Panda with his take on a growing medical school trend:
Problem-based learning is an admission by medical schools that most of first and second year is self-study. Instead of following this admission to its logical conclusion, that people should study on their own, Problem Based Learning was devised to justify both freeing up faculty to concentrate on their real interests and to not provide lectures while still collecting tuition. If you look at it like that it almost makes sense because otherwise you would have to believe that many highly intelligent people devised an intricate solution to a non-existent problem.
