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NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

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Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#251
post #4

This is amazing. I graduated from medical school two years ago with $300,000 in debt. I'm a software developer on the side and would love to stop residency to try a healthcare startup and/or pursue a research, but the risk is too great - I need the attending salary to pay off the debt.

Geniune question: why does a degree cost that much? Is it the teaching staff salaries? Is it extremely state of the art equipment? Is it possible to disrupt that?

Same reason gold costs a lot: many people want it and there's limited supply.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#252
post #32

I'll probably be downvoted on a forum like this, but I worry about the most successful universities using their funds to subsidize those who would be fine without it. I was actually made aware of this by a wealthy Stanford alumni which has a fairly broad program for undergraduate tuition assistance. Graduates of mid/low tier universities seem more and more likely to have to compete with better credentialed people wit…

IDK. The same thought process led me to not being able to complete college due to financial reasons. Despite being emancipated, FAFSA still considers you a dependent until you're 24. I was told that only with documentation of leaving an abusive household would a dependency exception grant be applied. So according to FAFSA I was supposed to use all this money that I didn't have to pay for college. By 24 I had dropped…

Agreed, this was exactly the thing that led to me dropping out of college as well. In retrospect moving into software was the better decision, and I now have the money to go back if I choose, but folks missing out on the education experience because of poor law is completely avoidable.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. But that's not a product of free education.

It is a product of guaranteed government loans, which makes it “free” for universities to take students.

And here you see a difference between free and "free".

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#254
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College is expensive because so much money is available in the forms of subsidies and loans. If the federal government stopped guaranteeing loans, and cut back on other subsidies, the cost of college would be much much lower.

No, College is expensive because it's horribly inefficient. Professors are paid terribly.

That would mean they're getting increasingly inefficient, significantly so? Given how much costs have increased.

Certainly factors into the cost, but seems unlikely it's the key factor in the rising costs.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#255
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, salaries are only one of the many ways that doctors make money. Many "providers" are doctor-owned. Perhaps a more general statement would be that decreasing the cost of medical care will unavoidably decrease the income and/or wealth of doctors. I don't see a problem with this, so long as doctors can earn a decent living. An idea I've thought about is that medical school is free, but doctors primar…

> I don't see a problem with this, so long as doctors can earn a decent living. There's an enormous opportunity to disrupt doctors. Doctors, particularly in the US, are grossly overpaid for the value they deliver. As I said below, there's an extra $100-$250 billion a year that gets sucked up by doctors. Frankly, the vast majority of what doctors end up doing -- collecting information, analyzing it, prescribing a cour…

This is just a secondary effect. The primary issue is the principal agent problem. There's effectively no limit to what doctors can charge because demand isn't limited by price. So they charge a lot.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#256
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a wealthy Stanford alumni Grammar tip: In English, the word "alumnus" is typically declined as it would be in Latin. Especially amongst academics, I'd say. So if you're writing for that audience, the appropriate forms of "alumnus" are, I think, as follows [0]: "alumnus" - One male, or one person of unspecified sex. "alumna" - One female. "alumnae" - Multiple females. "alumni" - Multiple persons whose sex is all mal…

I rarely hear that anymore. I almost always hear "alumni" in all cases. I've tried saying to the librarians of my alma mater that I'm an alumnus and they repeat back to me, "oh, you're an alumni, sure, let me get you alumni access to our system." Maybe it's common somewhere else to make those distinctions, but they're not common at McGill.

Unfortunately, common or not, the usage of "alumni" in that context is incorrect. It may be a bit pedantic to insist on correctness in Latin, but all other schools use the term correctly and it doesn't reflect well on a well-regarded school to use the term incorrectly.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#257
post #32

I'll probably be downvoted on a forum like this, but I worry about the most successful universities using their funds to subsidize those who would be fine without it. I was actually made aware of this by a wealthy Stanford alumni which has a fairly broad program for undergraduate tuition assistance. Graduates of mid/low tier universities seem more and more likely to have to compete with better credentialed people wit…

IDK. The same thought process led me to not being able to complete college due to financial reasons. Despite being emancipated, FAFSA still considers you a dependent until you're 24. I was told that only with documentation of leaving an abusive household would a dependency exception grant be applied. So according to FAFSA I was supposed to use all this money that I didn't have to pay for college. By 24 I had dropped…

That's ironic, I came from a houshold with parents willing to pay my tuition until I was 25 but FAFSA decided that I needed money once I turned 24.

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#258
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDK. The same thought process led me to not being able to complete college due to financial reasons. Despite being emancipated, FAFSA still considers you a dependent until you're 24. I was told that only with documentation of leaving an abusive household would a dependency exception grant be applied. So according to FAFSA I was supposed to use all this money that I didn't have to pay for college. By 24 I had dropped…

College is expensive because so much money is available in the forms of subsidies and loans. If the federal government stopped guaranteeing loans, and cut back on other subsidies, the cost of college would be much much lower.

Considering the millions of people struggling to pay for college and desperate for lower tuition, this is totally untrue. This is like saying, "if we didn't have food stamps, food would be half the cost."

Re: NYU Makes Tuition Free for All Medical Students

#260
post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

College is expensive because so much money is available in the forms of subsidies and loans. If the federal government stopped guaranteeing loans, and cut back on other subsidies, the cost of college would be much much lower.

Considering the millions of people struggling to pay for college and desperate for lower tuition, this is totally untrue. This is like saying, "if we didn't have food stamps, food would be half the cost."

I think the reverse of what he said was true: that tuition has risen artificially because of all the free money. But yeah I'm also skeptical that tuition would decrease even close to the same way if the money were removed. I think they'd cut supply before they cut price. Especially with the all too common "but you need a degree" fallacy
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