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Comment by unholythree | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if a better use would be to establish a new medical school at a university without one. It seems like if society has too few doctors we need additional medical student spots more than a reduction in medical student debt.

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Too few doctors thing is problem with different bottlenecks... Mainly being that the US Residency program is funded by the gov't, and is competitive to get into. Many of the lesser schools and especially DO or carribean schools have graduates who are not able to get into residency on first try because there are not enough slots.

You could take that money and open another medical school, and you may well get a pretty good medical school, but you probably won't get one nearly as good as Hopkins'.

Fortunately though, Hopkins already exists.

Waiving tuition won't increase the number of doctors. Adding slots for students would, but that would likely also effect the quality of education.

That seems fine to me. While it sounds nice, I am skeptical this donation will do much in terms of more equitable access to higher education, precisely because John Hopkins is one of the best med schools around. To get in you already need to be privileged or exceptional and probably both. I'd love to know how many people ever have been accepted into Johns Hopkins and declined to go exclusively because of the cost of tuition; I'd be surprised if it's even like 0.5% of students.

Meanwhile, you don't need to be a genius to better yourself.

Or give the money to a more “working class” med school that trains regular doctors to work in regular practices and hospitals.

Hopkins is the elite - those doctors are going to be the best of the best, and they’re going to be well connected and compensated regardless of where they started.

Medical student enrollment is controlled by quota dictated by the AMA cartel.

Or double enrollment at JHU.

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