What could happen if Clinton makes medical school tuition free?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
Members don't see this ad.
TXMED_1695 said:
The whole idea is disgusting to me. "Someone other than me ought to be paying for my education." The federal and state governments already pour billions into education and still they have people demanding more. If said person wants a free ride, earn it! There are numerous scholarships for students that excel in academic achievements (but that is not fair, I would have to work hard like everyone else) 🙁.



I have found in my lifetime, that "most people" who try to push their glorified standards on others - rarely uphold those standards themselves. Normally, they have massive opinions about every social issue, but have actually contributed only words to the said issues. Talk is utterly worthless without individual action.
Click to expand...
My action is voting.

As for the rest, well...my experience is that, yes, it does take hard work to break out of the bottom. But hard work, by itself, is not sufficient. That's what people tend to miss.
My family dug our way from food stamps to upper middle class, sure, and now I'm attending a great med school with zero debt from undergrad. But as hard as my mom worked (and trust me, she worked as hard or harder than any med student or resident I've ever seen at any stage), it would have meant exactly nothing if those food stamps hadn't existed in the first place, if she didn't have family to lean on and help her out when violence became an issue where we lived and we had to get out, if my grandparents hadn't helped her with childcare (especially in the summers), if my undergrad hadn't had incredible need-based financial aid. This kind of policy isn't about giving a 'free ride' to people who aren't willing to work, it's literally about making it so that everyone has the support they need to be at the stage where their good choices and hard work can actually occur and pay off.

I got into my state's public university, with a scholarship, and could have lived at home. I also got into a bunch of very good private universities...and yet if I had only gotten in to those, and not the school I eventually ended up attending, I wouldn't be in med school right now. I may not have even finished college due to finances. Because my mother had to work her butt off AND get government and family support just to get me to where I could get into those places. I had to work my butt off to qualify for those places. And yet I would not have been able to afford to attend; it simply wouldn't have made financial sense to invest that much into the degree. And if I had gambled on the loans, I would not have been able to take the extra time needed to get myself med-school-app ready, or taken on so much extra debt to be here now. You can work incredibly hard and make the best choices available to you and still be nowhere near moving up in the world, and that's the problem policies like this aim to address.
 
You will never convince someone like me that these people need more hand outs. My work has tuition reimbursement, so I had to work a year before I started college. For the duration of my undergraduate, I had to work 50 hours a week, and I still maintained a 4.0. The difference between success and failure are excuses - not hand outs. (I qualified for no government aid, and it did not stop me from going to college).


mehc012 said:
My action is voting.

As for the rest, well...my experience is that, yes, it does take hard work to break out of the bottom. But hard work, by itself, is not sufficient. That's what people tend to miss.
My family dug our way from food stamps to upper middle class, sure, and now I'm attending a great med school with zero debt from undergrad. But as hard as my mom worked (and trust me, she worked as hard or harder than any med student or resident I've ever seen at any stage), it would have meant exactly nothing if those food stamps hadn't existed in the first place, if she didn't have family to lean on and help her out when violence became an issue where we lived and we had to get out, if my grandparents hadn't helped her with childcare (especially in the summers), if my undergrad hadn't had incredible need-based financial aid. This kind of policy isn't about giving a 'free ride' to people who aren't willing to work, it's literally about making it so that everyone has the support they need to be at the stage where their good choices and hard work can actually occur and pay off.

I got into my state's public university, with a scholarship, and could have lived at home. I also got into a bunch of very good private universities...and yet if I had only gotten in to those, and not the school I eventually ended up attending, I wouldn't be in med school right now. I may not have even finished college due to finances. Because my mother had to work her butt off AND get government and family support just to get me to where I could get into those places. I had to work my butt off to qualify for those places. And yet I would not have been able to afford to attend; it simply wouldn't have made financial sense to invest that much into the degree. And if I had gambled on the loans, I would not have been able to take the extra time needed to get myself med-school-app ready, or taken on so much extra debt to be here now. You can work incredibly hard and make the best choices available to you and still be nowhere near moving up in the world, and that's the problem policies like this aim to address.
Click to expand...
 
