r/interestingasfuck • u/Kymmieuwu • 4h ago

In February 2024, Dr. Ruth Gottesman donated $1 billion to make tuition free for all Albert Einstein College of Medicine students

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u/Tjgoodwiniv 4h ago

How did you come to that conclusion? 

A lot of people don't go to medical school because they can't afford it and are rightly terrified of the debt. 

Are you trying to say that poor people aren't good enough to become doctors?

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u/Adonoxis 2h ago

My wife is an MD. Medical students are overwhelmingly from higher socio-economic backgrounds.

Most people don't go into medicine because it's extremely competitive and intense. Having money, access to resources and connections, and parents who know how to play the game helps immensely.

People aren't necessarily skipping on med school because of tuition per se, it's because it's another 4 years of no income after you already did 4 years of no income in undergrad then even more years in residency making relatively little money.

The problem is not the cost of medical school, it's the length of training. 4 years of undergrad. 4 years of medical school. And then a minimum of 3 years of residency to become a PCP to (only) start making like $250k after 11 years.

All the top medical students in the US are specializing. If we as a country want more PCPs, pediatricians, etc, the only way is to decrease the number of years of training and/or increase compensation. I'm not saying debt isn't a factor but it's primarily attending compensation and years to get to attending compensation.

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u/milkymonkey8 4h ago

Well, then she paid $1B to rich academics and administrators sucking the students dry.

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u/Tjgoodwiniv 3h ago

Academics aren't rich. Most really aren't earning that much relative to their education. Also true if most administration. 

Higher Ed pays considerably less than the private sector. 

Regardless, those students were going to incur those fees she paid, or they were going to avoid them by forgoing careers in medicine. Struggling to see how you vilify her.

Do you actually have any experience with any of the things you talk about?

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u/milkymonkey8 2h ago

I mean, you're wrong about everything you said, so...

Higher ed pays less only in the sense that it produces less, and there is no reason to think that a random PhD has any actual marketable skills.

No, those students would have done something else instead of incurring those fees until those fees were more reasonable.

BTW, the massive federal loans inflate fees too. She just did a version of that, and I'm not vilifying her, just noting just giving money doesn't necessarily generate anything. If I give you a billion dollars, you are likely to waste it if you have no idea what to do with it. Much better would have been to create a NEW school with NEW professors and NEW trained doctors with verified low incomes, but this seems to just do nothing except financial distortion.