most settings, whether indoors or outdoors. They are still expected to wear masks on public transportation, the agency said, such as on airplanes, buses and trains. The federal government’s mask mandate on public transportation is scheduled to expire on Sept. 13 unless the CDC extends it once again.

The guidance may be controversial as scientists and other health experts say indoor mask mandates many make a return this fall, particularly in low vaccinated states, as the highly transmissible delta variant spreads across the U.S.

Already the dominant variant in the U.S., delta will hit the states with the lowest vaccination rates the hardest — unless those states and businesses reintroduce mask rules, capacity limits and other public health measures that they’ve largely rolled back in recent months, experts say.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Tags CDC, Dont, fully, Guidance, indoors, Masks, students, teachers, updated, Vaccinated, wear

Health

Time Is Operating Out to Get U.S. College students Vaccinated by Fall

Post author By
Post date July 8, 2021

In the middle of summer, the school may seem blissfully distant to American students. But for many eligible, time may be running out to return to school: a full vaccination against the coronavirus before classes resume.

Many of the country’s 13,000+ counties, particularly in the south and southwest, plan to start the 2021-22 school year well before Labor Day. Completing a regimen of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine, the only vaccine now approved for 12 to 17 year olds, takes a minimum of five weeks for the two vaccinations to be given and for full protection to be achieved. In many of these early-starting districts, students would need to get their first dose in the next few days to be fully immune in time.

In the Hamilton County School District, Tennessee, the first day of school is scheduled for August 12th. From then on, the students would have to get their first shot no later than Thursday in order to be fully protected by the opening day.

Cody Patterson, a spokesman for the district, which includes Chattanooga and serves 45,000 students, recently said that while vaccinations are not mandatory for the new school year, the district made it clear to parents “that we believe vaccination is a key strategy to get around to keep the school ”. to open.”

Mr Patterson said individual schools in the district would likely accept students on a case-by-case basis if they were concerned about completing their vaccinations.

Schools across the country were closed and switched to online classes when the pandemic broke out last year. But as the pandemic progressed, research showed that elementary and secondary schools weren’t the main drivers of infection.

Colleges are a different matter, with a number of breakouts on campus. Many colleges (along with some private secondary schools) require vaccinations to allow students to attend in person this fall. This is more difficult for public middle and high schools for legal and other reasons, and a spokesman for the American Federation of Teachers recently said the union was not aware of any U.S. school district that required vaccinations.

Updated

July 7, 2021 at 11:27 p.m. ET

A vaccine for 12 to 15 year olds has only been available in the US since May. In many states, teenagers require parental consent to be vaccinated. No vaccine is yet approved for children under 12 years of age.

Michael Poore, the superintendent of the Little Rock School District in Arkansas, recently said the district contacted parents, worked with local health officials, and did extensive publicity work on local and social media to convince students and their parents to get a vaccine to get.

The district also hosted vaccination events at its 11 middle and high schools, he said, but only 300 to 400 of the district’s approximately 11,000 eligible students received vaccinations at the events.

School in Little Rock begins August 16th. In order to be fully protected by then, students would have to receive their first dose by Monday.

“We’re really going to be pushing the vaccines in August,” said Mr Poore, “because if you haven’t received the vaccination and are in close proximity to someone who has the virus, you must be quarantined.”

In some places, it’s too late for unvaccinated students to fully protect themselves before school, such as the Chandler Unified School District in Arizona, which will reopen on July 21.

Kimberly Guevara, a district spokeswoman, said the district recently informed parents when the vaccine was approved for teenagers and told them how to get a vaccination, but “we will not force vaccinations on students.”

Ms. Guevara said that she and the eligible members of her family were vaccinated as soon as possible.

Tags fall, Running, students, time, Vaccinated

Health

Biden’s new Covid vaccine push focuses on employees, college students, delta variant

Post author By
Post date July 7, 2021

President Joe Biden on Tuesday once again pushed for all eligible Americans to get Covid vaccinations, stressing the importance of being protected against the highly transmissible delta variant.

