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New York medical school eliminates tuition after $1B gift
- slater 3y agoeliminates tuition fees
- dangus 3y agoYou aren’t interpreting this correctly, they are indeed eliminating all tuition, not just the fees.
- titanomachy 3y ago“Tuition” is teaching. “Tuition fees” are the fees you pay to be taught. Admittedly pedantic, but they are not wrong.
- kopecs 3y ago> “Tuition” is teaching. “Tuition fees” are the fees you pay to be taught. Do you have a source for this? I am reasonably sure that in American English "Tuition" can certainly mean the fees you pay to be taught.
- delecti 3y agoIt seems that "tuition fees" might be a commonwealth term. In the US, the name of the fee is simply "tuition".
- lupusreal 3y agoCorrect. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tuition#English https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tuition#English > (Canada, US) A sum of money paid for instruction (such as in a high school, boarding school, university, or college). > Synonym: (UK) tuition fees Slater's correction may still be fair, despite the context of this being an American school, because it's a headline from a British website..
- entropyie 3y agoTuition is the act of teaching... I sure hope they aren't eliminating that. It is indeed the fees that are being eliminated.
- dangus 3y agoIn US vernacular it works like this: Tuition = the money you pay for your schooling, I.e., credit hours. Fees = Costs on top of tuition like registration fees, application fees, and other miscellaneous charges that aren’t represented in the per-credit hour price of school. If you told someone in the US that their school was eliminating fees they’d take that to mean that they were getting a small discount on a still-very large cost. Think in the realm of $30-100 per semester. American English has basically detached the word “tuition” to have anything to do with the teaching.
- recursive 3y agoNo, tuition is only the cost associated. Or at least, it certainly can be the cost. I've never heard any other usage.
- rahimnathwani 3y agoSemantic drift :(
- samatman 3y agoIn the American dialect of English, the only meaning of tuition is the fees students pay to receive their education. This school is located in America.
- ejb999 3y agoNot always - 3 of my kids got awards that paid for their entire 'tuition' at a good state school in New England (USA). The 'tuition' was $1800/year - the fees added on another $14K, and then the housing and food added another $10K on top of that - The state kept advertising how kids could get 'free tuition' if the met the academic requirements (combination of testing high enough and overall GPA) - but in reality, it worked out to less than 10% of the actual cost of attending this in-state, public university. Was still nice to get the $1,800 off the bill, but it was hardly 'free tuition'. PS: Not criticizing this medical school plan - just pointing out that the definition of tuition can, and does, vary - even in the USA.
- Taikonerd 3y agoThat's incredible. Imagine having $1B and open-ended instructions to "do whatever you think is right with it."
- yieldcrv 3y agoThey were married, that’s the default when a spouse dies
- woah 3y agoShould've used it to pay some dudes in the Bay Area to do thought experiments about Roko's Basilisk
- echelon 3y agoYou obviously use it to build the Basilisk. That's how I interpret the instructions, neverminding the fact that this would make the Basilisk smile upon me. FWIW, if an AI "satan" wins and becomes the hyper-advanced intelligence that rules our galaxy, it could just reverse simulate the light cone and torture each of us for all eternity anyway. It doesn't matter how good you are or which god you worship or how many "Hail Mary"s you say. We could be in that simulation now -- at any moment fire could erupt from beneath us.
- elzbardico 3y agoProbably the donor specified that those funds MUST go towards tuition-free education. No way school managers would come out with this idea from their own volition.
- jameskraus 3y agoWow, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine is about to immediately be the most competitive medical school in the US. I wonder how this will affect the number of doctors graduating from the school and how many will go on to practice in NYC / the Bronx.
- gnicholas 3y agoWhen UC Irvine launched its law school, they made tuition free for the first graduating class (and perhaps gave discounts to the next couple years — I can't remember). They are now ranked #35 in the USNWR, which is pretty good for a school that's about a dozen years old. My guess is that having free tuition for all students forever will have a much bigger impact. I believe Princeton's policy school is similarly endowed, [1] and it's basically the top choice for anyone getting an MPP. Of course, it also has the prestige of Princeton associated with it; I could imagine some student choosing Harvard over this school, which doesn't currently have the same name recognition/prestige. But surely that will grow as a result of this announcement! 1: https://spia.princeton.edu/blogs/we-fully-fund-all-students-spia-free-princeton-possible https://spia.princeton.edu/blogs/we-fully-fund-all-students-...
