NYU Raises Millions to Provide Free Tuition to Medical Students
“This is going to be a huge game-changer for us”
Doesn’t this just prove that the government doesn’t need to be involved in providing ‘free’ college?
The Washington Examiner reports:
New York University has raised $450 million to fund full-tuition scholarships for all medical students
New York University said on Thursday that it plans to pay for all medical student tuition, regardless of financial situation.
The university is the first major medical school to do so, according to the Wall Street Journal, and has raised over $450 million of its approximately $600 million goal for the tuition package. The move is motivated by a concern for a lack of researchers and primary care physicians, as high tuition costs and loan balances are causing doctors to pursue higher-paying fields.
The school is going to cover tuition for 92 first-year students and 350 who have already completed part of the program, in addition to refunding out-of-pocket tuition payments that were already made and returning loans already that were already taken out for the coming year, according to the Journal. Ten students who are attending through M.D./Ph.D. programs already have their tuition covered.
“This is going to be a huge game-changer for us, for our students and for our patients,” said Dr. Rafael Rivera, associate dean for admission and financial aid.
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Comments
“The move is motivated by a concern for a lack of researchers and primary care physicians”
So long as the American Medical Association limits medical school enrollment by threatening to withdraw accreditation from any school that won’t play ball, and you can’t get a medical license without graduating from an accredited school, how can the supply of doctors be increased?
It can’t, but they’re saying there’s no shortage of doctors, there’s only a shortage of them in the lower-paying fields, so this will enable those who wish to enter those fields to do so.
In a free market, of course, if all the doctors are going into certain fields and leaving others underserved, the pay for the former would go down and the pay for the latter would go up, until new doctors started noticing and redistributed themselves accordingly.
Why not just give scholarships to patients have financial need? Rather than giving free tuition to people of means? Doesn’t make sense to me. Money goes farther when it’s spent wisely.
Because the point is to make it affordable for doctors to go into lower-paying fields where there is a shortage. The theory is that there are just as many doctors who wish to enter these fields as there used to be, but they’re not doing so because they need to enter the higher-paying fields in order to pay off their loans, so if that need were removed they would go where they’re needed and where they really want to be, just as doctors always have in the past.
Are they providing free tuition to foreign students as well?
If so, why?
It would make sense to do so. If they choose to stay here they will relieve the shortage in lower-paying fields, and if they choose to go home it’s even better, because they are surely needed there. Either way it’s a good reason to give them the same deal as local students.