TXMED_1695 said:
You will never convince someone like me that these people need more hand outs. My work has tuition reimbursement, so I had to work a year before I started college. For the duration of my undergraduate, I had to work 50 hours a week, and I still maintained a 4.0. The difference between success and failure are excuses - not hand outs. (I qualified for no government aid, and it did not stop me from going to college).
Click to expand...
Oh noes, you had to work in college and you were able to get a great job before that which had its own handouts completely merited gifts. You even had enough money that you didn't qualify for government aid! You're right, I totally misjudged you, you started with absolutely nothing but a cardboard box and a loincloth and became successful through sheer awesomeness. Nobody ever helped you with anything ever.

There are plenty of people 'like you' who had to work hard and still manage to recognize that you were given SO much to be able to have your hard work pay off. You don't see that. Congratulations, you are part of what makes America, America, instead of something better.
 
You are not atypical.

"You had enough money," you are so ignorant, I refuse to engage you again.

mehc012 said:
Oh noes, you had to work in college and you were able to get a great job before that which had its own handouts completely merited gifts. You even had enough money that you didn't qualify for government aid! You're right, I totally misjudged you, you started with absolutely nothing but a cardboard box and a loincloth and became successful through sheer awesomeness. Nobody ever helped you with anything ever.

There are plenty of people 'like you' who had to work hard and still manage to recognize that you were given SO much to be able to have your hard work pay off. You don't see that. Congratulations, you are part of what makes America, America, instead of something better.
Click to expand...
 
TXMED_1695 said:
You are not atypical.

"You had enough money," you are so ignorant, I refuse to engage you again.
Click to expand...
Never said I was atypical
I also said that you didn't work hard. Just that hard work is not enough by itself.
 
LizzyM said:
Easy for you to say if F-35s or their parts are not made in your district. The unemployment that comes with a cutback in defense spending is not pretty and it hurts both working class (fabricators) and middle class (engineers) alike. The pain is then felt across entire communities as the buying power of unemployed workers declines and they take lower paying jobs or move elsewhere. I've lived it through family members and I get a pain in my stomach thinking about it.
Click to expand...

So we tax other poor people to keep those jobs afloat? Why not spend the ~trillion dollars to rebuild infrastructure or develop green energy? In the long view, you'll create just as many jobs spending that money on other things as you would building overpriced war machines used to bomb little kids in poor countries.
 
mehc012 said:
You say that like it's a bad thing, but if we could get our **** together enough to pay what Europe does in order to get the benefits that Europe does, that'd be a wonderful improvement over what we've got now.
Click to expand...

It IS a bad thing.
 
QuantumMan said:
This is something that I definitely thought of at first, but she didn't specify whether free tuition would be given to undergraduate vs. graduate schools, which leads me to think she plans on free tuition in all public universities regardless of the degree. Or perhaps, she avoids saying that she "will give free tuition to only undergraduates" so as to foster up more votes.

But this is besides the point, if it so happens that medical school becomes free, what are the potential consequences and the future challenges for medicine?
Click to expand...
Come down from the clouds, that would be way to expensive.
 
mehc012 said:
Americans think that they're paying extra for autonomy and independence. That's not what they get.
The belief that 'anyone who works can earn', while it sounds nice, is not true in our society explicitly because we don't make basic education and the ability to live equal access things for everyone. Instead, we just repeat it to allow us to pat ourselves on the back while we piss on poor people here, because our society has always functioned on picking out a group of people to hold out as an example of "their lives suck the most because you are better than them" so that everyone else can ignore that their lives aren't much better.

That's what I meant by 'get our **** together'. We won't do it, even though we should, because we've deluded ourselves into thinking that we're speshul snowfwakes even though our democracy is less democratic than most other countries, and our 'freedom to do what we want' is true only for a much, much smaller proportion of our population than in other countries. We're so caught up in thinking that we're better than everyone else that we will never actually learn from those who have outstripped us in the areas that we supposedly value most. A twisted caricature of the American Dream, combined with American exceptionalism, is what's holding us back as a nation, and in order to accomplish any of what many European countries have, we would have to 'get our **** together', get over ourselves, and actually work towards the reality of the American Dream instead of the cartoon version the way everyone else has figured out how to do.
Click to expand...
The SJW is here.... he's here to inform us all of the sins of the country.

Edit: Quote Changed
 
Last edited:
leonardoson said:
The SJW is here.... he's here to inform us all of the sins of the country.
Click to expand...
Whether or not you believe that everyone *should* be able to succeed if only they work hard is a completely separate issue from whether you think that's currently true. One is a matter of opinion, the other is just a falsehood.
 