- wrs 3y agoIrvine did that as an enticement to attract students for the first years, because the school couldn’t be accredited until the first class graduated. So the folks who enrolled for the first three years were taking a risk.
- gnicholas 3y agoTrue, though with the faculty they lined up (including Dean Erwin Chemerinsky), there wasn't much risk of it not being accredited.
- bombcar 3y agoA degree from an unaccredited college/university is not as worthless as you might think; in fact, if the education is at least middling, it can be quite a steal. Hard to find them, however, that aren't just scams.
- huytersd 3y agoDamn, I wish I could get into here.
- atbpaca 3y ago[flagged]
- robertlagrant 3y agoWho knows - it's a perjorative in and of itself. It means whatever the citer wants it to mean.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- aantix 3y agoIf we were to get to a single-payer healthcare system, it seems like we would have to tackle the issue of medical school debt. $360K of debt would be a massive burden if the system had fixed costs.
- echelon 3y agoIt's not just tuition. There are so many issues with the workforce and their education: - We cap the number of residency students per year, creating an artificial limited supply. - We don't allow immigrant doctors to transfer their credentials, creating an artificial limited supply. - Med school is expensive, limiting the pool of applicants. - Nurses and nurse practitioners are extremely close to the action on a daily basis. There should be a path for them to graduate into doctors, perhaps by attending night school and then some form of on-the-job residency.
- dmoy 3y agoplus the other 85% of medical expenses (since what only 15% is doctor & nurse & tech pay?) Even if doctors and nurses worked for $0, we'd still have the most expensive healthcare system due to admin, drug, etc costs.
- HEmanZ 3y agoYes, it is similar skill and effort for an np who got a one year online degree that took 15th/wk of studying and a doctor who spent 80hrs per week of studying for 4 years to complete med school, then did 4-7 years of 80-100hrs per week of intense residency. Do you really believe this when a loved one’s life is on the line?
- ldoughty 3y agoThe interest should cover about 1750 students/semester (assuming about 10%) The school has about 1250 students (Wikipedia). I'm guessing the difference comes from other sources.. or it slowly will drain downward. Interesting to see nonetheless.
- wbeckler 3y agoYou're assuming there was no need-based tuition program already running. Average tuition may not be full tuition.
- thehappypm 3y agoWhy would the school having less students than the interest can cover be a problem?
- divbzero 3y ago10% interest seems like a stretch in today’s environment. 5% interest from US Treasuries would be a more reasonable baseline: yielding $50,000,000 per year total, or $40,000 per year for each of the 1,250 students.
- bombcar 3y agoBased on https://www.treasurydirect.gov/auctions/announcements-data-results/ https://www.treasurydirect.gov/auctions/announcements-data-r... the "safest" seems to be an assumption you should use TIPS, and you get about 2.2% Can you do better than that? Almost certainly! But at least TIPS has some inflation protection built-in.
- dmurray 3y agoNot many investors would assume a long term return of 10% over inflation. If they target 7% instead, it would almost exactly fund that enrolment level.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y agoAssuming 10% interest is not realistic. The inflation-adjusted rate of return of the S&P 500 is 6.8%. Plus, the inflation rate of what it costs to train doctors has gone up at a much higher rate than the overall consumer price index.
- DaleNeumann 3y ago"I wanted to fund students at Einstein so that they would receive free tuition," Dr Gottesman said she immediately realised. "There was enough money to do that in perpetuity." I have never heard of a school getting this lucky from there alumni/faculty and even hearing there students getting something out of it so it touched my heart I have always had a toxic opinion about my teachers. Perhaps this could turn into an example for the rest of Americas medical schools in the coming decades.
- CobrastanJorji 3y ago[flagged]
- ProllyInfamous 3y ago"Nobody would actually ever do that..." they'd continue onward, gas-lighting you from Truth.
- briffle 3y agoThe private school in my town with a $1B endowment is still one of the priciest west of the mississippi, and spent last week with no internet, because of a cyber-attack. I guess it mainly matters what their priorities are.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hentrep 3y agoKaiser Permanente has something similar for their med school in Pasadena. In 2019 they announced free med school tuition for the first 5 classes (through 2024). Unsurprisingly this attracts top talent, and there don’t appear to be any sort of strings attached (eg, stay employed with Kaiser for X years once you finish). Their acceptance rate was 50/11,000 applicants last year (0.45%). [0] https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/health-wellness/kaiser-permanente-free-medical-classes/3138991/ https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/health-wellness/kaiser-pe...
