One way to attract and ensure enough blacks apply UK’s medical school is to build pipeline programs and mentoring at high school and college levels. Existence of minority pipeline programs to produce qualified black applicants is a positive step; however, there is no guarantee that such programs will produce any results. Over the last decade, there were very few applicants enrolled to UK College of Medicine from such pipeline programs, which makes us believe such programs were built only to satisfy accreditation bodies such as LCME with no true intentions of producing any viable applicants.
UK College of Medicine has no incentive to attract black medical students from Kentucky. If minority numbers matter, there is no distinction between a black in-state student and a black out-of-state student. Minority statistics would essentially stay the same if UK decides to only accept nonresident black students, which is essentially what they have been doing for the last 5-6 years.
Much of the argument for University of Kentucky’s recruitment of minority students centers on the idea of how state and federal scholarships are distributed. Most of the black students recruited by UK are excluded from state-funded scholarships due to their out-of-state status and some cannot benefit from federal grants and loans due to their non-resident immigration status.