Free Tuition?

Kaylee Lamarche.

On August 11th, at the white coat ceremony for the class of 2022, New York University School of Medicine announced it will cover tuition costs for all current and incoming students, regardless of their financial situation. This is all to be funded by an endowment that is currently at $450 million of the $600 million goal. With this initiative, NYU School of Medicine intends to shed light on two main issues in the medical profession: the lack of socioeconomic diversity in medical students and the propensity for medical students to align with well-paid, niche specialties, like cardiology and anesthesiology.

Only 3 in 10 students choose to work in primary care specialties, such as family medicine, pediatrics, and internal medicine, causing an  ever-growing shortage in primary care physicians. The cause of this shortage has been attributed to two factors: (1) the seemingly insurmountable debt burden accumulated in medical school and residency and (2) the wage gap between primary care physicians and better-paid specialties.

NYU Medical School aims to alleviate the pressure to pursue careers in well-paid specialties and increase the number of future primary care physicians by eliminating the burden of tuition debt. In introducing this initiative, NYU Medical School also hopes to increase socioeconomic diversity in their student population. Many students experiencing poverty or financial insecurity tend to shy away from pursuing careers in medicine because of the astronomical costs of attendance. In making tuition free, students of any financial background can theoretically apply without the fear of accumulating debt.

Or can they? The endowment covers tuition for all students, but not other costs of attendance. The yearly cost of attendance, including housing and fees, is projected to be a whopping $27,000. Potential medical students experiencing financial insecurity also have to consider the debt they accrued as undergraduate students, as well as the climbing costs of attendance, despite not having to worry about medical school tuition. NYU Medical School’s free tuition initiative also raises questions about how the admissions board is going to base their decisions on who to accept. With an influx of applications, will they continue to choose to pick only the top of the top? If so, this could be counterproductive to their goal of diversifying their student body as prospective medical students of low socioeconomic status could be discouraged to apply because a lot of what makes the country’s top medical school applicants so great is based very heavily on factors, like high MCAT scores, that students from financially privileged backgrounds are more likely to possess, because they can afford services such as tutoring. This tension illuminates the deeper-rooted systemic causes that led to disparity in financial status in medical schools, and even before reaching levels of higher education. On the flipside, with financial incentives out of the question, the admissions board can shape their class to fit the desired image of inclusivity.

While eliminating the cost of tuition could be a step in the right direction, it leaves New York University School of Medicine in a very precarious position: will they revolutionize the medical field by creating an environment for students who are disproportionately affected by a flawed system or perpetuate that very system by making it even more difficult for those very students?