Although, it is the wish of many to persue litigation against the state of California, it does not make sense in my opinion. California has barred Spartan graduates from ever receiving a license in the state. California requires schools to dish out thousands upon thousands of dollars to apply for state approval. Now 80,000 dollars is not much for a school such as Spartan. In fact if Spartan requires the money I would be more than happy to have my family make out a check to Spartan to pay for the application fee and approval process! California has a set of standards that they require foreign medical schools to meet. In 1984, when Spartan was last reviewed by the state of California, Spartan did NOT meet the criterion set for approval! A relative of mine attended Spartan back then and told me what it was like. I wouldnt have approved Spartan either!! However, Spartan is MUCH MUCH MUCH different than it was 20 years ago. In fact, when my uncle visited the school last month while on vacation in St.Lucia, he was amazed at the changes Spartan has made. I have been to Saba myself to see the facilities and they are the SAME as Spartan! In fact, I found that some facilities at Saba were not as good as Spartan's but Saba had a MUCH MUCH MUCH better administration! As for clinical rotations, Saba and Spartan pretty much have the same hospitals! So, lets review now----Saba and Spartan have the same facilites on the their respective islands, Saba and Spartan students conduct clerkships at the same hospitals by the same faculty, Saba has been around for something like 9 years, and Spartan for 24 years, Spartan's tuition is HALF that of Saba's but offers the same facilities and same clinical education, Spartan has some pretty OUTSTANDING alumni (Stevie Award Winners, Royal Family doctors, Authors of best selling medical books, Professor's in medical schools around the USA, etc etc) which I know Saba has not produced to date (but WILL with time and more graduates), Saba has an administration that is about a million times better than Spartan, and both Saba and Spartan have the SAME loans offered to their students. As you can see there is not much of a difference between the two schools except for the fact that Saba has a proper administration, and Spartan offers lower tuition and has more sucessful graduates, and horrible admistration. So what factor seems to be the most important here in allowing Saba to be more sucessful than Spartan-------ADMINISTRATION! Of course, we all know this already. Spartan needs a NEW administration that has a vision for Spartan School of Medicine to move forward and become more sucessful in these ever changing times where you cant just "fly under the radar" anymore! But what can we as students do as a collective? We pay the current administration's salaries so I think it is our fundamental right to complain and change the administration when the majority of students are not satisfied! If Spartan wishes to survive it must apply for California, New York approval! The current administration has shown that it is NOT interested in applying for such approval in the near future. This means that Spartan WILL sink unless the administration is changed VERY SOON! Spartan should either change the administration or sell the school to someone who wants to turn larger profits. I as a student do not know how I can be a catalyst in this process! If it means that many of us (current Spartan students, and alumni) protest infront of Spartan's "office" in New Mexico then we should do it! We need to some how FORCE school officials to make extreme changes to administration! If anyone has any good ideas please feel free to PM me. I also invite Pat Park the Foreign Schools Liason for the Medical Board of California to please review this post and post her thoughts about Spartan's ability to receive approval by the state of California. I would like Pat Park to review the facts which I have stated comparing Spartan (not approved by California) and Saba (recently approved by California) and conduct her own research if she would like. I also ask Ms. Park to visit www.spartanmed.org and www.saba.edu and read both websites in their entirety and post her thoughts on both schools. I would like Ms. Park to do an unofficial comparison of both schools and tell us what differences she sees between the schools that impact the ability to receive California approval. As someone on this forum proposed earlier regarding civil litigation against the state of California, I do not think that this is the right way of approaching this matter. Spartan must first at least apply for approval and be rejected for some minor reasons before alumni can take legal action against the Medical Board of California. It is my opinion however, that Spartan CAN indeed receive approval by the state of California if they just apply! It is paramount that Spartan be approved by the state of California otherwise we can kiss our precious school good bye and transfer to or start over at another medical institution.
Thank you,

Currentstudent