When Maria Garcia was a senior at Eldorado High School, she wasn't sure if college was for her.

After being caught in the grip of the nation's economic struggles, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas has struggled for the past four years to recover from a plunge in student attendance.

Just east of this desert city's gleaming resort corridor, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas anchors a hardscrabble stretch of Clark County with early signs of college life.

Medical education in Nevada is growing and is poised for significant expansion. Collectively, the current and proposed changes will eventually go far in reversing the state’s shortages of medical students, physician residency programs, doctors and nurses.

The people poked the mighty dragon that is the Nevada establishment. And the mighty dragon roared. And the Nevada establishment won again.

Any discussion about the need for a medical school at UNLV should include the financial implications — not the cost of the facility but how it will generate private and federal money that will benefit the region.

Las Vegas’ economy is missing one crucial piece to its puzzle — a public medical school, according to panelists at a Lincy Institute forum on the economic impact of a medical school at UNLV.

UNLV, in the meantime, has taken another step in an effort to establish such a school.