TXMED_1695 said:
The whole idea is disgusting to me. "Someone other than me ought to be paying for my education." The federal and state governments already pour billions into education and still they have people demanding more. If said person wants a free ride, earn it! There are numerous scholarships for students that excel in academic achievements (but that is not fair, I would have to work hard like everyone else) 🙁.
Click to expand...

TXMED_1695 said:
You will never convince someone like me that these people need more hand outs. My work has tuition reimbursement, so I had to work a year before I started college. For the duration of my undergraduate, I had to work 50 hours a week, and I still maintained a 4.0. The difference between success and failure are excuses - not hand outs. (I qualified for no government aid, and it did not stop me from going to college).
Click to expand...

I hope you can take this response respectfully, as it is respectfully given. I believe that free rides should absolutely be earned by the student. Free education for everybody is unsustainable given our economic realities. However, I also understand that merit-based scholarships, as they currently stand, do not adequately cover tuition costs for all those qualified. Free rides to four-year institutions nowadays are diminishing. More common is a merit-based scholarship that will partly offset the cost of attending but not completely. Most academically high-achieving students still take out student loans when even ten years ago, they would have received a full ride. I am not arguing that student loans are a bad thing but rather that the fact that there are "numerous scholarships for students that excel in academic achievements" is not what we should be focusing on. It is whether the number of those scholarships is commensurate with the number of students who are academically-gifted and have earned them.
 
leonardoson said:
I quoted the wrong post
Click to expand...
Ah, in that case yeah...that's not an SJW thing, I just really dislike America and think we're a lost cause as a nation.

And before you tell me to leave, I've got family and friends I'm not going to jump ship on because I like them more than I dislike the national attitude as a whole. Among other things...
 
mehc012 said:
Ah, in that case yeah...that's not an SJW thing, I just really dislike America and think we're a lost cause as a nation.

And before you tell me to leave, I've got family and friends I'm not going to jump ship on because I like them more than I dislike the national attitude as a whole. Among other things...
Click to expand...
Why would I tell you to leave? We need your tax dollars to pay for all these new programs you want.
 
leonardoson said:
Why would I tell you to leave? We need your tax dollars to pay for all these new programs you want.
Click to expand...
Haha, I'm fine with that! If we would actually start implementing those programs I would be 100% glad to be taxed for 'em.
 
I completely agree. The majority of students who receive government aid never graduate college. Money has never changed personal responsibilities.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/billions-pell-grants-go-students-never-graduate/

aldol16 said:
It is whether the number of those scholarships is commensurate with the number of students who are academically-gifted and have earned them.
Click to expand...

It's impossible for them to do it this way though.




aldol16 said:
I hope you can take this response respectfully, as it is respectfully given. I believe that free rides should absolutely be earned by the student. Free education for everybody is unsustainable given our economic realities. However, I also understand that merit-based scholarships, as they currently stand, do not adequately cover tuition costs for all those qualified. Free rides to four-year institutions nowadays are diminishing. More common is a merit-based scholarship that will partly offset the cost of attending but not completely. Most academically high-achieving students still take out student loans when even ten years ago, they would have received a full ride. I am not arguing that student loans are a bad thing but rather that the fact that there are "numerous scholarships for students that excel in academic achievements" is not what we should be focusing on. It is whether the number of those scholarships is commensurate with the number of students who are academically-gifted and have earned them.
Click to expand...
 
mehc012 said:
Americans think that they're paying extra for autonomy and independence. That's not what they get.
The belief that 'anyone who works can earn', while it sounds nice, is not true in our society explicitly because we don't make basic education and the ability to live equal access things for everyone. Instead, we just repeat it to allow us to pat ourselves on the back while we piss on poor people here, because our society has always functioned on picking out a group of people to hold out as an example of "their lives suck the most because you are better than them" so that everyone else can ignore that their lives aren't much better.

That's what I meant by 'get our **** together'. We won't do it, even though we should, because we've deluded ourselves into thinking that we're speshul snowfwakes even though our democracy is less democratic than most other countries, and our 'freedom to do what we want' is true only for a much, much smaller proportion of our population than in other countries. We're so caught up in thinking that we're better than everyone else that we will never actually learn from those who have outstripped us in the areas that we supposedly value most. A twisted caricature of the American Dream, combined with American exceptionalism, is what's holding us back as a nation, and in order to accomplish any of what many European countries have, we would have to 'get our **** together', get over ourselves, and actually work towards the reality of the American Dream instead of the cartoon version the way everyone else has figured out how to do.
Click to expand...

