Med school tuition: where does it go?

[energy_girl]

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I've always wondered about this: where exactly does our med school tuition go? I understand that it goes towards paying our instructors, laboratory/classroom equipment, and other administrative stuff. However, I also learned recently that some of the money goes towards paying researchers who may fall under clinical departments. This seems ridiculous to me--why should we students be paying for basic science research out of our own pockets?

So that's why I'm curious... do any of you have any numbers, either in general or for particular schools, about the distribution of your tuition?

 

[mpp]

Although I don't have any numbers, it seems reasonable that your tuition should be used for school expenses even if research is associated with that expense. Having quality research being performed at a school will only enhance you education in the long run by attracting higher quality faculty and students.

For a big private school with say 120 students per class each paying $30,000 tuition year, that's only an income of about $14,000,000 per year. Not nearly enough to pay faculty salaries much less for research (not to mention that many students are also on school scholarships). The amount of your tuition that goes towards research is miniscule. If you don't like that fact that your tuition goes towards research, bring it up to the office of planning and budget. Doubtful you'll get anywhere, but it probably wouldn't hurt.

 

[CANES2006]

Tuition goes into the administration's big pockets. Oops! Did I say that out loud?🙂

 

[Darth Vader]

Actually, if you go to a descent, US school; your tuition will not even cover the amount that it costs just to train you. Running a med school is an unprofitable business, that's why there have been so few new ones in the last 10 yrs or so. Tuition "income" only accounts for a small amount of a med school's budget. I think that I remember reading estimates that it costs around 70,000 dollars a yr to train a med student. Most of this cost is incurred from you taking away time from the attendings during wards and from the professors during lecture. Time=$.

 

[analu]

I agree...when I interviewed at my state school, the director of admissions told me that it costs the institution $60-70K to train each med student here, vs. the $14K in-state tuition. It was part of his reason why our school has limited its class size to 62 students, going back to the early '80s.

 

[8744]

Our tuition at LSU is only $8500 per year. Most of the cost of our education, conservatively estimated to be about $80,000 per student, is stolen from the unsuspecting people of our beautiful state.