Mike Bloomberg Gives $1 Billion to Help Pay for Students’ Fees at Johns Hopkins Medical School
There won’t be many medicine students at Johns Hopkins University who have to worry about student loans.
The billionaire Michael Bloomberg started Bloomberg Philanthropies, which gave $1 billion to Johns Hopkins on Monday. This will cover the costs of education for medical students from families making less than $300,000 a year starting this fall.
Johns Hopkins said that the gift would also let them pay for medical students whose families make less than $175,000 a year to live. It was thought that almost two-thirds of present and future medical students would be able to get free tuition or tuition that paid for their living costs.
“As the US struggles to recover from a disturbing decline in life expectancy, our country faces a serious shortage of doctors, nurses, and public health professionals — and yet, the high cost of medical, nursing, and graduate school too often bars students from enrolling,” said Bloomberg.
“By reducing the financial barriers to these essential fields, we can free more students to pursue careers they’re passionate about — and enable them to serve more of the families and communities who need them the most,” he said.
The school said that qualified students would get new financial aid packages this summer.
It can be expensive to go to medical school. The Association of American Medical Colleges says that graduates usually have about $200,000 plus in student loans. Medical jobs usually pay well, but you don’t have to make that your career. People who borrow money can end up with six-figure sums that can go up because of high interest rates.
Along with Johns Hopkins, other schools have gotten donations from generous people to help lower the costs of going to college. Giving $1 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock to a medical school in the Bronx in February to pay for its students’ fees was one example of Ruth Gottesman’s generosity. She is the widow of David Gottesman, an early investor in Berkshire Hathaway.
Some schools have taken things into their own hands to deal with the high amounts of debt that their first-year students have. It’s becoming more and more common for schools like Princeton, Amherst, and Harvard to switch from giving student loans to giving grants that students don’t have to return.
Monday’s announcement will add to the gifts that Johns Hopkins has gotten over the past few years that have helped its graduates pay off their student loans. The school said that this aid helped bring down the average overall student debt for medical school graduates to about $105,000 in the 2023–24 school year.