A few years ago, I reported here that the NYU School of Medicine was going tuition-free, thanks to bounteous private philanthropy. From my 2018 post:
I asked NYU bioethicist Art Caplan for a comment. He told me that the entire cost will come from private philanthropy. “Our dean made it a priority for fundraising. The motivation was to minimize debt for graduates to encourage them to pursue areas of medicine that don’t pay as well as others.” (This is especially important to increase the number of primary-care physicians.)
I hadn’t heard much about that project since, so I contacted Caplan by email to see how it is going. “Very well,” he reports. “We are pulling in students we would not otherwise have gotten,” he said, adding: “I firmly believe this decision to go tuition free is not receiving sufficient attention. At a time when so much time and argument is being put into DEI efforts, the NYU commitment to removing fiscal barriers for student is a landmark moral and administrative decision that shows a true effort to diversify students and provide better care for all.”
Not only that, but Caplan told me that a second NYU medical school has now gone tuition free. From the announcement by the NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine:
A year after NYU Grossman School of Medicine launched the first top-ranked MD program to award Full-Tuition Scholarships to all students in 2018, NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine debuted with the same Full-Tuition Scholarship model. Of the dozen medical school programs nationwide specializing in primary care medicine, it’s the only one that spares students the annual burden of tuition—a benefit now sustained for generations thanks to a transformative $200 million gift from Kenneth G. Langone, Board Chair of NYU Langone Health, and his wife, Elaine. The gift extends the school’s award of a three-year Full-Tuition Scholarship to every student in good standing, regardless of need or merit, in perpetuity.
Bravo! Contrary to the blathering of socialists and political progressives like Bernie Sanders and AOC, billionaire capitalist philanthropists like the Langones — he was the founder of Home Depot — provide so much benefit to the country. Too bad they receive brickbats more often than the credit they deserve.
In any event, good for NYU! We need more doctors. Tuition costs should not be an impediment to attaining a medical degree.