Reflections on the three-year program.

Abstract

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.