FEWER MINORITIES APPLY TO U.S. MEDICAL SCHOOLS, STUDY SAYS.

Byline: Kalpana Srinivasan Associated Press 

The number of minorities entering U.S. medical schools dropped this year, most drastically in states affected by affirmative-action rollbacks.

The Association of American Medical Colleges released a study Saturday of the nation's 125 accredited medical schools that showed an 11 percent drop in African-Americans, American Indians, Mexican-Americans, Chicanos and Puerto Ricans applying to medical schools. In addition, 6.8 percent fewer of those minority students were accepted for 1997 than in 1996.

Some educators fear the figures show that actions of a federal court in Texas and voters in California are echoing through the nation to end affirmative action for minorities. They say minorities are discouraged from applying, and administrators have become overly cautious about admissions policies.

``This is an ominous sign for the medical community and our nation, which badly needs a physician work force that is both diverse and reflective of our society as a whole,'' said the association's president, Jordan J. Cohen.

He said the downturn is clearly linked to Proposition 209, with which California's electorate ended admission preferences for minorities in state institutions, and the Hopwood decision, calling affirmative action unconstitutional, by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

According to the report, 17 percent fewer minority students applied to their state medical schools in California and in Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana. The number accepted in the four states plunged by 27 percent.

``The threat to affirmative action in many states is sending the signal to minority students that they are unwelcome,'' said Hector Garza, vice president for access and equity programs at the American Council on Education.

The council makes its own annual status report on minorities in higher education, which showed slight progress in minority matriculation until 1995-96.

``Just as we were beginning to see some upward mobility at all levels of the educational pipeline, we see this backlash to affirmative action having an adverse effect,'' Garza said.

One group that studies problems involving racial preferences, the American Civil Rights Institute, cautioned against attributing national fluctuations to the two California and Texas events.

``It is a leap of logic . . . to assume that changes in California and Texas graduate schools account for this nationwide trend,'' said executive director Jennifer Nelson, who had not seen the report.

Educators at institutions outside the four states said they have witnessed rollbacks firsthand.

Dr. R. Allen-Noble, associate dean of special academic programs at the Medical College of Georgia, said the school's minority enrollment has suffered since it revoked scholarships for minorities in 1996. Allen-Noble said the state's former attorney general declared the scholarships illegal in light of the Hopwood decision.

``Institutions are so afraid of a lawsuit that they are being overly cautious,'' she said Saturday at the American Association of Medical Colleges' annual meeting in Washington.

Allen-Noble said while the school is striving for more applications overall, it will have to combat an image of being unfriendly to minorities.

Dr. Cornelius Hopper, vice president for health affairs for the University of California, had similar worries last spring after noticing a 22 percent drop in minority applicants at the state's five medical schools.

Hopper said the school has not surrendered its goal of diversity among its students and will try to reach out for more minority applicants.

``Ultimately the people who fashion public policy will have to deal with questions of educational opportunity,'' Hopper said. Otherwise, he fears, ``gains that had been made in getting minorities to professional ranks will be allowed to disintegrate.''