- divbzero 3y agoThe wealth came from David “Sandy” Gottesman’s investments, the most prominent of which was an early investment in Berkshire Hathaway. Gottesman was a friend of Warren Buffett, served on the board of Berkshire Hathaway, and also founded his own firm First Manhattan.
- proee 3y agoCouldn't other Universities follow suit? Harvard sits on a $50B endowment fund, though maybe these funds are contractually obligated toward different causes.
- psychlops 3y agoHow then would Harvard sort students by socioeconomic status?
- Atotalnoob 3y agoThey use FAFSA like every university
- legitster 3y agoHarvard is already free if your family income is less than $85,000. https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/why-harvard/affordability https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/why-harvard/affordabi... In fact Harvard charges more in tuition just because your family is rich!
- proee 3y agoWhat if the parent are rich but won't fund their children's education? I guess they are SOL?
- bombcar 3y agoThere is a way to be declared an "emancipated minor" or equivalent, but it can be a pain in the ass (because otherwise all parents would decide not to fund so the kids can go free).
- legitster 3y agoThat actually doesn't work. Too many tried to game the system by getting emancipated. If your parents refuse to pay or fill out the FAFSA, the only way to get off their income: - They die - You turn 24 - You get married
- legitster 3y agoI'm not opposed to free tuition, but I kind of question the utility of a grant like this. It's not like there's a requirement here that the doctors are going to work in the non-profit sector. It's not going to make the field less overworked and toxic. The students at this school have the same demographics as every other medical school. Given that nearly all of the students who graduate from a medical program end up in the top 10% of wage earners, this seems like a temporary alleviation of financial problems for a very small cadre of well-to-do. I am happy Dr. Gottesman felt such an affinity for her former employer, but it kind of strikes me as an ... uncreative(?) deployment of a billion dollars.
- DylanDmitri 3y agoDoctors who graduate without loans have more leverage when deciding their next position. They can immediately go for research or volunteer work that otherwise wouldn’t recoup their costs.
- _dark_matter_ 3y agoMy wife is a physician, and of the friends we made when she was in medical school, only one went to serve underserved populations. A big part of the reason he did so was because they would pay off his loans! So maybe this will actually lose an effective lever at getting doctors to serve those populations?
- earthwalker99 3y agoBy the dictates of capitalism, this can never make a dent. If it does, it must be undermined.
- udkl 3y agoSee this comment in case you did not get context on "only one went to serve underserved populations" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39517637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39517637
- phillypham 3y ago
- burntwater 3y agoJust thinking through everything this implies. Would it be safe to assume this means some people if not entire departments will be laid off? Not as much need for financial aid, bursar's office, etc. Overall it's a great thing, a more lean administration and better efficiency, but it's a small peek into what would happen if the U.S. ever gets single-payer healthcare (as I fully hope we do). On a different note, if things like this became more common, with fewer new doctors having massive debt, that would pull down salaries and medical bills. How you view that depends on if you're a doctor or a patient.
- molave 3y agoIt'll be similar to how horse drivers reacted when cars became popular, or painters with the advent of the camera.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y agoHow one views that isn’t completely influenced by which ‘side’ you’re on. Plenty of people are capable of not being completely selfish.
- ryandrake 3y agoThey may do something to keep all the bureaucracy around, like structure things so they take money from one of their pockets and put it in the other, such that a staff is still needed to fill out paperwork and move money from one ledger to another. They might keep student loan administrators around to "loan" the students money, paid off by the endowment, securing the jobs of all the people doing all the overhead.
- stevage 3y agoSounds like a very interesting experiment in economics is about to happen.
- chenxi9649 3y agoThis entire story is just so heart warming and I don't know if the title/discussions right now are doing it justice. 1. The fact that this donation is 100% going towards tuition. My university has a few B's in endowment, but those money are most definitely not going towards making the tuition fees lower lol. Hopefully this will allow them to select some candidate that are struggling the most financially... 2. The donor being a 93 year old doctor/alumni of that school that studied "learning disabilities and developed screening protocols". 3. The money was from her late husband's "whole portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway stock". And before he passed, he told her to "do whatever you think is right with it" and the article ends with her saying "I hope he's smiling and not frowning". Makes me cry a little.
- louwrentius 3y ago[flagged]
- nolongerthere 3y agoBecause our elected officials have been shown to be fantastic stewards of our money? Said no one ever. The truth is that this is a fantastic use of the money and no politician would ever have used it more effectively.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y agoYou’ve got the cause and effect the wrong way around.
