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Reflections on the three‐year program
Author(s) -
Formicola AJ
Publication year - 1978
Publication title -
journal of dental education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.53
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1930-7837
pISSN - 0022-0337
DOI - 10.1002/j.0022-0337.1978.42.10.tb01215.x
Subject(s) - curriculum , medical education , flexibility (engineering) , schedule , dental education , psychology , medicine , pedagogy , management , economics
Dental education has twice altered curriculum length from four‐ to three‐year programs. The first switch from four to three years came during World War II to meet the need for additional dentists, but schools rapidly returned to four‐year programs after the war. During the early 1970s, 14 dental schools converted to three‐year programs; however, by 1976 several of these schools had returned to the four‐year programs. At the New Jersey Dental School, one of the first schools to adopt a three‐year program in 1970, a return to a four‐year program in 1977 was the result of poor acceptance of the program by the faculty, a lack of flexibility in the schedule, and an undiminishing negative attitude by the profession toward the graduates. The experience derived from the three‐year curriculum has reenforced the need for designing variable length programs, because a significant number of students can successfully complete the traditional program in three years.