Future impact of dental science on dental education.

My purpose in this brief paper is to assess the future impact of scientific advances, such as those described by others in this symposium, on dental education. A disclaimer is usually in order at this point, something about the risks of being wrong about the future, but, not being particularly cautious, I'll state unequivocally that I think that there will be four major impacts. The disclaimers that I will make are two-fold: First, the impacts of new scientific advances are inextricably bound and confounded by other major changes affecting dental education. In particular, these are changes in dental disease patterns, related to past scientific achievement, and demographic changes which constitute a more independent variable. It is impossible to isolate totally the impact of scientific advances from the impact of such other variables. Second, the rate of change in scientific information and, thankfully, its unpredictability limit my forecasts to the relatively short-range future. This is tempered by the general slowness of institutional change, so my forecast is for something like the next five to ten years, beginning immediately. Having disposed of disclaimers, I will state the four major impacts that I see, and then make a brief elaboration on each: 1. Dental schools will make a choice, consciously or unconsciously, whether or not to achieve a better integration with their parent University or Health Sciences Center. 2. Major shifts in allocation of curricular time will occur. 3. The formal education of a dentist will be expanded in time. 4. Most schools will require an internal restructuring in order to support and sustain these changes. The first of these relates to the traditional and accepted role of Universities as the repositories for knowledge and the generators of new knowledge, and to the fact that the current and future rate of change guarantees that isolation means stagnation. With the complexities and extent of modern science, dental schools in and of themselves will not be able to develop the manpower and facilities to keep abreast