Mizzou has been under a lot of fire recently due racial tensions and mishaps taking place around their campus. Now, it seems like their medical school may be in trouble due to the lack of diversity.

According to Stat News, The University of Missouri School of Medicine is in danger of losing its accreditation next year because it has so few minority students and faculty. In the current first-year class, there are only five black students out of the incoming 104. Back in 2015, there were two. The year before, there was only one.

The school has been trying to find innovative ways to reach out to minority students to come to their school but they are aware they have a real issue to deal with. In interviews with STAT, more than a half-dozen current and former black students described the university as a campus that has made it harder for them to succeed. Due to the lack of diversity at MU, some students have been mistaken for janitors, they get singled out of ID checks by campus security and they have to deal with racial remarks from physicians about patients of color. Between the subtle and obvious displays of racism, a lot of them question if they even made the right choice to attend this particular university in the first place.

The biggest issue at hand is if the school loses its accreditation, a medical degree from there could be essentially worthless.

The school has tried to form bonds with historically black schools to offer more minority scholarships that prepare students for medical school and even launched a minority lecture series to expose students of color to physicians who look like them. These are good steps in the right direction but is it enough? Only time will tell.

The University of Missouri

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