UT System medical schools refuse to release admissions data, sparking racial preference concerns: report

University of Texas medical schools are concealing their admissions data, according to a new report by the watchdog group Do No Harm.

This sparked allegations that the schools may be preferring students based on race despite the Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions ruling that banned affirmative action admissions policies.

Do No Harm sent records requests to every public medical school in the country seeking admissions data, which should be publicly available. All seven UT medical schools refused to release this information. 

David Puelz, a statistician and professor at the University of Austin, analyzed pre‑SFFA admissions patterns at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, UT Austin’s Dell Medical School, and UT Southwestern Medical School. 

Puelz’s analysis indicates that these institutions all gave significant preference to black applicants over academically identical white or Asian applicants. Notably, at UT Southwestern, black students had 21 times the odds of acceptance as compared to similar white applicants.

The College Fix reached out to the University of Texas System and all seven associated medical schools to obtain comment on the Do No Harm report. None of the schools responded. They also did not comment when asked to provide a reason for their refusal to release admissions data.

In an email interview, Ian Kingsbury, senior director of Do No Harm’s Center for Accountability in Medicine, firmly criticized UT’s lack of transparency.

“Unfortunately, restricting access to records that should be publicly available isn’t unique to this request or to the UT system,” he stated. 

“Many colleges and universities seem to want to operate outside public oversight or scrutiny because they fundamentally do not see themselves as accountable to taxpayers. What happened with UT is a microcosm of a larger cultural rot within our higher education system,” he said. 

According to Kingsbury, colleges and universities have been instructed by the Department of Education to provide admissions data. 

“This would go a long way toward promoting basic transparency and ensuring compliance with SFFA,” he said.

When asked what legal options may be available regarding UT’s refusal to release public access information, Kingsbury said, “Legal recourse can sometimes be available for a situation like this, but it is time-consuming and expensive.” 

The director reaffirmed Do No Harm’s role in highlighting problems in higher education through investigations such as Puelz’s. 

He said, “We would rather reach a resolution here by other means to shine a light on the issue and drive constructive change, and that’s what we hope to achieve by publishing Dr. Puelz’s terrific work.”

Adding to these concerns, another recent report by Do No Harm revealed that Texas Tech University’s internal medicine residency program is staffed almost entirely by residents who attended medical school outside the U.S., raising more concerns about discrimination, The College Fix previously reported. 

The group’s findings show that 95 percent of Texas Tech’s residents are from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, Iraq, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Syria, among other countries. The program’s directors completed their medical education in Iraq.

The allegations of preferential racial treatment at UT medical schools are consistent with past actions by Texas universities. Further, Texas schools have appeared to dodge a new state law banning DEI offices by rebranding them.

MORE: Minority enrollment soars at Arkansas universities after affirmative action ban