- digging 3y ago> Because our elected officials have been shown to be fantastic stewards of our money? Compared to the billionaires who currently steward our money? Absolutely. For example, I just flushed a toilet and I'll never have to think about that shit again, except perhaps to marvel at how it may one day fertilize shade trees in my city.
- deleted 3y ago
- emmelaich 3y agoEliminates tuition fees. These language shortcuts can be confusing for those of us not in the USA.
- mistrial9 3y ago[flagged]
- Scoundreller 3y agoDoes the US let you forego capital gains taxes on unrealized gains when you donate stock, along with whatever benefit you get from donating money? As a salaryman, I wish I got to donate pre-tax amounts! I get some credits, but if your income is high enough, it doesn’t even cover the taxes already paid.
- gnicholas 3y agoYes. You deduct the FMV, not the basis. There are some limits on deductions, especially when giving to foundations you control. But you can be sure that the donor has been well-advised on matching up this enormous deduction with similarly-sized realization events (i.e., selling other assets and generating taxable gains).
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago> I wish I got to donate pre-tax amounts "When you donate stock to charity, you’ll generally take a tax deduction for the full fair market value" [1]. [1] https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/giving-account/what-you-can-donate/donating-stock-to-charity.html https://www.fidelitycharitable.org/giving-account/what-you-c...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- bombcar 3y agoThis only works for the first dollar after the you stop taking the standard deduction. For most people, the standard deduction is freaking huge now due to the changes under Trump - for married couples in 2024 it will be $29,200. So you have to have deductions that equal almost $30k before they start to "matter". If your itemized deductions would be about $10k (mortgage interest, perhaps, SALT, etc) you would have to donate $20k before you would start to see some effect from the donations. There are still some ways to do pre-tax donations even without that, but you may have to involve estate-planning trickery.
- akashshah87 3y agoYes, donating stock means you avoid capital gains. But even more relevant in this case is that she likely inherited the Berkshire stock from her husband which also resets the cost basis which means she wouldn't have had to pay capital gains even if she had sold the portfolio instead of donating.
- giogadi 3y agoWe actually already have many loan forgiveness programs for doctors - for example, they can choose to work at an understaffed clinic in a historically underserved area of the country and get huge amounts of their loans forgiven, on top of making a big salary. A lot of these clinics fully depend on this pipeline of doctors needing loan forgiveness. I'm not saying that this an ideal situation, but the loans can sorta encourage many doctors to practice where they are most needed.
- dantheman 3y agoLoan forgiveness like other tax incentives merely distort the market. Just pay the doctors what it costs to get them there, we are probably over paying by giving loan forgiveness.
- ilc 3y agoThe free market does not solve all problems. Sometimes it simply doesn't make economic sense to provide a service that people need. Witness broadband availability and other things, and you'll see that the free market won't provide a service if it can't make money.
- dantheman 3y agoAnd you think it's justified for others to subsidize the lifestyle of those who live in rural environment? This is about government funding - it's not a free market solution, it's about the government being honest in how much it is subsidizing different areas. If the total cost was visible perhaps people would say - hey maybe people shouldn't live there.
- ilc 3y agoHonestly, given that they are some of the poorest parts of our country. Yes. I'm also pro-single payer healthcare, and want us just to get on with it. I don't believe the value of people is just the money they earn.
- 3y ago
- VincentEvans 3y ago- 1B in donations at 5% APR conservatively invested will yield 50M every year. - At yearly tuition rate of 59K the earned interest is enough to pay for 850 students without drawing down the invested principal. - Albert Einstein college of medicine admits about 150 freshmen every year and medical school is 4 years long. So at any given time there are 600 students studying medicine at this school. It seems to me that simply earned interest on this donation should be enough to allow students to attend this school free of tuition indefinitely.
- sergiotapia 3y agoBeautiful, I hope admin bloat doesn't eat the whole enchilada.
- anonym29 3y agoIt's enough not only for that, but to gradually expand the number of students they can afford to admit tuition-free into the future (strictly on interest), as well, should the desire to do so ever arise.
