Mike Bloomberg donates $1 billion to cover Johns Hopkins medical school tuition for students
Most Johns Hopkins medical students will get free tuition following a $1 billion gift from Mike Bloomberg.
Most medical students at Johns Hopkins University won’t have to worry about student loans.
On Monday, Johns Hopkins announced that Bloomberg Philanthropies, founded by the billionaire Michael Bloomberg, would donate $1 billion to make tuition free for medical students with family incomes under $300,000 a year, beginning this fall.
Johns Hopkins said the gift would also allow it to cover living expenses for medical students with family incomes under $175,000 a year. It estimated that nearly two-thirds of current and incoming medical students would qualify for free tuition or free tuition and covered living expenses.
“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,” Bloomberg said.
“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 added.
The university said students eligible for the benefits would receive updated financial-aid packages this summer.
Going to medical school can be costly — the Association of American Medical Colleges says it can leave borrowers with about $200,000 in student debt on average upon graduation. While medical jobs are typically high paying, a career isn’t guaranteed. Borrowers can be left with six-figure balances that can surge because of high interest rates.
Along with Johns Hopkins, other schools have received philanthropic donations to address high costs that can be barriers to pursuing further education. For example, Ruth Gottesman — the philanthropist and widow of David Gottesman, an early Berkshire Hathaway investor — donated $1 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock to a medical school in the Bronx in February to cover its students’ tuition.
Some schools seeking to address high student-debt loads for their undergraduates have taken matters into their own hands. Princeton, Amherst, and Harvard are among a growing number of schools that have eliminated student loans from their financial-aid packages, shifting to grants that students don’t need to repay.
Monday’s announcement will build on donations Johns Hopkins has received over the past few years to reduce student-debt loads for its graduates. The university said that through that aid, the average total student debt for medical-school graduates declined to about $105,000 in the 2023-24 academic year.
