“As America struggles to recover from a severe decline in life expectancy, our nation faces a serious shortage of doctors, nurses and public health professionals. Yet the high cost of medical, nursing and graduate school too often prevents students from enrolling,” wrote Bloomberg, a 1964 graduate of Johns Hopkins University and founder of the business and financial data and news company Bloomberg. “Reducing financial barriers to these critical fields will enable more students to pursue careers they’re passionate about, allowing them to better serve the families and communities that need them most.”
Johns Hopkins University announced that starting this fall, it will waive tuition fees, which typically cost about $65,000 a year over four years, for medical students from families earning less than $300,000 a year.
Living expenses and tuition fees are also provided to students from families earning less than $175,000 a year.
“This is a full scholarship,” said Hopkins President Ronald J. Daniels, “and we think this is a very significant step in making a medical education available to the best and brightest people across the nation.”
Tuition increases at both public and private medical schools are outpacing inflation, said Holly J. Humphrey, president of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on improving education for health professionals. The demographics of students enrolled are shifting, with a growing share of students from higher-income families and a shrinking number from lower-income families.
According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the average medical school debt for students entering in 2023 was $200,000.
Sanjay Desai, chief academic officer of the American Medical Association, said too many students don’t even consider medical school because of the cost.
Health outcomes improve when doctors reflect the diversity of the patients they treat, he said, and studies have also shown that students from low-income backgrounds are more likely to return as doctors to underserved areas.
There are other troubling gaps: The country needs more primary care doctors, but student loan debt can drive people into more lucrative specialties, Desai said.
“Hopefully this will inspire others to take action,” said Desai, who is also on the faculty at Johns Hopkins University.
The gift brings the Bloomberg Foundation’s total endowment to Johns Hopkins to a staggering $4.55 billion, and the infusion of capital has allowed the university to exponentially increase its ambition and impact in many areas. Affordability is a key pillar of the university’s mission statement. In 2018, former New York City mayor and presidential candidate Bloomberg announced a historic $1.8 billion gift to increase financial aid for undergraduates and promise to make future admissions decisions independent of financial means. The gift helped change the student body, which now includes more low-income students and is more racially diverse.
Stefano Montalvo, who will be entering Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in the fall, was one of the beneficiaries of a donation in 2018. He didn’t think he could afford college, but when he snuck out of track practice at his New Jersey public high school to check if he’d been accepted to Hopkins, he was surprised to see a scholarship offer that would cover nearly his entire tuition.
“I called my mom,” he said, “and we both cried on the phone.”
The donation announced Monday is not the first to be made to waive tuition fees for medical school students. Earlier this year, $1 billion donation to Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York A resignation letter from Board of Trustees Chair Ruth Gottesman allowed the school to announce to cheering students that seniors would receive spring tuition refunds and that tuition would be free in the future. NYU Grossman School of Medicine announced in 2018 that it would offer full tuition scholarships to all students, regardless of financial need, and a $200 million donation last summer ensured that Grossman Long Island School of Medicine, NYU’s second medical school, would be tuition-free in perpetuity.
At Hopkins, Existing aid funds are already reducing student debt The average debt load for last year’s graduates was $105,000, about half the national average. A school official said.
Monday’s announcement will change that dramatically.
Part of the value of this model, Daniels says, is its simplicity: “Applicants, or potential applicants, don’t have to wait for an admissions offer or a scholarship package from the school and can get a clear idea of what the total cost will be based on their family income.”
This donation is The bill increases scholarships for graduate students at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the School of Nursing, as well as in the School of Arts and Sciences, School of International and Advanced Studies, School of Education, School of Engineering, School of Business, Peabody Institute and the School of Government and Policy, which was announced last fall and will be located at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Center near the Capitol in Washington.
Many students at Johns Hopkins have already benefited from the scholarship donation. Growing up near Chicago, Albert Holler had always wanted to be a doctor, ever since a high school classmate died of leukemia. But with his mother working a variety of jobs, including as a hairdresser, waitress and cleaner, and his father working two jobs to support a family of five, he thought he would have to take on huge debts. After applying to medical schools, he woke up in his dorm one weekend morning, still sleepy, when he opened an email from Hopkins University. The dean had offered him a $90,000 annual scholarship, which also included living expenses for four years. Wondering if it was a real offer, Holler texted his father.
That gift from a donor “profoundly changed the course of my life,” he said.
Covering medical school tuition for more students would not only help Hopkins attract the best students regardless of financial ability, but it would also be great for patient care, he said.
As he completes his internal medicine residency in Baltimore and plans to one day become an oncologist, he frequently uses the Spanish he learned from his mother and honed while volunteering at the clinic. Baltimore has seen a recent influx of Central Americans, and he relies on Spanish to understand their needs. “It seems to make them take a deep breath and have a little more confidence,” he says.