Despite the U.S. being on track to hit 160 million people fully vaccinated in the coming days, Biden said, millions remain unvaccinated against Covid, “and because of that, their communities are at risk, their friends are at risk, the people they care about are at risk.”

“This is an even bigger concern because of the delta variant,” the president said.

“It seems to me, this should cause everybody to think twice,” Biden said. But “the good news is that our vaccinations are highly effective,” including against the delta variant, he added.

Biden detailed his administration’s latest push to increase vaccination rates two days after failing to reach his Covid vaccination goal for the Fourth of July.

His team is now training its focus on boosting vaccination availability in places such as doctor’s offices and work settings. They are also ramping up efforts to get vaccines to pediatricians and other child health-care providers, Biden said, with the goal of getting more adolescents ages 12 to 18 inoculated before they head back to school in the fall.

The team also aims to expand mobile clinic efforts and will work to refine door-to-door outreach efforts to get information about vaccines to Americans who have yet to get their shots, the president said.

“Our focus now is on doubling down on our efforts” to get more people vaccinated, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a briefing earlier Tuesday afternoon.

“There’s still more work to be done,” Psaki said, before noting that “the vast, vast majority of people are safe from the virus” once they are vaccinated.

“If you are not vaccinated, you are not. That is also a message that we’re going to continue to clearly communicate,” she said.

Biden in his speech at the White House highlighted that nearly 160 million people in the U.S. will be fully vaccinated by the end of this week.

There are currently 157 million people in the U.S. who are fully vaccinated, which is less than half of the total population, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Among people in the U.S. ages 18 and up, the CDC’s percentage for those fully vaccinated rises to 58.2%, and it stands at 78.7% among those ages 65 or older, who face the greatest risk from Covid.

Biden in May had set the goal of having 70% of American adults vaccinated with at least one shot by Independence Day. On the holiday itself, roughly 67% of U.S. adults had received at least one dose, according to the CDC.

“The bottom line is, the virus is on the run and America’s coming back, coming back together,” Biden said. It’s “one of the greatest achievements in American history,” he said, “but our fight against the virus is not over.”

The delta variant, which was first observed in India, has now spread to at least 96 countries, including the U.S., according to the World Health Organization.

The variant, which the WHO says is about 55% more transmissible than another strain of the virus found in the United Kingdom, has threatened to derail some countries’ plans to lift social-distancing restrictions. About 25% of all new reported U.S. Covid cases are of the delta variant, according to the CDC, which predicts it will become the dominant variant.

White House chief medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci last month called delta the “greatest threat” to the nation’s fight against the pandemic.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, told CNBC last week that while the delta variant may cause an increase in cases, he doesn’t expect a massive surge in infections on the scale of those seen at earlier points in the pandemic.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a raging epidemic across the country like we saw last winter. I think that there’s going to be pockets of spread, and prevalence overall is going to pick up,” Gottlieb said on “Squawk Box.”

The White House is deploying Covid-19 response teams across the nation focused on combatting the variant. The teams, composed of officials from the CDC and other federal agencies, will work with communities at higher risk of experiencing outbreaks.

There are still about 1,000 counties in the U.S. that have vaccination coverage of less than 30%, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky told reporters last week.

The counties are mostly located in the Southeast and Midwest and the agency is already seeing increasing rates of disease in these places due to further spread of the delta variant, she said.

— CNBC’s Ylan Mui contributed to this report.

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC contributor and is a member of the boards of Pfizer, genetic testing start-up Tempus, health-care tech company Aetion Inc. and biotech company Illumina. He also serves as co-chair of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings’ and Royal Caribbean’s “Healthy Sail Panel.”

