The University of Illinois College of Medicine’s “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” page is every bit as politicized, unscientific, and unserious as one might fear. Yet a deeper dive into the page’s resources reveals a grading scheme that, if actually operative, should terrify those eager to see future physicians held to appropriate academic standards.
UICOM has campuses in Chicago, Peoria, and Rockford. According to the Peoria campus’s website, the three branches combined educate one in six Illinois doctors.
Thus, it is no mere curiosity that the institution’s DEI office directs site visitors to such medically irrelevant frippery as a “land acknowledgement.” Nor is it harmless that the DEI website points medical students toward various “DEI Initiatives/Opportunities,” among them the university’s startlingly progressive Gender and Sexuality Center.
Rather, these errors in judgment matter. By introducing ideology into medical education, they blur what ought to be a tight focus on foundational science, clinical skills, and hands-on training.
They may also be paving the way for even more damaging experiments.
Tucked away at the bottom of UICOM’s DEI page is a list of “Resources,” among them “Teaching for Equity and Social Justice.”
Following that link and selecting “Assessment & Grading Practices” then “Equitable Assessments & Grading Practices” brings up a radical scheme whose enactment would seriously compromise authentic academic evaluation.
Specifically, the page in question urges instructors to embrace grading practices that “respect the diversity of students’ social identities as well as the diversity of student interests.”
Such grading practices, the page continues, focus on “reducing assessment biases” — e.g., those that “unfairly penaliz[e] students based on their race, gender, socio-economic status, etc.”
Moreover, the page declares, grading performed in this manner “recognize[s] that students have varying lived experiences and background knowledge.” This language should be familiar to anyone who has previously encountered critical educational theory, a Marxist framework obsessed with power dynamics and systemic oppression.
Among the page’s specific grading recommendations are that instructors should consider “[r]e-assessing [student work] without penalty & [allowing] multiple attempts.” They should consider “[r]ethinking the grading of participation” and “[i]ncorporating personal learning goals.”
Missing from these recommendations is any acknowledgement that medical students must regularly master difficult material that has its source in scientific reality. Students’ “lived experiences” are, in these instances, less important than what (or whether) they have actually learned.
To be clear, the webpage in question was produced by the University of Illinois Chicago’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence, not UICOM itself. Nevertheless, the College of Medicine promotes this material as a resource and thus presumably affirms the ideology behind it.
UICOM should publicly clarify whether it supports the use of “equitable assessments” in medical-school classrooms. If it does, the institution has a serious problem on its hands.
