Billionaire Bloomberg's $1 Billion Gift Makes Medical School Free At Johns Hopkins — Should Other Billionaires Follow Suit?

A $1 billion gift from Michael Bloomberg to Johns Hopkins University removes financial barriers for medical students and expands support for future nurses, public health professionals and other graduate students.

Starting this fall, tuition will disappear for those from families making less than $300,000 per year. Living expenses will also be covered for those earning less than $175,000.

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In a letter, Bloomberg said the donation is intended to address the "twin challenges of declining levels of health and education."

Even before Bloomberg's gift, Johns Hopkins helped two-thirds of its medical students with financial aid. However, graduates still faced an average debt of $104,000. The Bloomberg donation tackles this by boosting financial aid not just for medicine but also for nursing, public health and other graduate programs.

But is it the responsibility of billionaires to fund the education of the country's future doctors?

"It's great that medical students are getting money for their schooling," Reddit user JoshDoesDamage posted. "It's terrible that schooling is so expensive that our doctors need millions of people who also spent tons of money without another option to get a degree that they thought would end in a gainful career."

ATimeToTry noted that Bloomberg's gift was a one-time donation to the university and that doctors don't need to rely on "benevolent billionaires."

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"Throughout modern history, all medical professionals have graduated and gone on to practice medicine by taking loans or receiving grants/scholarships," ATimeToTry wrote. "It's an exception. It's not setting the bar for anything. Yeah, college is expensive. Literally, always has been. You get loans, you go, you graduate, you get a job, you pay it back."

But Jabbadarth disagreed, saying that college was affordable for decades and that student loans "weren't even a thing until a few decades ago."

Johns Hopkins President Ron Daniels said every penny of the $1 billion will go directly to students through the Johns Hopkins endowment.

"Mike has really been moved by the challenges that the professions confronted during the course of the pandemic and the heroic efforts they've made to protect and provide care to American citizens during the pandemic," Daniels said during an interview with The Associated Press. "I think he simply wanted to recognize the importance of these fields and provide this support to ensure that the best and brightest could attend medical school and the school of nursing and public health."

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Johns Hopkins joins a growing trend of medical schools offering free tuition to most students. This follows similar large donations in 2018 and 2023 that made New York University's medical schools tuition-free.

Ruth Gottesman, a former professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the widow of a Wall Street investor, donated $1 billion to the school, allowing four-year students to receive free tuition.

"Collectively, the medical schools right now, I hate to say this, but they're failing in terms of producing primary care, mental health specialists as well as the doctors who will work in and serve in rural and underserved communities," said Candice Chen, associate professor at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University.

Chen would have loved to see this gift go to Meharry Medical College in Tennessee, for example. This historically Black school has produced many primary care doctors who work in communities with shortages. 

In 2020, Bloomberg donated $34 million to Meharry as part of a $100 million initiative to reduce debt burdens for Black medical students at four schools.

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