10 Financing
Your
Medical Education
The current financial aid crisis
Successfully managing educational
indebtedness
Scholarships and loans
Securing a medical education can be extremely
expensive. The annual tuition at the
costliest school has exceeded $28,000, and the
national mean for private schools is more
than $16,000 per academic year.
The reason for high tuition is many-faceted.
Many schools are burdened with the
major expense of sustaining commitments--from
tenured faculty to capital improve-
ments. Research, which requires a physical plant
and equipment, is no longer as heavily
subsidized by the federal government. Medical
technology has created increasingly
costly instrumentation that must be updated to
maintain the state-of-the-art performance.
Essentially, tuition constitutes only a very
small part of the school's income. The
bulk of the income comes from research grants,
government funding, endowments, and
medical practice fees. For most private schools
the critical factor is the endowment. For
public medical schools the allotment by the
state legislature is the determining factor,
with the state's economy and demographics being
the key factors.
The only bright spot in the financial picture
is that there is evidence that tuition lev-
els may have peaked and recently, in a few
cases, tuition reductions have taken place,
perhaps in response to the decline in
applicants during the late 1980s.
The high cost of medical education raises
problems for many students. Various
sources of financial assistance are presently
available, so that, once accepted, a student
can feel relatively assured that adequate
financial support will be forthcoming, if not in
scholarships, then in loans. Recent proposed
cuts in the federal aid to medical schools
have included mostly attempts to cut back on
research and building grants. These cuts in
funding would affect the research being done
primarily by staff professors and would
threaten the future of research and the
training of research scientists. In addition, other
proposals include the substitution of a loan
program instead of scholarships for students.
Needless to say, educators have been decrying
these cuts and have been urging a
reassessment of financial
allocations.
How do medical students meet their expenses?
Usually from multiple sources
including gifts and loans from families, their
own earnings, and, if married, their
spouses' earnings. Scholarships and loans form
another major source of financial assis-
tance, with about 50% of all students currently
being helped by either of these means.
Employment during medical school is not
advisable, but work during the summers is
possible. In light of this situation, it is
important that prospective medical students antic-
ipating the need for financial assistance
undertake long term planning early in their
careers. Once the student has been accepted and
has decided to attend a school, the
financial aid office should be contacted for
information and assistance. In most cases,
financial aid is provided solely on the basis
of need.
In determining how to finance your medical
education, keep the following points in
mind:
1. The most important sources of current
financial information are the individual
schools.
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