Most students at Johns Hopkins will receive free tuition this fall

Medical school is about to get a lot cheaper—for lots of students at Johns Hopkins University, at least.

The former New York mayor, entrepreneur, and 1964 John Hopkins alum Michael Bloomberg donated $1 billion to the university, according to Bloomberg Philanthropies and the university in a Monday announcement. Starting this fall, tuition will be free for students coming from households that earn less than $300,000 annually, and the gift will also cover living expenses and other fees for students from families with less than $175,000 in annual income.

Financial access to medical school is a challenge for many students: The median debt for the class of 2023 is $200,000, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. This cost can discourage students from attending medical school at a time when the US needs more physicians; the association predicted that there will be a physician shortage of up to 86,000 doctors nationwide by 2036.

In a Monday letter in the Bloomberg Philanthropies’s annual report, Bloomberg wrote that he wanted to address challenges related to the “declining levels of health and education,” citing the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact on life expectancy and difficulties with remote learning.

Bloomberg also voiced concerns about shortages of primary care doctors and nurses, which he said was not only partially due to an increase in retirements and early resignations but also because expensive schooling dissuades prospective medical students.

“Many who do matriculate end up dropping out because of financial pressures. And those who graduate often choose to work in the most lucrative specialties in order to repay their debts, rather than in fields and communities that are most in need,” he wrote.

Tuition alone at Johns Hopkins University for the 2024–2025 academic year is about $65,000 for med students, and doctors who graduate from the school have an average total student loan debt of about $104,000, according to Bloomberg Philanthropies. 

“This [donation] will help Johns Hopkins attract more of the nation’s brightest minds and help free more of them to pursue the fields that most inspire them, rather than ones that will best enable them to repay loans,” Bloomberg wrote in the letter. “I hope other schools will follow Johns Hopkins in reducing barriers to enrollment—and that other donors will help them do so.”

Earlier this year, Ruth Gottesman donated $1 billion to make tuition free for all students at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, where she had long served as a professor. Through the donation, Gottesman said she hoped to reduce the burden of debt and open doors to students who could not afford medical school, the New York Times reported.

Since he graduated from the school, Bloomberg has donated $4.55 billion to Johns Hopkins University in total, according to the charity, including $1.8 billion in 2018 to bolster student aid for low- and middle-income students so finances would “never again factor into decisions,” he wrote.