Tags Bidens, Covid, Delta, Focuses, push, students, Vaccine, Variant, Workers

Health

‘It’s Powerful to Get Out’: How Caribbean Medical Colleges Fail Their College students

Post author By
Post date June 30, 2021

Last summer, when Dr. Sneha Sheth went online to begin filling out applications for residency — the next stage of her training after medical school — she was hit with a jolt of disappointment.

Of the 500 residency programs she was considering, nearly half had been labeled unfriendly to international medical students, like her, by the website Match a Resident, which helps medical students abroad navigate the U.S. residency application process. Dr. Sheth submitted her applications in September and spent months on edge. Then came the distress of rejections from numerous programs, and no responses from others.

“There are 50 percent of programs that don’t want you, which is a scary feeling,” said Dr. Sheth, 28, who graduated recently from a Caribbean medical school. “It’s like, if they don’t want you, who will?”

The frustrations of the match process, which assigns graduates to programs where they can begin practicing medicine, made Dr. Sheth question whether she had been foolish to enroll in a Caribbean medical school. She had spent tens of thousands of dollars but ended up shut out of American residency programs (although she recently landed a spot in a Canadian one).

In the 1970s, a wave of medical schools began to open across the Caribbean, catering largely to American students who had not been accepted to U.S. medical schools; today there are roughly 80 of them. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, the schools are predominantly for-profit institutions, their excess revenue from tuition and fees going to investors.

Admissions standards at Caribbean schools tend to be more lax than at schools in the United States. Many do not consider scores on the standardized Medical College Admission Test as a factor in admissions. Acceptance rates at some are 10 times as high as those at American schools. They also do not guarantee as clear a career path. The residency match rate for international medical graduates is about 60 percent, compared with over 94 percent for U.S. graduates.

In 2019, Tania Jenkins, a medical sociologist, studied the composition of U.S. residency programs and found that at more than a third of the country’s biggest university-affiliated internal medicine programs, the residency population was made up overwhelmingly of U.S. medical graduates. Caribbean medical school students match into residencies at a rate 30 percentage points lower than their U.S. counterparts.

“U.S. medical school graduates enjoy tailwinds,” Ms. Jenkins said. “Caribbean medical students experience headwinds. They have a number of obstacles they have to overcome in order to be given a chance at lower-prestige and lower-quality training institutions.”

The challenges that Caribbean medical students face in career advancement have raised questions about the quality of their education. But with the rapid rise in the number of medical schools worldwide — from around 1,700 in the year 2000 to roughly 3,500 today — tracking and reporting on the quality of medical schools abroad has proved a difficult task.

In recent years, medical educators and accreditors have made a more concerted effort to evaluate the credibility of those institutions, with the goal of keeping applicants informed about subpar Caribbean schools, which charge tens of thousands of dollars in tuition and fees and sometimes fail to position their students for career success.

That effort has largely been led by the Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates, which reviews and provides credentials for graduates of foreign medical schools, including documentation of their exam scores and their academic histories. In 2010, the commission announced an initiative requiring every physician applying for certification to have graduated from an accredited medical school. The group also said it would more closely scrutinize the standards for organizations that accredit medical schools around the world. The new rule will take effect by 2024.

The commission has already penalized two Caribbean medical schools — the University of Science, Arts & Technology Faculty of Medicine in Montserrat and the Atlantic University School of Medicine in Antigua and Barbuda. The group refused to grant credentials to any of those schools’ graduates, saying it had found the schools to be “egregious in terms of how they treated students and misrepresented themselves.” The medical school in Montserrat subsequently sued the commission, but the case was dismissed in a U.S. federal court. The University of Science, Arts & Technology Faculty of Medicine in Montserrat did not respond to requests for comment.

“I’m very concerned about students’ being taken advantage of by schools that may not give them proper information as to how they’re going to learn and what their opportunities are going to be when they finish school,” said Dr. William Pinsky, head of the commission.

He said he hoped that students would be better protected by 2024, when accrediting organizations plan to complete evaluations of all international medical schools through a more rigorous accreditation process.

