1 week Ago By [email protected] (Kristin Rushowy)
Toronto Metropolitan University used “aspirational” words, but never had any equity quotas for admission to its , says president Mohamed Lachemi. Lachemi told the Star on Friday that he wanted to clarify TMU’s expectations of the incoming medical class, after the provincial government and critics raised concerns about the potential for lowering standards. On its website, TMU had said it expected to select three-quarters of its incoming medical students from a stream of applicants who are Black, Indigenous or members of other equity groups, and the other 25 per cent from the general application stream.
That prompted Premier Doug Ford to say last week that the government had spoken with TMU to emphasize that “medical schools must ensure that qualified individuals fill these seats, regardless of their race or background.” Following a media report about Ford’s interaction with the university, Lachemi wrote in a statement posted Thursday on TMU’s website that “we have no quotas and there have never been quotas around who we will accept” to the medical school. “We understand that aspirational language on the website was causing confusion on this point, and that language has been removed,” he wrote.
“While our approach to the pathways may evolve over time, our commitment to fostering a school that produces exceptional doctors as diverse as the communities they will serve, remains steadfast.” A spokesperson for Colleges and Universities Minister Nolan Quinn said Friday that “our priority is putting the most qualified Ontario students first. We understand TMU has now clarified their position and that the previously reported policy has been removed.
Overall, we need the best and the brightest students at our medical schools and in our hospitals — anything less is unacceptable.” Lachemi told the Star that the creation of TMU’s medical school “has been a collaborative effort with the government since day one,” and that the university continues to work closely with Queen’s Park. “We are both committed to the same thing — attracting outstanding students who will become great physicians to provide much-needed family and primary care to the residents of Brampton, Peel and beyond.
” He said the provincial government “has long said it wants the medical school to look like the community it serves. We strongly agree and believe in our admissions processes — the existence of equity pathways does not and will not lower our academic standards.” And with an expected 5,000 to 7,000 students vying for fewer than 100 spots, it will be an extremely competitive process, Lachemi said.
In his statement on TMU’s website, Lachemi wrote that “critics have said that, because of our commitment to providing equity pathways, we will be accepting inadequate and academically unprepared students and graduating unqualified doctors into practice. Nothing could be further from the truth.” Like other medical schools across the province, TMU will have specific application pathways, especially for Black and Indigenous students, but students have to meet entrance requirements and no spots will be held specifically for any equity group, he said.
“In fall 2021, TMU conducted a series of town halls and an online survey for Brampton, Peel and surrounding communities, where we heard loud and clear that there is an urgent need for more family doctors, and in particular, doctors who understand the languages, cultures and faiths of local residents,” Lachemi noted in his statement on TMU’s website. “This is why our commitment to recruit people from the diverse backgrounds that make up the Region of Peel and its surrounding communities is so important,” he wrote, adding “a similar strategy was employed when the province decided to build a medical school in northern Ontario that prioritized people with lived experience in the North to address chronic under servicing, including those from rural communities and Indigenous backgrounds.” TMU’s GPA requirements are comparable to a number of other medical schools, and like a handful of others, it will not use the traditional MCAT test for admissions.
The provincial government recently announced that it would require 95 per cent of medical students to be from Ontario, with the rest from other provinces..
