Where's the tech program for the recently unemployed or people with families so that they can obtain unrestricted licenses to practice medicine? Heck, one major difference between prehospital care and medicine is that there really is a lack of physicians (especially primary care physicians) unlike paramedics. A lot of my classmates are married with children, yet are still putting in an insane amount of time to get their education instead of looking for an easy way to obtain said license. Why doesn't the school offer them flexible hours different from everyone else?
Those Carribean schools aren't tech schools, but they do shave off the time required for a degree. It'll work if you can find a place that will allow you to do your residency. If you can do that, then complete your residency, then won't the place that you did your residency be of much more importance than your alma mater? Smae thing in EMS. Many places require (or state desire) for prior experience when applying. It would appear, then, that many employers value relevant work history over your place of education. Experience trumps your alma mater.
So many of your classmates are married with children and are going through med school. I have to wonder if the marriage will be strained to the breaking point (divorce) due to the physical and emotional unavailability to their families (they're home, but they're unavailable due to hours of studying). I, for one, place family time at a premium. I don't want to be a stranger to my children, or a stranger in my own home. If med school is extremely time intensive as it is, how can one ever hope to devote the proper amount of attention to their family. A family may be able to endure 2-3 years of FT school, but a decade of unavailability? One would risk a high level of resentment and feelings of abandonment from their spouse and leaving their children with self esteem and insecurity issues. I wonder where and what they'll turn as a substitute for fatherly attention (assuming it's the husband going to school of course)? This all sounds like grand assumptions, sure, but these scenarios are possible and do happen to the best of families. I'm a realist. I look at the big picture.
My wife almost left me when I disappeared to medic school shortly after giving birth to our daughter. It took her years to get over that, basically up until I was hired by the FD, when we were finally secure and comfortable, thereby validating the year's misery where I largely abandoned her and left her to provide most of the care for out infant daughter.