Ok, let's compare the two programs:

the faculty at OSU SOM

http://medicine.osu.edu/about/school...ntscenters.cfm

compare that to the listing at IUHS:

http://www.iuhs.edu/html/faculty.html
(check and see how many of their faculty are actually fulltime and
even on the island of St. Kitts)

or at UHSA

http://www.uhsa.ag/admin_faculty/

That Ohio uses "some" distance education doesn't negate the fact that they have close supervision of their students and they don't give advanced placement to non-medical school people like the above schools do. They don't ask their students to get help from 'big brothers/big sisters' who have been in the schools before them. They have full blown research programs going on and ample opportunities for their students to get into clinicals.

But let's talk brass tacks. Offshore medical schools are not the full thing but they are your choice if you don't have the grades to get into a US medical school or if you are a non-traditional student (older,educated in something else). Nothing wrong with it. It is a different way. But if you want to be a US doctor you need to go to medical school,not peer through a computer and go out and find a 'mentor' on your own.

The state boards realize that there is a problem and shortly you'll see more states (last count I figure there were 20 states where you can't license if you were to graduate with a distance education MD) rule that these degrees are worthless. If you don't believe me, contact your states and ask them about getting a degree from a school that you don't physically attend.

I don't know about Sydney Australia. But is has nothing to do,in my humble opinion, with distance education,which can be a tool. The problem with the current schools I mention (www.internetmedicalschool.homestead.com) is that they have ragtag groups of professors, non-existent facilities basically, poor supervision of their students, no help for their students, and provide little chance of licensing.

Don't take my word for it. Just contact the state boards and ask them. Ask them what they are talking about in their Administrators in Medicine meeting in October in Orlando Florida. My goal as a consumer advocate is to see all of the states in the US require that foreign graduates meet the same equivalency as US med schools and if you are one of the people doing the 'virtual med school attempt' if I was a betting man, I would bet you that you have major problems in getting licensed in most states,perhaps all states. This same thing happened in the 1980s when some chiropractors went to Russia for an advanced MD program--it took the boards a while to catch on but they pulled the licenses.

Glad to dialogue.

Az Skeptic-Dean Hughson