- delfinom 3y agoGiven that the AMA cartel sets artificial quotas on med school admissions per school, it's not that simple lol
- verteu 3y agoI don't think that's accurate. From my research, the bottleneck is residencies, whose funding is determined by Congress [1]. The AMA has supported laws to increase residencies, such as "H.R. 2389/S. 1302, the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act" [2]. The paper "Physician workforce in the United States of America: forecasting nationwide shortages" [3] mainly blames an aging population and too-slow growth in the number of "residents and fellows". edit: Found a dissenting view here [4], its main reference seems to be [5]. [1] https://www.washingtonian.com/2020/04/13/were-short-on-healthcare-workers-why-doesnt-the-u-s-just-make-more-doctors/ https://www.washingtonian.com/2020/04/13/were-short-on-healt... [2] https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/2024-nac-action-kit-gme-physician-workforce.pdf https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/2024-nac-action-kit-gm... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7006215/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7006215/ [4] https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/11/its-doctors-who-control-number-doctors-america-not-government/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/11/its-doctors-w... [5] https://washingtonmonthly.com/2013/06/19/first-teach-no-harm/ https://washingtonmonthly.com/2013/06/19/first-teach-no-harm...
- johanneskanybal 3y agoVery us focused, why would you pay for university if you qualify? What else could be more in your country's interest?
- 000ooo000 3y agoCurious what kind of provisos come attached in arrangement like this. Surely it's not just the cynical that now expect a bit of bloat to appear, salaries to increase, wastage, etc. In 3 years time, $59k/y becomes $79k/y, obviously "due to inflation".
- sillypuddy 3y agoFor all those speculating about the impact, NYU Med School went tuition free in 2018. This isn't the first school to do it. It would be interesting to read what the actual impact has been to NYU.
- Wh1skey 3y ago[dead]
- chrisjj 3y ago> New York medical school eliminates tuition after $1bn gift Oops BBC. Eliminates tuition /fees/.
- HlessClaudesman 3y agoYes, "tuition" is the act of teaching, which I hope was not eliminated. Someone does not pay tuition, they pay "for tuition", Americans seem to have dropped the for. Linguistic divergence is not a new phenomenon, perhaps we will have two completely different Englishes in a few centuries?
- chrisjj 3y ago> Someone does not pay tuition, they pay "for tuition", Americans seem to have dropped the for. Given this headline doesn't say "pay" either. I don't see how restoring "for" can help it. And note the headline is by the BBC - not Americans. I put it down to error, not language.
- testfoobar 3y agoThis is a great, impactful donation. Without any cynicism, I am curious what sort of negotiation and terms go into a donation of such size. As all the founders here can attest, taking money requires agreeing to a complex array of terms. For example - what kind of protections are in place to preserve the donor's intent? Is there a board of directors for the donated funds that provides oversight? Could the med school 10X the salary of administrators and raise tuition equally? Could the med school hire 10X more staff? Could they relocate the med school to a 5 Star hotel? People do funny things when vast sums of money appear.
- jostmey 3y agoHow about expanding admissions to more students rather than making it free. With the earning power that clinicians command, they won't have trouble paying off the fees. But patients deserve more doctors and more talent deserves the chance to become doctors.
- cryptoegorophy 3y agoAs someone who went through college without loans and with part time work this is such great news.
- bradleyjg 3y agoLet’s hope they have better trustees than the feckless ones Cooper Union had in the 90s and oughts.
- mathattack 3y agoGreat intentions - this is better than just naming a big building. Olin college was founded on free tuition paid outbid the endowment. Unfortunately this didn’t last. https://www.olin.edu/admission-financial-aid-afford/cost-attendance https://www.olin.edu/admission-financial-aid-afford/cost-att...
- selimthegrim 3y agoCooper Union too.
- jongjong 3y agoIt's not enough that governments use my tax money to subsidize my competitors and enable them to monopolize industries. Billionaires (who themselves are the beneficiaries of the scheme) are now also giving free money to my competitors. I understand that the intent is good, but the effect is mostly negative. It's about cherry-picking one set of people and giving them an unfair advantage over everyone else. The irony is that those who are in a position to be engaging in some kind of charity or philanthropy are the only ones who don't understand that the economy is a zero-sum game, by their own hand! It's a zero-sum game for everyone else except them.
- WalterBright 3y agoThis is a great and generous initiative. But there is a potential downside. People, being human, tend to not value what they get for free. Just some examples I see: 1. people don't turn off the lights when they leave a hotel room. I ask why, they say "who cares". 2. people abuse rental cars, because "it's just a rental". 3. students abuse free textbooks. 4. heck, the whole free public school system. 5. nobody values a "participation" award. And so it goes. Students should have some sweat equity in their education.
- pchristensen 3y agoDo the N years of medical school classes count as sweat equity?