One of the primary accrediting bodies for Caribbean medical schools is the Caribbean Accreditation Authority for Education in Medicine and Other Health Professions, known as CAAM-HP. Lorna Parkins, executive director of the organization, said that some of the key factors the group considers in denying accreditation include high attrition rates and low exam pass rates.

Credit…via Yasien Eltigani

But Caribbean schools occasionally misrepresent their accreditation status on their websites, Ms. Parkins added. She sometimes hears from students who are struggling to transfer out of lower-quality schools.

“It’s my daily concern,” Ms. Parkins said. “I know students have very high loans, and their families make great sacrifices to educate them.”

Applying to medical school in the United States requires a certain level of know-how: how to study for the MCAT; how to apply for loans; and how to make yourself competitive for a select number of spots. Applicants with less access to resources and mentoring are at a disadvantage and are sometimes less aware of the drawbacks of international medical education.

Dr. Yasien Eltigani, 27, who is Sudanese and immigrated from the United Arab Emirates to the United States, said he had little assistance in navigating the obstacle course of medical school applications. He applied to only nine schools, all in Texas, not realizing that most U.S. students apply more widely, and was rejected from all of them. Two years later, when he saw a Facebook advertisement for St. George’s University in Grenada, he decided to apply.

Looking back, he says he wished he had reapplied to American schools instead of going the Caribbean route. Although he was able to match into a residency program, which he recently started, he found the process to be anxiety-inducing.

“If you fall behind in a U.S. medical school, your chances of matching are decent, whereas in a Caribbean medical school you’re at risk,” he said. “As an immigrant, I didn’t have much in the way of guidance.”

Caribbean medical school administrators say their intentions are straightforward: They aim to expand opportunities for students to go to medical school, especially those from racially, socioeconomically and geographically diverse backgrounds, to include people who might not have traditionally pursued careers in medicine.

“U.S. medical schools have more applicants than they know what to do with,” said Neil Simon, president of the American University of Antigua College of Medicine. “So why do they object to medical schools that have obtained approval and are educating a student population that is much more diverse? Wouldn’t you think they’d welcome us with open arms?”

Mr. Simon said that he was aware of the bias that A.U.A.’s graduates confront as they apply for residency positions in the United States and that he saw the stigma as unfounded. He added that international medical graduates were more likely to pursue family medicine and to work in underserved areas, especially rural communities.

But experts say that the proliferation of for-profit medical schools does not always serve the best interests of students. The Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which credentials U.S. schools, did not recognize any for-profit schools until 2013, when it changed its stance following an antitrust ruling mandating that the American Bar Association accredit for-profit law schools. Among medical educators, substantial skepticism still exists toward the for-profit model.

“If medical students are viewed as dollar signs rather than trainees that require lots of investment, support and guidance, that fundamentally changes the training experience of these students and the way their education pans out,” Ms. Jenkins said.

Some students at Caribbean medical schools said the quality of their education had declined even further in recent years as some campuses faced natural disasters.

In 2017 when Hurricane Maria hit Dominica, where Ross University School of Medicine’s campus was situated, the school decided to offer its students accommodations on a ship docked near St. Kitts. To some of the students, this sounded like an adventure. But as soon as they arrived on the boat, they realized that it did not lend itself to rigorous study.

With few study spots or electric outlets available on the ship, Kayla, a first-year-student, awoke each day at 2 a.m. to claim a place where she could study for the day. (Kayla asked to be identified by just her first name so that she could freely share her experience.) Her exams were held in a room filled with windows that looked out over the ocean waves. She and her classmates said that if they looked up from their tests, they had immediately felt nauseated. She couldn’t take Dramamine, she said, because that exacerbated her fatigue. Some of her classmates left before the semester ended because they could not handle study conditions on the ship.

