Discusses how professional schools, except for medicine, are reporting surges in applications and enrollments, as graduating seniors decide to avoid the job market. (EV)

Discusses how professional schools, faced with a shortage of students and an increased demand for cross-disciplinary training, are teaming up to offer joint degrees. Examples include joint medical and business degrees, joint social work and law degrees, and joint medical and law degrees. (EV)

A new salary survey highlights concerns about the growing pay gap between professional-school faculty members and everyone else. Offers a table of average faculty salaries by field at 4-year institutions. (EV)

Increasingly, professional schools are addressing the issue of whether a financially successful program has a responsibility to support other, less financially successful programs, and how university fund raisers can assure donors that their gifts will benefit specific programs and not be siphoned into others. Law and business schools, often…

Drexel University (Pennsylvania) has agreed to manage Allegheny University of the Health Sciences, now known as MCP Hahnemann University (Pennsylvania) in a unique arrangement designed to save the latter institution from bankruptcy. Drexel will administer the institution until summer 2001, when it will decide to either merge or part ways. (MSE)

For the first time, the American Bar Association has published a law school guide that includes statistics on the percentage of students passing the bar examination on the first try. For schools with low passage rates, the figures are embarrassing; for those with high rates, the guide is a publicity windfall. (MSE)

Spurred by public dissatisfaction with the legal profession and expansion of the bar exam's ethics section, law schools are trying to invigorate the field of legal ethics, giving students more exposure to moral and ethical conflicts they are likely to face as professionals. Some legal experts say law schools should do more to integrate ethical…

First-year enrollments of minority (American Indian, Hispanic, and black) medical students declined from 1995 to 1996, endangering efforts to achieve a diverse physician workforce. Some institutions are recruiting minorities aggressively and making an added effort to support their persistence. Many minority medical students plan to work in poor…

Frustrated by the ways in which large managed-care companies are controlling physicians' lives and professional practice, the American Medical Association has voted to form a union to represent physicians and medical residents. Academic physicians have shown less interest than others. (MSE)

The Management Education Alliance, a group of 15 business schools, including 11 predominantly minority schools, and 11 corporations was formed in 1994 to help minority schools identify and develop a specialty. It offers participation in faculty-development seminars, helps forge ties with the business community, and offers opportunities for…

Applications to law schools have slipped steadily since 1990-91, and current applicants have a 70% chance of admission. Faculty are seeing more students with mediocre skills in writing and analysis. Institutions are providing more academic support, and some are cutting enrollments. However, law schools often are a prime income source for their…

As nurse practitioners increasingly move into practice areas once reserved for primary-care physicians, and as medical schools move more toward general practice and primary care, medical and nursing students are competing for a limited number of slots in which they can receive on-the-job clinical instruction. With professional boundaries…

At a recent American Association of University Professors conference, professors and researchers discussed the growing influence of corporations on academic research in medicine, including increased medical school reliance on corporate funding, requirements for research confidentiality, the potential for conflict of interest in research, and the…

The Brown University (Rhode Island) medical school curriculum content remains the same, but students must now demonstrate proficiency in relationships with patients, both real and simulated. In addition to traditional skill areas, students must demonstrate competency in effective communication, moral reasoning and ethical judgment, lifelong…