The Perverse Consequences of Tuition-Free Medical School

October 23, 2024

A physician writing on a clipboard

(The Atlantic) – The school’s shift to a tuition-free model has no doubt been a tremendous boon to those students fortunate enough to gain admission. But judged against the standards set out by the Langones and NYU itself, the initiative has been a failure. The percentage of NYU medical students who went into primary care was about the same in 2017 and 2024, according to an analysis by Chuck Dinerstein, the medical director at the American Council on Science and Health. The locations of the hospitals where students do their residencies—often a clue about where they will end up practicing long-term—also remained essentially unchanged. And although applications from underrepresented minority students increased by 102 percent after the school went tuition-free, the proportion of Black students declined slightly over the following years, according to data from the Association of American Medical Colleges and provided by Jared Boyce, a medical student at the University of Wisconsin. (The share of Latino students grew by a few percentage points.) Perhaps most alarming of all, doing away with tuition appears to have made the student body wealthier: The percentage of incoming students categorized as “financially disadvantaged” fell from 12 percent in 2017 to 3 percent in 2019. (Read More)