“We understand that extenuating circumstances posed challenges for all,” a spokesman for Adtalem Global Education, the parent organization of Ross University School of Medicine, said in an email. “We took extraordinary measures to provide options for students to continue their studies or to take a leave of absence until campus facilities could be restored.”

But the combined challenges of these schools have given way to a saying: “It’s extremely easy to get into Caribbean schools,” said Dr. Abiola Ogunbiyi, a recent graduate of Trinity Medical Sciences University in Saint Vincent. “But it’s tough to get out.”

As accreditation standards evolve, Ms. Jenkins said one of the most critical ways to protect students was to ensure transparency from the schools. “People should go into their training with their eyes wide open,” she said.

Tags Caribbean, Fail, Medical, Schools, students, tough

Entertainment

Juilliard College students Protest Tuition Enhance With Marches and Music

Post author By
Post date June 12, 2021

The Juilliard School, one of the world’s leading performing arts conservatories, is known for concerts rather than pickets. But students protesting a proposed tuition hike occupied portions of the Lincoln Center campus this week and led music and dance-filled protests on West 65th Street when they were later denied entry to a school building.

The protests began Monday when a group of students speaking out against plans to increase tuition fees from $ 49,260 to $ 51,230 a year occupied portions of the school’s Irene Diamond building and took photos of dozen of them multi-colored sheets of paper posted on social media arranged to include the words “LESSON DEADLINE.”

On Wednesday, students said they had received an email from the administration stating that “classrooms” could not be used for after-school events without permission. “Posting signs, posters or leaflets, setting up in the lobby, requesting or distributing printed materials also requires prior approval,” the statement said.

The students returned to the Diamond building that day, marched through the halls and stopped in front of the school president Damian Woetzel’s door. At some point, some said, they knocked on his door and sang, “We know you’re in there. Will you meet the needs of the students and freeze the class? “

Protesters later said they had been banned from the Diamond building and the school told them it was investigating an incident involving reported violations “relating to the safety of the community”. On Thursday, around 20 students continued protesting on the sidewalk outside, waving posters, accusing the school of using persistent tactics to suppress dissent.

“They made it clear that they weren’t listening to us,” says Carl Hallberg, an 18-year-old acting student.

Rosalie Contreras, a spokeswoman for Juilliard, wrote in an email that the school is increasing funding, raising the minimum wage for student workers on campus to $ 15 an hour, and providing special funding for students in financial need Have available.

“Juilliard respects the right of all members of the community, including students, to express their views freely with demonstrations held at an appropriate time, place, and manner,” added Ms. Contreras. “Unfortunately, the demonstration escalated to the point on Wednesday that an employee called public security.”

Both Mr. Hallberg and another student, Gabe Canepa, said they were part of a campus group called Socialist Penguins that had called for the protests. They said they hadn’t compromised anyone’s safety.

Mr. Canepa, a 19-year-old dance student, added that the students took the tuition increase seriously because it would reduce their spending on “rent, groceries, subway fares and school supplies”.

An online petition by the group states that “the already astronomically high tuition fees” are harmful to working-class students. It added, “We are calling for Juilliard to cancel their proposed tuition increase.”

Students who participated in the protests said about 300 current students, or about 30 to a third of those currently enrolled, signed the petition.

The events at Juilliard this week seem to have been less controversial than school occupations that have taken place elsewhere in Manhattan over the years, including New York University, Cooper Union and New School, where cops with helmets and plastic shields arrested people who took over part of the school’s Fifth Avenue building in 2009. However, the conflict struck at odds.

Juilliard is also under pressure when it comes to diversity issues. In May, CBS News quoted a black college student there as saying she had been disturbed by an acting workshop asking class members to pretend they were slaves while whips, rain and racial slurs were played. Juilliard told CBS that the workshop was a “mistake” and regretted “that the workshop caused pain to the students”.

Following Wednesday’s protests, several students said they had received emails from Sabrina Tanbara, the deputy dean of studies, informing them that their access to the Diamond building had been suspended pending investigation.

