Changing Undergraduate Curricula and Their Relationship to Postgraduate Education

IN RECENT years orthodox post-flexnerian medical education has been under intensive review in many schools around the country, and it has been widely concluded that it may not be meeting the needs of the late 1960's. The climate of change—an outbreak of curriculitis, as it has been described —has resulted from a number of conclusions that have been remarkably similarly stated in documents such as the report of the 1965 Endicott House Summer Study and analyses in many schools. At the same time a dissatisfaction with a pattern of postgraduate education has become apparent in such documents as the Millis Commission Report and the Willard Committee Report.

Taking undergraduate education first, criticisms have centered on a number of aspects that are well known to all of you. It is clear, firstly, that medical school curricula have not reacted to the generally increasing level of scientific education in colleges, and