$1B gift to make Johns Hopkins medical school free for most | Hacker News Reader

$1B gift to make Johns Hopkins medical school free for most

washingtonpost.com

38 pointsgrubbs32 comments

>Starting this fall, Johns Hopkins will offer medical school students free tuition — normally about $65,000 a year for four years — for those whose families earn less than $300,000 a year.

So if your in a household with two high income parents, someone needs to quit to get under the cap.

Hypothetically a family of 4 in NYC making 300k only keeps around 180 to 200k after taxes and deductions. If you have a kid attending that's 65k just for tuition. I can't imagine putting a 3rd of a family's income into a student's education.

The vast majority take out loans, so there's no reason wealthier families should be exempt from this "requirement". Stanford does the same for undergrad -- free for students with HHI <$250k/yr. It's perfectly reasonable.

>Stanford does the same for undergrad -- free for students with HHI <$250k/yr. It's perfectly reasonable.

Lots of highly ranked schools and Ivy's have similar policies. It's often cheaper for a middle class family to have their kid go to an Ivy for essentially free than it is to deal with tuition for a state school, even with grants and scholarships and such.

There's an argument to be made you're encouraging people to just reduce their own income up front.

I'd have to look at their financial aid calculator, but I suspect a high income earning family could just reduce their income a bit and qualify for vastly more aid.

It's really rare that this would be an issue, but the way to fix it would be to do what the tax system does and say it's free up to $235,000 and give $1 or 50¢ less for every dollar earned over that. The downside is that the administrative burden added by that probably costs similarly to any high earners intentionally taking a pay cut to mooch off them.

This seems like an edge case though. Unless this is the actual-norm, why optimize for something happening infrequently?

There is no 100.000% perfect solution, but a 99.9995% one isn't terrible.

Yes along with the risk you take in reducing your income... you quit a job (leaving a hole in your resume), or you ask for a pay decrease (hurting your future earning potential)?

It’s assessed to show income is less than Y over X number of years. So reducing income right before going to Johns Hopkins would not normally qualify.

Well let's flip it around. Your Mom gets laid before you enroll.

Do you just find 65k even though your family had a massive reduction in income.

I don't like the financial aid system in general, it's really bad for young adults with rough backgrounds. Not everyone has a good relationship with their parents.

> I don't like the financial aid system in general, it's really bad for young adults with rough backgrounds. Not everyone has a good relationship with their parents.

Having gone through the community college and state university system, it wasn't that uncommon to hear students say "my parents make too much for me to get aid, but they don't contribute to my schooling" when discussing financial stuff.

Dr Freud would be proud.

> So if your in a household with two high income parents, someone needs to quit to get under the cap.

This is already a thing that happens. You also see plenty of highly-educated parents working fairly menial jobs at highly-ranked universities - so their kids get free/half-price tuition.

It's not nice to talk about college professors like this.

They're capping the wrong side. As philanthropy, they should be forgiving a loan unless the recipient makes more than x per year. By the time people are in medical school there is minimal reason to expect their parents (staring down retirement) to foot any of the bill except out of the goodness of their hearts. Mike has somehow managed to make his well-meaning donation extremely controversial.

That would set up bad incentives. Students might be more tempted to keep their salary under the threshold until the loan expires, or even to temporarily drop out of the field altogether (e.g. to raise children).

Expecting the parents to pay for their children also comes with issues, but in general successful parents do want to have successful children.

Grad students are considered independent for financial aid purposes so family income in most cases won't apply.

It depends on the financial aid program .

The FAFSA for example only looks at the parent you're living with, but I believe Harvard's financial aid will want income information from both parents.

I can't imagine most grad students already having an income of $300,000 per year. In that case why go to med school?

Good point, does the CSS consider parents income for grad students at private schools?

To be fair, most parents who anticipate sending their kids to college and/or graduate school start saving well before that happens.

So, it’s not like 1/4 of your income just disappears the day they enroll.

Deferred compensation plans exist partially for this reason (although obviously not every employer offers them).

Is it family or household income? Divorce would be easier if it's the latter.

Is it binary, no aid vs 100%? Or does it scale based on income?

$65k over 4 years are just favorable payment terms for a one-time $260k investment. A household making $300k can easily afford a $260k investment, whether by saving up for it or by taking out a loan.

I mean it seems like a good investment so why not?

This assumes the kid gets through all 3 years and you have a spare 65k a year to spend.

If they quit after 2 years or can't get though residency you just wasted a ton of money.

Let's say Billy and Bob have an adopted son named Dave. Billy and Bob both make around 160k. Arguably Bob should just quit the year before Dave starts attending, the family would probably break even.

My college scholarship never looked at my high school transcripts. Instead I was put through a series of interviews and testing to measure my abilities and gauge my likelihood of completing my degree.

At the end, degree programs were recommend to me. Courses, books and some associated living expenses (childcare) were paid for. I had regular interviews all through college to measure my progress - and help at the ready when struggled.

All this to say, knowledgeable, genuinely helpful and immersive engagement with the recipients of aid - this goes a long way to safeguarding funds + intentions + outcomes.

These kinds of income limits are not great. So a family that earns $300,001 has to pay full tuition and one with $299,999 get it free. There is no reason not to use a sliding scale. Not just for this but for a whole range of other "cut-off" limits for income assistance.

I'd agree if this were a much lower threshold, but 300 grand is a high amount. Most people won't hit it

What would be better for society is if they pay 50% tuition but double the number of slots. I am sure the AMA would not hear of it.

Looks like COA is $102K to 108K so not free.

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/som/offices/finaid/cost#meds...

> Students from families earning up to $175,000 a year will have living expenses and fees covered as well.

At this rate, Johns Hopkins can enact a statue of Michael Bloomberg. $3 billion in donations and counting.

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