The next day, Juilliard’s dean for student development emailed all students with some details about what the school was reviewing. Regarding the Wednesday afternoon protest outside the President’s office, Dean Barrett Hipes wrote: “Yesterday public security received a report of confrontational and intimidating behavior from students that led to an administrative assistant working alone in an office their own safety. “

Since the students could not enter the Diamond building on Thursday, they protested outside and asked passing motorists to honk their horns in support.

A young man was fashionable on West 65th Street. Mr. Hallberg strummed a guitar and another student plucked a stand-up bass and led a singalong of the labor standard “Which side are you on?”

Some students said they felt punished without due process.

Sarah Williams, a 19-year-old oboe student, said she wrote to Ms. Tanbara asking what specific she should have done to expel her from the Diamond building. She said she hadn’t received an answer yet.

“My resources have been eliminated without any explanation,” she said.

Raphael Zimmerman, a 20-year-old clarinet student, said he had received an email from Ms. Tanbara informing him that he would be contacted to set up an “investigative interview” to present his report on the activities outside the office of the Catch up with President late Wednesday afternoon.

“I think the many minutes we spent knocking on that door and singing were a nuisance,” he said, “essentially we are denying our right to assemble and demonstrate.”

Tags Increase, Juilliard, Marches, Music, Protest, students, Tuition

Politics

Robert Mueller will take legislation college students behind the decision-making means of the Russia inquiry.

Post author By
Post date June 3, 2021

Robert S. Mueller III will teach a course at the University of Virginia’s law school intended to take students inside his investigation that concluded Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald J. Trump, the university announced on Wednesday.

The course, called “The Mueller Report and the Role of the Special Counsel,” will be taught by Mr. Mueller alongside three former federal prosecutors: James L. Quarles III, Andrew D. Goldstein and Aaron Zebley, who was Mr. Mueller’s deputy. Mr. Mueller recruited the three men to work on the investigation, which spanned two years of the Trump administration.

Mr. Mueller will lead at least one of six in-person classes and said that he hoped to bring in other top prosecutors as guest speakers, according to the university.

The course will cover the investigation chronologically, from the hiring of Mr. Mueller as special counsel in 2017 until the inquiry’s conclusion in 2019. The instructors also intend to explain the challenges that prosecutors faced and “the legal and practical context” behind critical decisions, the university said.

The final class is expected to focus on obstruction of justice and the role of special counsels in presidential accountability. The Mueller report detailed actions by Mr. Trump that many legal experts said were sufficient to ask a grand jury to indict him on charges of obstruction of justice, but Attorney General William P. Barr cleared him of obstruction soon after the report was completed.

The announcement of the course is likely to revive curiosity around the Russian inquiry, which Mr. Trump repeatedly derided as a “witch hunt” and of which Mr. Mueller has seldom spoken publicly. He was a reluctant witness during a closely watched congressional hearing in July 2019, where he testified for nearly seven hours, giving many clipped answers and largely not straying from his report’s conclusions.

Last summer, Mr. Mueller wrote an opinion essay for The Washington Post the day after Mr. Trump commuted the prison sentence of his longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr., a political operative. In the essay, Mr. Mueller defended the prosecution of Mr. Stone for federal crimes as part of the Russia inquiry.

“We made every decision in Stone’s case, as in all our cases, based solely on the facts and the law and in accordance with the rule of law,” Mr. Mueller wrote.

Mr. Zebley told the University of Virginia that the course instructors would rely on public records to explain the path of the investigation.

After the inquiry ended, Mr. Mueller, Mr. Zebley and Mr. Quarles left the Justice Department and returned to the private law firm WilmerHale in Washington, where they are partners. Mr. Goldstein is now a partner at the firm Cooley in Washington. Mr. Mueller and Mr. Zebley are both alumni of the University of Virginia’s law school.

