It's a valid question. The way I explained it to my chairman, my decision works to further his longer-term vision; if my current trainees are unhappy (e.g. they feel unwanted/unvalued by their program), that will be visible to interviewees, who are keenly attuned to that as a barometer of a program - nobody wants to go to a place where they can expect to be unhappy. I'm selling "doing the right thing" (at least what qualifies for that in my view) as good longer-term strategy, since I believe that the two dovetail nicely right now. I'm still working toward the longer-term goal, since roughly 85% of the interviews we've scheduled are with US grads; but I've put enough FGs on the schedule to reassure current FGs of their value and to ensure that I get a shot at the best of the graduating class from the foreign schools.

Someone else noted above that the balancing act with my current trainees will be most tricky in the beginning, as the numbers of FGs we accept are beginning to dwindle while a large proportion of current trainees are still foreign graduates. Once that proportion goes down, it won't be as big an issue from that standpoint. But it's at that point that the issue with my chairman will become more interesting; I don't anticipate that I will ever want to completely discard FGs as potential members of our program - they generally have had to fight, sweat and improvise more for their training and education than their American counterparts, and I think that brings something valuable to the program. However, my chair's ideal world includes a program free of them entirely, so this will become a potential area of future conflict if he sees the numbers asymptotically dwindle but never go away. My hope is that by that time he will see that if we get the best FGs out there as a small percentage of the program, they add positive value without diminishing the program's cachet with future classes of potential interviewees.