US: Questioning foreign medical schools

Just as Congress ratchets up its scrutiny of for-profit higher education as a whole, the body's investigative arm is calling on the US Department of Education to begin examining some of the same issues of value and quality at foreign medical schools where Americans use federal student loans, writes Jennifer Epstein for Inside Higher Ed. The largest of such schools are for-profit institutions.

In a report released on Monday, the Government Accountability Office recommends that the department begin collecting data on student debt levels, graduation rates and licensure exam pass rates to better understand where federal funding is going when students choose to use it at foreign medical schools. The office's analysis found that first-time pass rates for all three stages of the United States Medical Licensing Examination were significantly lower for students using federally guaranteed loans at foreign medical schools than they were for students at US medical schools.
Full report on the Inside Higher Ed site