NYU Offers Full-Tuition Scholarships for All Medical Students (wsj.com)

New York University said Thursday that it will cover tuition for all its medical students regardless of their financial situation, a first among the nation's major medical schools and an attempt to expand career options for graduates who won't be saddled with six-figure debt [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled]. From a report: School officials worry that rising tuition and soaring loan balances are pushing new doctors into high-paying fields and contributing to a shortage of researchers and primary care physicians. Medical schools nationwide have been conducting aggressive fundraising campaigns to compete for top prospects, alleviate the debt burden and give graduates more career choices. NYU raised more than $450 million of the roughly $600 million it estimates it will need to fund the tuition package in perpetuity, including $100 million from Home Depot founder Kenneth Langone and his wife, Elaine. The school will provide full-tuition scholarships for 92 first-year students -- another 10 are already covered through M.D./PhD programs -- as well as 350 students already partway through the M.D.-only degree program.

Comments

Great news

[rsilvergun]

We need more home grown doctors. I don't know about the rest of /. but I'm getting older. Right now we've been able to poach doctors from poorer countries but those countries are modernizing so that's not going to last forever.

Costs to NYUTuition

[lengel]

I would be very interested in seeing the books on this program after a few years. The school realized it would not take much fundraising to cover their costs of educating the students. Note they do not have to cover the tuition they charge students; only their costs.

These days since colleges and universities have turned into money printing machines instead of educational entities, the difference between tuition and how much it actually costs the schools is so large they determined let's raise the money to cover our costs and live off the PR of providing free tuition. They have basically admitted the difference between the two amounts of money is ridiculous in this day and age.

not all doctors make $150k

[Thud457]

"Do you want more doctors?
Because that's how you get more doctors."

This way someone can become a doctor and take a not-as-well-paying position in under-served areas or research.

Depends on the Doctor

[rsilvergun]

we've got a big problem with getting Primary Care Physicians. They don't earn a lot, especially if they've got their own practice. A big part of that it our crap insurance system that fights against paying them every step of the way, but given our political environment switching to a single payer system isn't going to happen any time soon. That's left a lot of them unable to pay their crazy high student loans. Which in turn means doctor shortages, especially in rural communities

That's where importing doctors comes in. They're trained overseas where education is usually paid for by tax dollars. That's made up for a lot of the supply issues. We could fix those issues with better pay but given our insurance system that's not an option. So if we take away those imports and we don't fix the pay problems we're going to have massive shortages.