Why Doctors Are Drowning in Medical School Debt
- By Daniel Barron on
It’s four o’clock on a roasting Wednesday last a resident physician at payday loans Iowa Yale University, and I am sitting beside my wife, Kristin Budde, who just became an attending physician, also at Yale. We are both opposite our new accountant.
Our accountant has no confidence in loan forgiveness programs
We have never spoken to an accountant; we’re not from families that have accountants. And 300,000 is an unfathomable amount of dollars. Wide-eyed and disillusioned, we hang on our accountant’s every word and encouragement; it’s the way I’ve seen my patients look as I explain diagnosis and treatment.
Around 5:30, we leave with the clear directive to pay off our student debt ASAP. Knock down these loans as fast as possible, he stated with clinical coolness. If we pay off our loans in 10 years, we might be in a good position to, one day, have financial security.
Neither of us questions whether going to medical school was a good investment. Our question is more basic, a more direct extension of the budgetary quandary we’re in now: what did we actually pay for?
You know, I heard tuition doesn’t even pay for education but that it goes into some kind of slush fund. I declare, as my fingers curl tightly around the steering wheel, which is sticky with heat. The AC hasn’t kicked in yet.
Jealous, she says. I thought I was getting a good deal. She went to medical school in Texas, where tuition is among the lowest in the country.
I mention that Robert Grossman, the dean and CEO of NYU Langone Health, spent over a decade building a $650 million endowment to replace tution. Curious how he did it and whether other schools will follow suit, I decide to go meet Grossman.
I’m sitting on the 15th floor of N.Y.U.’s Langone Medical Center. I’ve taken the train from New Haven to meet Robert Grossman.
When Grossman became the dean and CEO in 2007, the school was hopelessly in the red. Following his appointment, he oversaw what one author called the most hopeful and positive healthcare stories of our time.
Under Grossman’s leadership, revenue rose from $2 billion to $10 billion. Research funding more than doubled and, with 1.2 million added square feet of hospital and research space, the total number of employees ballooned from 7,000 to 40,000.
In addition to learning more about academic finances, I want to meet Grossman in person to size him up, to understand why he’d spend 10 years building an endowment to give away tuition. He announced the endowment in 2018 as a moral imperative,saying the opportunity cost of student debt crippled young doctors. Critics disagreed, arguing that Grossman’s endowment was no more than a calculated business move to recruit students.
As directed, we have dutifully organized our combined student loans on an Excel spreadsheet
I arrive early and notice that his staff endearingly calls him Bob. I’m flipping through a coffee-table book when Grossman rounds the corner. He extends a warm handshake and we walk to his office, an expansive room with a circle of plush sofas.
Grossman agrees to let me ask personal questions, about his family and childhood. He grew up poor, sharing a bedroom with his uncle and brother. During high school, Grossman’s glamorous side-hustles included washing dishes at a local summer camp, a paper route, and cleaning a butcher shop each night. He describes working in Connecticut during the summer and, with a chisel and hammer, scraping the paint off Glen Island Casino’s siding. He still remembers the buzz of pleasure boats as he stood on a ladder for hours tap-tap-tapping away.