You might be right -- I have no way to know whether or not it will be effective (hence my reference to the flowery prose in applications
), but, for people who don't aspire to mansions and yachts, the difference between $500,000 in debt and maybe $150,000 in debt might very well be the difference between doing what they want and doing what they feel they have to.
The only point of my post is that the movement toward making med school less expensive is driven by the desire to make a graduating MD's ability to choose a less lucrative path more viable, assuming that's what they want to do, without compelling it, as the specific programs do, and has nothing to do with climbing ranking charts. Time will tell whether it is effective or just a wasteful subsidy to future millionaires.