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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.
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.
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Is this really the best way to spend the generous donations of your alumni? Surely there is a better way to spend this money, like a lazy river in an event center.
You don't need a government program to fix everything, private donations and effort can actually work to fix problems like the rising cost of tuition.
So.....instead of relying on government to handle necessary services and programs you feel we should just rely on the generosity of billionaires.....I fail to see how that could go wrong in any way.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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.
Sounds like you could really use that "benzos" perscription
If it weren't for the actions of government which have largely created this problem in the first place, I think some people would be more willing to trust them.
Even then, I'm not sure I believe that government should subsidize the costs of medical school. Sure you can argue that the world needs doctors and this will help ensure that the world gets its doctors, but someone else will come along and say that the world needs auto mechanics as well. So we might decide to pay their tuition in full as well, but someone else might point out that no one really needs a car and can just take a bicycle to work and that it's morally wrong to make them pay to subsidize the automotive industry and all the pollution in creates.
Maybe we all settle on some convoluted system that we can (mostly) agree with, or will at least collectively agree to use since we all get a little bit of something we like, even though no one is really ultimately happy with how it turned out. Of course this system will not be unchanged. It won't take more than five minutes for some politician to start proposing changes and now there will be an endless fight over the system with bits getting ripped out and special interests getting their own bits jammed in instead.
Also, I don't think that most alumni donations come from billionaires. There aren't nearly enough of them. Instead it's a larger number of moderately well off individuals who have accrued wealth across their own life times and wish to contribute back. Not everyone wants to leave everything to their own children after all.
"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.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You don't need a government program to fix everything, private donations and effort can actually work to fix problems like the rising cost of tuition.
True, this works well for medicine where people are very cognizant of the fact that at some point they are going to need good doctors. It is far less likely to work for fields like teaching or science where, although the entire population benefit, the benefit is not so direct.
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.
I think there's a larger point here that people are missing.
The school is putting aside enough money to fund the scholarships in perpetuity.
If you have enough wealth gathered in one spot, you can use it to fund things forever. We could gradually extend this model to cover other universities and other disciplines, and eventually reach the point where all university education is funded this way.
(Would require a *lot* of invested money - probably more than the current GDP - but we could do it incrementally over time; say, over the next 100 years.)
The model could also be extended to other societal benefits. Hypothetically, the return from $2 million in an investment account can keep pace with inflation (roughly 2%) as well as provide an income for one family: varies depending on assumptions, but a 5% return minus 2% inflation would yield $60,000 in perpetuity.
This could be the way to get UBI and universal health care: start putting away chunks of wealth to be used for funding projects in perpetuity.
It neatly side-steps the counter argument "eventually you run out of other people' money".
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.
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We do, but doctors should be making enough money to pay their student loans.
They should but you hugely overestimate how much money certain specialties like family practice make - not to mention the number of hours they work. Specialists can do much better of course but it's still hard to start off with several hundred thousand in debt (medical school plus undergrad typically) at the beginning of your career. Plus residencies can take 3-8 years and they only get paid something like $40K per year while a resident.
What about the other students that are going into areas that don't pay as well, but are also essential?
A fair question. We used to do this by adequately funding state schools. But people of a certain political persuasion in the US don't like that for ideological/political reasons so the funding has languished and debt has been piled on young people when they are least able to deal with it so that others can get tax cuts they don't really need. Of course even some private schools really don't need to charge what they do. Harvard has a $36 billion endowment so every student who goes there could go there for free if Harvard chose to do that.
Why should they be subsidizing people going into such high paying professions?
A lot of graduate schools are highly subsidized. I got a scholarship to grad school. But pragmatically because we need more of them. Because the job is important. Because that school can do it. The question should be why are we not doing it for more professions rather than why this profession in particular. What you should be asking is which important profession can we help out next.
Various schemes like nurse practitioners certainly can help, but the chief problem is aging demographics in most industrialized nations, which means patients are getting older, with more complex conditions, and that means you need doctors, and not just doctors, but more specialists. So sure, you can take some load off of the system by looking at alternative delivery methods, but that's not likely to get anywhere near enough to solving the primary issues.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You don't need a government program to fix everything, private donations and effort can actually work to fix problems like the rising cost of tuition.
So instead of a government program with some measure of accountability, you prefer hand outs from wealthy donors with no accountability? Nothing wrong with private donations but depending on fickle handouts from rich people who may have ulterior motives isn't a very sensible way to run a society.
And forcible confiscations of taxes from the poor, middle class and rich alike to support such programs IS sensible?
To each their own I guess.