- paulcole 3y ago> Students should have some sweat equity in their education. I don’t think you mean “sweat” here. Because they do have sweat equity in their education. They have years of hard work behind them and ahead of them. If they fail out of this school they can reapply and pay $300k at another school.
- WalterBright 3y agoThe freshman classes could be swamped by people who aren't serious about getting a med degree. And why should they be serious? It doesn't cost them anything. Heck, they could have a good time for a semester and never attend class. Caltech was a pretty fun place to be. If people are halfway through, a motivating thing to keep them going is the money they've already invested in it. I bet you'll see a significantly higher dropout rate with free tuition. Like we see in public high school.
- paulcole 3y ago> The freshman classes could be swamped by people who aren't serious about getting a med degree. And why should they be serious? This is not what medical school is like from the people I know. Nobody has a bigger stick up their butts about how important their work is than medical students. Computer programmers (despite what reading comments here on HN would make you think) are at best a distant, distant second.
- davidf18 3y ago[dead]
- ifyoubuildit 3y ago[flagged]
- shermantanktop 3y agoWhat a fantastic scrap to have fallen from the table of the ultra-wealthy! Perhaps if we wait patiently by this here table leg, we can get cheaper prescription medication or some workplace safety. We can hope!
- lnxg33k1 3y agoIt is a great gesture, but if someone gets to have a spare billion to donate, makes me think that it could be the case to increase taxes and make institutions as vital as school be funded publicly and consistently by governments rather than random act of philanthropy It’s mad that someone accrued billions and students can’t get 60k for free to study I consider this kind of events more as a proof of the inadequacy of the system rather than the contrary
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- chii 3y ago> increase taxes and make institutions as vital as school be funded publicly studying medicine is not a right. Basic education is - but k-12 schools are publicly funded already.
- hijodelsol 3y agoFor each individual perhaps not, but there is a right to healthcare and out of this arises the need for physicians. And I for one would like the talent of the candidates to be the deciding factor, not their or in most cases their parents’ bank accounts. I’m a physician myself with an upper middle class background but if I lived in the U.S. I most probably wouldn’t be because of how cost prohibitive med school is over there. And this leads to all kinds of downstream effects like exorbitant physician later salaries on that render healthcare unaffordable for many and are detrimental to society.
- lnxg33k1 3y agoI would also try to spark a thought about the effects that high debt might have on the decisions of doctors, to think that maybe if people weren’t buried by med school debt there could have been a different approach to oxy prescriptions or other pushes from pharma companies Have countries with public universities suffered the same amount of opioids prescriptions epidemic?
- 3y ago
- manast95 3y ago[dead]
- iraqmtpizza 3y agoyou could build a gothic cathedral with that money. what a waste.
- SilverBirch 3y agoCall me a dirty European, but my first reaction to this is "This is why you're meant to have a working tax system". I agree that tuition for doctors shouldn't be usurious, but is this really the best use of $1bn? Imagine how much better we could make things if all the people who got rich off Berkshire Hathaway put their money towards good causes and we actually focused that spending on the best outcomes for everyone rather than just helicopter money for random pet causes. It's just such a weird system.
- rldjbpin 3y agoas a dirty third-worlder, there are far worse ways to spend that kind of money. like someone else posted here, you can earn insane amounts of interest by sitting that money around somewhere. with that, it would have been possible to instead provide scholarship to select students every year for like perpetuity. but this one relieves the donator from the responsibility and at the end of the day, a very selfless work. i would not judge it any beyond that.
- SilverBirch 3y agoYeah don't get me wrong, it's definitely a better thing to do with the money than some of the alternatives. It's just difficult to look at the system as a whole and go "Ok, so Xmillion kids in the US are going to go medical schoool this year, 99% are going to go into hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, but these lucky 10,000 are going to get it for free". Meanwhile, you look at that wealth and trace it through and think "Hang on, that's an incredible amount of wealth accumulated over decades. I wonder how much tax revenue that resulted in? $0.
- scotty79 3y agoOf course you can do worse. You could buy weapons, and pay mercenaries to kill people and destroy infrastructure with them. The point is you can do so much better than let generation hoard this much of economical power and wait hundred years for some of them accidentally do something benficial with it.
- mlrtime 3y ago
- RandomWorker 3y agoDoing the math one bil surprising would only pay for one year.. 60k a year, let’s say 15k students, your at 900mil right there.
- naveen99 3y agoIf another 30-50% of med schools get this, full tuition private schools will have a hard time getting any merit students.
- arb-spreads 3y agoIneffective altruism strikes again