Yale Daily News

Attendance at med school lectures varies dramatically from class to class as a direct function of the value of that class. Some classes are easily (and more efficiently) learned from textbooks, other classes are of limited relevance to certain students' interests, and other classes are simply poorly taught. As Dean Alpern said, low class attendance should be seen as a challenge to make a lecture more relevant - I can assure you that it does not reflect student laziness. One need only look at Yale's national board exam results (Yale consistently scores very, very well) and Yale's residency placement results (reflecting residency program directors' positive experiences with qualified Yale Med grads - Yale's residency match lists are enviable) to see that Yale students still work and learn as they should. Classes which are relevant, effective and efficient have overwhelming attendance where even finding a seat can be difficult.

Yale's system should not be construed as an environment rife with abuse - it is not. We are all extremely self-motivated and hard working, and this is why our grads go on to be leaders in medicine despite the lack of grades. Learning here is, uniquely, not about being better than your peers or acing a test; it is about being a good doctor and the love of the art and science of medicine. We learn to learn for learning's sake, a principle of paramount importance which will be applicable to our entire careers.

Having used an image of the first-year medical school class to introduce and frame this story, it would seem fair to have spoken to people in the class, as well as to provide context for the image. That particular lecture was well-attended; the picture was taken at 9 AM, and few lectures start on time (both in part to student and professor punctuality; class today did not start until 9:05, not because students were not there but because the professor had not yet arrived).

This article says that lectures are "regularly" unattended, with no statistics whatsoever. The truth is that class attendance varies, dependent more on the quality of lecture than on student self-motivation. Many lectures have near-full attendance, most notably a class on child and adolescent development, a class that does not require even the anonymous exam that other classes require. There is absolutely nothing mandatory attached to this class; yet almost the entire class comes for the interesting material and engaging lectures.

As students who have worked hard through the exams and structured path to medical school, it seems out of place for faculty to attribute lack of attendance to less engagement with material. While the "premed" mentality that the article refers to may not be innate and indeed cultivated by the premed environment, the hard-working ethic that drives one's ability to get to med school is inherent. My class is the hardest working group of people I've encountered in my academic pursuits. They work to know things, not to pass exams, and they use a diverse array of resources in addition to lecture. They go to faculty for research, extra questions, not just lecture. An evaluation of the Yale System would benefit greatly from these perspectives--from the students, especially considering this is an article about student self-motivation.

I agree with the above posts. Due to the immense amount of material presented in the first year, one must make the best use of available time. With that said, attendance in lecture is completely a function of the perceived quality of the lecturer. For instance anatomy, neuro, and even cell bio have nearly complete attendance.

If I know that the lecturer has a history of underwhelming me, I mind as well spend that time reading the text or studying another subject. Attempting to attribute low attendance to dwindling commitment or interest is simply a cop-out to addressing the real issue: low-yield lectures.

The author of this article should be fired. This story could not have portrayed the image of the med school worse without any context or actual investigative reporting. Did you even bother to speak with the Dean of Education or Student Affairs? This is yet another example of shoddy work done by a person with no concept of what is actually happening on the medical campus or what is required to become a doctor.

Yale medical students have a deeper grasp of fundamental concepts than many of the residents that are teaching them in the hospital during their 3rd and 4th years. They go on to become some of the best doctors in the world, and leaders in their fields. The Yale system is one of the foundations of the education at the med school and prepares the students for a successful future.

To suggest that the students are lazy and not as motivated or informed as students at other schools is an ignorant and poorly conceived premise for an article. I hope that, in the future, the author actually takes the time to research and fully understand the topic before fabricating a story that lacks any real evidence besides quotes from students taken out of context and sprinkled in to support a false premise.

The above post is much too harsh. The premise of the article was not that "the students are lazy and not as motivated or informed as students at other schools." The article cited that residency results at Yale med school are consistently superb, and that the majority of students are "self selected and self-motivated" meaning that they do not abuse the system. The premise was simply that the system is controversial for various reasons and presents both benefits and drawbacks. The professors, within the context of the article, drew the links between low classroom attendance and the flexibility of the system, which does not have any bearing on the quality of the students at YMS; nor does the article state so. I think a good amount of balanced was achieved. The Yale system does need to be investigated. From what I hear, Dean Alpern is conducting a investigation in the coming months.

Post #4 made at 11:49 pm on a Saturday night? Do you not have anything better to do on the weekends except make anonymous, disparaging remarks on teh intrawebs? : O

I found the comment that low attendance "take a toll on professors’ morale and motivation" interesting. I thought lectures were meant to help the students learn, not to help professors feel better about themselves.

very comprehensive article, pleasure to read. interesting that, considering yale's residency match results, other peer schools (ranked higher or comparably) have not done away with their pass/fail systems or even grades, in some cases. why is yale the anomaly?

to #8: some other peer schools have indeed followed yale's example and done away with grades. the true difference, which vanishingly few people understand, is that yale does not RANK their students. every other school in the country has a rank list from 1 to 80 or 100 or 320 which is provided to residency directors, whereas yale has no numerical rank at all, whatsoever, and does not participate in the national medical honor society (aoa). and why is yale the anomaly? who knows... probably because of the tremendous trust yale puts in its students

I graduated from YSM in 1972 and offer the following observations from the late 1960's. Students attended those lectures that they found to be interesting and relevant. If the professors were not, the students lost interest.

Two anecdotes:

The pharmacology department always had 100% attendance and the students routinely scored #1 in pharma on the national boards. The department's secret? The chairman mandated that every pharma grad student and faculty member attend every lecture. The result of having to perform before one's peers? Interesting, relevant, no b.s. lectures.

OTOH, epidemiology/public health had 1.5 years of boring irrelevance. How did the EPH faculty respond? Six weeks before the EPH part of national boards, the EPH faculty ran a cram course.

Personally, I was tired of the grind/rat race as a pre-med and yearned to attend Yale. As I near the end of my academic career as a surgical prof, I believe that my 4 years as a student were the most important of my education.

Milton Winternitz, the dean who came to Yale from Hopkins and who started the Yale system did so because he wanted future MDs to learn for the love of learning, not because they had to. He worried that medicine was changing too quickly and that if MDs learned just because of the pressure of grades, that they would be obsolete within 5 years.