The NEJM takes a look the skyrocketing medical school debt of American students, and the numbers are staggering.
When you include undergraduate debt, medical student graduates are saddled with a burden ranging from $145,000 to $180,000, depending on whether they enroll in public or private universities.
There is no other country that can boast that amount of debt for newly minted physicians, which has to be taken into account whenever salaries are compared between the United States and other countries.
It is no surprise that there is a “strong direct correlation between higher mean salary in a specialty, such as orthopedic surgery or radiology, and the percentage of residency positions filled by U.S. graduates.”
Some medical schools recognize this by fully subsidizing medical education. But only a minority of institutions are able to do this, which means that specialists will continue be in demand for the foreseeable future.
Related posts:
- Free medical school for students who choose primary care?
- Medical school debt and political views
- Graduate medical school debt-free?
- Would you accept a lower salary if you could graduate from medical school debt free?
- Auctioning off medical debt
- Medical school debt
- Medical students lobby Congress for lower medical school tuition
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“When you include undergraduate debt, medical student graduates are saddled with a burden ranging from $145,000 to $180,000, depending on whether they enroll in public or private universities.”
Umm, no, that’s just the low end of the range.
Leaving OUT undergrad debt, if the med student borrows cost of attendance…
Cheapest is East Carolina, instate COA $27,911 per year, four years is $111,644. Out of state? $211,604.
Most expensive public school is Virginia Commonwealth, instate COA $55,563, four years $222,252. That’s IN STATE. Out of state: $268,932.
Cheapest private school is San Juan Bautista in Puerto Rico (yep, it’s LCME accredited), four years in-state costs $127,204. Out of state: $139,204.
A mid-range private school is Yale, $59,910 COA per year, total $239,640, instate or not.
Most expensive private school: Drexel, $69,046 COA, total $276,184, instate or not.
Most expensive public school for out-of-staters, just for kicks, is U of South Carolina, $87,811 COA, total $351,244. Instate costs $201,980.
In my state, if I’m one of the 160 lucky ones to go to public undergrad and public med school, I’ve got $22,411 COA for undergrad, and $35,670 for med school, totalling $232,324.
Also note that 20% of US medical students are now in DO schools, which are on the private tuition end of the spectrum.
Source: ‘09-’10 MSAR
I am always jealous of the numbers you guys quote on the cost of the average medical education as mine is costing $280,000 not including undergrad….
I graduated with about 215,000 in debt, and that was after I had some help from my parents. Also, no accounting for opportunity costs.
I still don’t get these kinds of posts – I mean if I graduated with no debt I’d still pursue a specialty like radiology or anesthesia – cuz _then_ I’d really rake it in, have a better lifestyle than most generalists do, and be the kind of person people want to marry! http://www.stuff.co.nz/4798567a19716.html
I went to a public school and still owe $180,000 (but about 10K of that was from undergrad). And that was including the 2/3 tuition deferment if you were planning on primary care! What they don’t tell you about tuition deferment is that it doesn’t include the fees, which at my school were about twice as much as tuition. Then, if I don’t practice in the state of my med school, I’m on the hook for another $40K. I’m still going into primary care despite all of this, because for me I just want to make enough. And even $100K is enough. Not for a cush lifestyle, but enough for a small home, occasional vacations, and paying back my loans if I live modestly. But I certainly see the pull of seeking more money, after deferring so many things for so many years.
Anonymous 3:15 has it right. “Debt” is just political cover for talking about the real issue: income discrepancy. The income discrepancy between a career as a procedurist or imager and a career as a cognitive specialist is completely independent of debt. And the total amount of money at stake in the income discrepancy ($2-5 million over a career, even after accounting for interest and inflation) completely dwarfs all debt considerations.
It is not useful to conflate debt with income. Doing so weakens the generalist position in the political debate. The solution to attracting med students into primary care careers is _not_ debt forgiveness…this is insufficient and arbitrary. The solution is a combination of _income_ increases for cognitive specialists and decreases for those doing _overpaid_ procedures and imaging (note: this is not all procedures, but certainly many of them).
“There is no other country that can boast that amount of debt for newly minted physicians, which has to be taken into account whenever salaries are compared between the United States and other countries.”
So when you take it into account, where do you come out? I’m guessing that you still come out with US physicians the most well compensated in the world by a long shot.
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