Harvard to ease debt burden for medical students

Harvard Medical School will reduce the debt burden for students whose families earn up to $120,000, the school announced today, a plan designed to free students to choose less lucrative primary care specialties when they graduate.

In an e-mail to staff today, medical school dean Dr. Jeffrey Flier said the school will eliminate the family financial contribution for about one-third of its 700 students. The savings for families will average $50,000 over four years. The school will award an additional $3 million in scholarships when the program begins in the 2008-2009 academic year, a nearly 40 percent increase.

"It is important that the School not be out of reach to a broad segment of undergraduate students and their families," Flier said in the e-mail message. "Reducing indebtedness for our medical students is also essential in light of the recent trend that starting salaries in medicine are lagging increases in educational debt. If borrowing continues to grow, medical students will feel rising pressure to choose more lucrative specialties."

It costs about $65,000 a year to attend Harvard Medical School, including tuition, fees, and living expenses. Traditionally this annual bill was paid by the family, student loans, and institutional scholarships. In addition to paying the $50,000 family contribution, the typical student who qualifies for financial aid now graduates having to pay back loans of $98,000, and the dean wrote that the school is examining whether to reduce this loan amount as well and replace it with scholarships.

The school will also exclude from its aid calculations money families are saving for retirement, the dean wrote.

Shortages in primary care specialties -- family practice, internal medicine, obstetrics/gynecology, and pediatrics -- have grown more acute as new doctors have gravitated toward plastic surgery, dermatology, and other better-paid fields of medicine.

"We continue to pursue ways to make sure Harvard’s doors are open to students of talent and promise, whatever their financial means, and to moderate students' debt levels so that financial worries don’t constrain their choice of career," Harvard President Drew Faust said in a statement. "This initiative by the Medical School is a strong step forward down that path, and the long-term beneficiaries will include not only our future medical students but the many people these future physicians will serve."

Earlier this week, Harvard Law School announced that it will eliminate third-year tuition for students who commit to work in public service jobs for five years after graduation.