A university suddenly offers free tuition for all medical students

NYU Medical School representative announced the decision to waive tuition fees for all students of the school. Photo: ABC News

The New York University School of Medicine (NYU) has just made a shocking decision when it announced that it will waive tuition fees for all current and future students of the school. New students will be wearing white lab coats to attend an event marking the start of their course.

According to news agencyABC, all current NYU medical students received an email announcing that the school will also offer them full scholarships.

“The last thing we need to tell students and their parents is that tuition is our responsibility. It’s amazing to see the emotions on their faces,” said Dr. Rafael Rivera, associate dean for admissions and financial aid at NYU School of Medicine.

Skyrocketing tuition costs, which can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in student debt, have become a hot topic of debate across the country. Future doctors may be facing debt for their top educations.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, 75 percent of doctors graduated in the United States with some form of educational debt in 2017. On average, doctors graduating from a private school owe $202,000. The pressure of debt can cause many new doctors to shy away from research, community service, and general practice, which don’t pay as much as specialty care.

NYU School of Medicine is the first private medical school in the United States and the only one in the top 10 to offer free tuition to all students, according to a statement from the school. The school’s previous annual tuition was $55,108.

The tuition-free initiative began more than a decade ago, when NYU launched a fundraising campaign to help fund it. To date, the school has raised more than $450 million of the nearly $600 million it estimates it will need to provide full scholarships to all medical students.

The move follows the school's 2013 decision to offer a three-year accelerated medical school program, cutting tuition fees for students.

The goal of the full-tuition scholarship program is to allow aspiring physicians “from all walks of life” to pursue their passions with less pressure, according to Dr. Robert Grossman, dean of NYU School of Medicine and CEO of NYU Langone Medical Center.

The fear of debt has a negative impact on patient care, Mr. Grossman explained, because it scares talented students away from pursuing medical careers, leading to a shortage of doctors and a diversity of medical graduates.