Johns Hopkins med school will be free for most after $1 billion donation

[We Never Know]

Anyone want to go to med school?

Johns Hopkins med school will be free for most after $1 billion donation

"Starting this fall, most students at Johns Hopkins' medical school will attend tuition-free thanks to a $1 billion donation from billionaire Mike Bloomberg...

The big picture: The donation will cover the full cost of tuition for medical students from families earning less than $300,000, Bloomberg Industries announced Monday.

• It will also cover living expenses and other fees for students from families earning up to $175,000.
• Currently, nearly two-thirds of medical students at the school qualify for financial aid. Johns Hopkins' medical students graduate with an average student loan debt of about $104,000.
• The donation will also increase financial aid at some of the university's other graduate schools, including the schools of nursing and public health."

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www.axios.com

 

[Stevicus]

Anyone want to go to med school?

Johns Hopkins med school will be free for most after $1 billion donation

"Starting this fall, most students at Johns Hopkins' medical school will attend tuition-free thanks to a $1 billion donation from billionaire Mike Bloomberg...

The big picture: The donation will cover the full cost of tuition for medical students from families earning less than $300,000, Bloomberg Industries announced Monday.

• It will also cover living expenses and other fees for students from families earning up to $175,000.
• Currently, nearly two-thirds of medical students at the school qualify for financial aid. Johns Hopkins' medical students graduate with an average student loan debt of about $104,000.
• The donation will also increase financial aid at some of the university's other graduate schools, including the schools of nursing and public health."

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www.axios.com

Sounds like a good thing. There are shortages of qualified medical professionals, and these shortages will become more acute in the years to come. So, reducing/eliminating the costs of medical school should attract more people to the field. Hopefully. (I think all universities should be free anyway, but I guess that may be too much to ask for.)

 

[Quintessence]

Sounds like a good thing. There are shortages of qualified medical professionals, and these shortages will become more acute in the years to come. So, reducing/eliminating the costs of medical school should attract more people to the field. Hopefully. (I think all universities should be free anyway, but I guess that may be too much to ask for.)

This is unlikely to impact the size of each incoming class so this will not help with the shortage of medical professionals. Class sizes are always kept small at professional schools and that is a main factor behind shortages - getting in has simply become more competitive and class sizes have not increased like they have at other levels of education. Johns Hopkins in particular is one of the elite, highly competitive, very difficult to get into medical schools. I do not see them increasing their class size in response to this donation, but they're welcome to prove us wrong I suppose.

What it will help with is barriers of opportunity, which are very significant for all human health fields that require post-graduate training. I work with a lot of students who are pre-medical/pre-health, and it often shocks and appalls me how expensive it is to even apply. Taking the MCAT exam alone is a few hundred dollars. Then add several hundred dollars for all the schools the student applies to. It's north of a thousand USD just to put your hat in the ring, which for college students who basically don't have any money to speak of, is a huge ask. And that's without getting into the non-financial barriers of opportunity, like where you happened to be born and go to school before college, what race or ethnicity you were born as, etc. But anyway, I could rant for a long time about this so I'll stop.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Super cool!