Medical Education.

Once it was easy to become a doctor. During the nineteenth century the United States saw the emergence of an estimated four hundred proprietary medical schools. Set up to offer medical degrees as part of profit-making ventures, these schools generally had low standards of instruction, poor facilities, and admitted anyone who could pay the tuition. Since the proprietary schools competed with so many other for-profit schools as well as schools affiliated with universities, they advertised incentives to get students for their programs. One school gave free trips to Europe upon graduation to any students who regularly paid fees in cash for three years. Anyone who had the money could get a medical degree and practice medicine. In many of the private proprietary schools, degrees were granted after one year of courses that consisted chiefly of listening to lectures.

Flexner's Tour.