All four lawyers had notable careers at the Justice Department and said they were looking forward to sharing those experiences with students, according to the university.

“I look forward to engaging with the students this fall,” Mr. Mueller said.

Tags decisionmaking, Inquiry, Law, Mueller, process, Robert, Russia, students

Health

College students protest necessary Covid vaccinations at faculties

Post author By
Post date May 23, 2021

Across the country, a growing number of colleges and universities have said vaccinations will be mandatory for the fall of 2021.

Now, hundreds of thousands of students will be required to get the Covid-19 vaccine, whether they want to or not.

For the most part, students will get vaccinated if it means campus life can return to a pre-pandemic “normal” by September. But not everyone feels that way.

Roughly 88% of college students plan to get the coronavirus vaccine and nearly 3 in 4 students believe vaccinations should be mandatory, according to a recent survey of more than 1,000 college students by College Finance.

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However, Jackie Gale, a rising sophomore at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, is not one of them.

For religious reasons, Gale has never been vaccinated. The 19-year-old attended Alabama public schools and received a religious exemption from the Alabama state health department.

The University of Alabama-Birmingham also exempted Gale from its vaccine requirements during the 2020-2021 school year but won’t apply the same exemption for the upcoming year, according to her lawyer.

“If they decide to give her a religious exemption, that will be the end of it,” said Hiram Sasser, executive general counsel for First Liberty Institute, based outside of Dallas. “If not, we will have to communicate with them through a lawsuit.”

“In compliance with applicable law, we do provide religious exemptions for immunization requirements,” a spokeswoman for the school said. The university does require students provide proof of immunization against certain diseases, although there is currently no Covid vaccine mandate for the fall semester.

For those enrolled in school, there are many vaccination requirements already in place to prevent the spread of diseases such as polio, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.

All 50 states have at least some vaccine mandates for students attending public schools and even those attending private schools. In every case, there are medical exemptions and, in some instances, there are religious or philosophical exemptions, as well.

Rutgers University, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, said it will now mandate Covid vaccinations for its 71,000 students.

“Adding Covid-19 vaccination to our student immunization requirements will help provide a safer and more robust college experience for our students,” Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway said in a statement.

“We are committed to creating a safe campus environment in fall 2021, and to support the health and safety for all members of the Rutgers community, the university has updated existing immunization requirements for students to include the Covid-19 vaccine,” a spokesman for the university added.

Sara Razi, a 21-year-old junior at Rutgers, is challenging that requirement.

“I’m not anti-vax, I’m anti-mandate,” she said. “My education should not be restricted based on my personal decision to receive the Covid-19 vaccination.

Vaccinations are a personal and a private choice and students should have the right to choose whether or not they want to take a vaccine that is experimental.

Sara Razi

student at Rutgers University

“Vaccinations are a personal and a private choice and students should have the right to choose whether or not they want to take a vaccine that is experimental,” Razi added. “Therefore, a public institution like Rutgers should not have the right to dictate a student’s personal decisions.”

Razi, who has received other immunizations in the past, said she hasn’t decided yet whether she will get a Covid shot. In the meantime, she will be participating in a rally on campus, protesting the school’s mandate.

The political science major from Freehold, New Jersey, is also a member of Young Americans for Liberty, a libertarian group active on nearly 400 college and university campuses, including Rutgers.

Rutgers has said it will grant exemptions, for medical or religious reasons, although requests will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

“There are a lot of people who are hesitant, that doesn’t mean they don’t want to get the vaccinated,” said Brittany Kmush, assistant professor of public health at Syracuse University.

“This pandemic has become so politicized and it’s really unfortunate that health outcomes have been tied to political parties,” she added.

Colleges need to offer information and education so families can have their concerns addressed. “Just the opportunity to listen to people and give them a place to voice their concerns,” Kmush said, “that would be helpful.”

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Tags Colleges, Covid, mandatory, Protest, students, vaccinations

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