You used government and accountable in the same sentence, implying that one gives you the other. Somehow I don't think you understand what "accountable" means because one doesn't give you the other. Besides, if doctors are getting trained and are able to meet the certification standards to get their licenses, what more accountability do you need in this case?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Even then, I'm not sure I believe that government should subsidize the costs of medical school. Sure you can argue that the world needs doctors and this will help ensure that the world gets its doctors, but someone else will come along and say that the world needs auto mechanics as well. So we might decide to pay their tuition in full as well, but someone else might point out that no one really needs a car and can just take a bicycle to work and that it's morally wrong to make them pay to subsidize the automotive industry and all the pollution in creates.
We should subsidize both. Society needs skilled mechanics just as it needs skilled doctors, especially modern society. Of course, to do that would mean actually taxing people to pay for education rather than forcing people to take out exorbitant loans or depend on the generosity of those that have money. Because everyone benefits from an educated, trained society it therefore stands to reason that everyone would have a responsibility to help pay for it.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Then gender studies would be a free degree, if I understand the logic that started this thread. Seems fair.
Except Germany's extremely biased and social class enforcing stratification starting in early education fails to produce the kind of highly skilled workers that the modern economy demands. Germany is experiencing a shortage of workers with the complex skills gained in tertiary education. Specifically "managers, researchers, engineers, doctors, nurses and medical assistants".
Being bracketed into the "easy" path dooms students to failure in the rest of their academic careers. Despite efforts to expand access, drop out rates are increasing especially for those previously bracketed onto lower paths, and total time until graduation is increasing for those who do finish. This is while the same high skill jobs go unfilled.
For the US though, the reality is that making college free in the US would be cheaper for the federal government than its current programs.
We are facing a shortage of doctors, but training more doctors is unlikely to be the best answer to the problem. We need to offload work currently done by doctors to other staff who don't need as much training. I doubt it takes 6 years of post-bachelor training to diagnose a toddler's ear infection. It won't be easy to make such a transition in our medical industry, but it may be less painful than medical costs increasing 5%+ higher than inflation every year.
You are paying the doctor to diagnose. Non-invasive treatment is almost always handed off to more appropriately skilled staff.
The diagnostic expertise is what takes years to hone. Nine people in ten can spot the zebra in the horse corral, but they can't find the lame horse with similar success (or substitute a car analogy, I'm lazy today).
I don't disagree with you. Turning out Nurse Practitioners by the dozen is not a panacea, however. The medical industry recognizes the shortages and action is happening in fits and starts in different areas.
A large part of physician training is already subsidized, though not always visible. The high tuition and limited seats are a product of the profession fighting to retain the prestige and compensation built up over time. This is obviously a simplification, but good enough to seed the argument on /.
There are combined 6 and 7 year programs that get students a medical degree out of high school in the US. Incidentally, this is the way most of the world outside of the US does things -- medicine is a 6-year university degree out of high school.
The problem is that the admission process in the US is too competitive in the wrong ways. They focus too much on extracurriculars, seeing an applicant as a "whole person", volunteering for religious groups, etc. Whereas in France, anyone can get in, and as long as they do well on their 2nd-year exams, they're allowed to continue. Base it on the ability to do science and understand it, not "soft" criteria.
A government always has an ulterior motive: to grow. Three universal laws are not to be messed with: speed of light, gravity, and self interest.
Private people giving money away adds to the economy. Government money by definition sucks from the economy. A private person managing their wealth does not need any 'accountability'. The point of accountability is to REIGN IN excess, waste, graft, name your moral failing.
Libertarian claptrap.
Plenty of instances where government largesse contributed to the economy. Giving railroads free land in the 1860s. Building the US and Interstate Highway systems in the 1920s through 1960s. Basic research that wouldn't otherwise be funded. Military research (unfortunately) with civilian applications -- Internet, telecommunications, nuclear power, etc.
Colleges can charge whatever they want for a gender studies degree. But the student will not be able to borrow as much from the government to get it. Maybe they can find other sources of loans (from the college itself maybe?), negotiate tuition, get a sugar-daddy, whatever. If it's so hard to secure funding, maybe the cost will come down or maybe even go away because it's stupid useless degree only gender studies professors can make any money with. Taxpayers win too because they are no longer subsidizing these big loans with high default rates.
Gender studies majors are maybe 0.1% of the US college student population. Something like this is usually a concentration on a history or poli sci degree, or maybe a double major. And nothing wrong with history or poli sci. If we forget history, don't write about it, don't read about it, and don't view politics through a critical lens, we'll likely trend towards authoritarianism and repeat the mistakes of the past. We need intellectuals to keep our culture honest as well as engineers, doctors, and scientists.