I'd have to agree with LizzyM on this one. It doesn't matter whether the belief that 'anyone who works can earn' is true or not, all that matters to sustain LizzyM's argument is that it is believed to be true. Most people appear to be stuck in the delusion that there is equal access to education/opportunities, and that is enough to have them prefer autonomy and independence rather than socialism. Even on this forum we see opposition to Affirmative Action. The US is largely an individualistic culture.

(I say this despite the success of ObamaCare)
 
Last edited:
mehc012 said:
Ah, in that case yeah...that's not an SJW thing, I just really dislike America and think we're a lost cause as a nation.

And before you tell me to leave, I've got family and friends I'm not going to jump ship on because I like them more than I dislike the national attitude as a whole. Among other things...​
Click to expand...
╔══════════════ ೋღ☃ღೋ ══════════════╗

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Repost this if ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ you are a strongly opinionated millennial ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ who don’t need no America ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~

╚══════════════ ೋღ☃ღೋ ══════════════╝​
 
nonociceptors said:
╔══════════════ ೋღ☃ღೋ ══════════════╗

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Repost this if ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

~ ~ you are a strongly opinionated millennial ~ ~

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ who don’t need no America ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~

╚══════════════ ೋღ☃ღೋ ══════════════╝​
Click to expand...

Topics that get the SDN fear machine rolling and with it the endless parade of ad hominem attacks and sensationalist non-arguments:


"Will mid-levels take over medicine?"

"Should we take care of poor, sick people?"

"Why are blacks and Hispanics taking our medical school seats?"

This tells you everything you need to know about how much hope you should have in the medical professional of the future
 
Lucca said:
Topics that get the SDN fear machine rolling and with it the endless parade of ad hominem attacks and sensationalist non-arguments:


"Will mid-levels take over medicine?"

"Should we take care of poor, sick people?"

"Why are blacks and Hispanics taking our medical school seats?"

This tells you everything you need to know about how much hope you should have in the medical professional of the future
Click to expand...
it's just a prank, bro

sorry if my joke #triggered anyone

a stupid one at that, but stupid begets stupid. what, did you expect some insightful dialogue to erupt from a comment that amounts to something as hackneyed as "my country sux"? nah...try again
 
Last edited:
LizzyM said:
I would only hope that with declining income from medicine, the profession will lose some of its prestige and desirability; as a result, we may find that only those truly interested for the good of the patients will pursue the profession. Just like the old days (pre WWII).
Click to expand...

Yeah because that's the effect that lowered incomes seem to have in academic medicine :whistle:
 
Med Ed said:
Calling that a prank is an insult to baby Jesus and true pranks everywhere.
Click to expand...
You've never heard someone say that before? First day on the internet? The next line down I clearly called it a joke, anyway. **** now I remember why pre-allo threads suck.
 
nonociceptors said:
You've never heard someone say that before? First day on the internet? The next line down I clearly called it a joke, anyway. **** now I remember why pre-allo threads suck.
Click to expand...
I mean, I've been on the internet a while and I've never heard it before. Figured it was a joke/colloquialism tho.
For what it's worth, though, I thought the response to you was a joke, too, especially since they added "and pranks everywhere".
Pre-allo threads suck for reasons wayyy beyond that of one person either not liking your joke or continuing it in a way you didn't get (whichever it turns out to have been.)
 
mehc012 said:
I mean, I've been on the internet a while and I've never heard it before. Figured it was a joke/colloquialism tho.
For what it's worth, though, I thought the response to you was a joke, too, especially since they added "and pranks everywhere".
Pre-allo threads suck for reasons wayyy beyond that of one person either not liking your joke or continuing it in a way you didn't get (whichever it turns out to have been.)
Click to expand...
Yeah they suck because you've got people trying to make sweeping generalizations about the future of medicine (Lucca) in response to an obvious joke. I forgot how on-edge prehealth undergrads with axes to grind can be.
 
gonnif said:
And the morality of the being a self-professed super power not being able to provide decent basic healthcare to its citizens is perhaps my strongest disappointment as an American
Click to expand...
Lucca said:
This tells you everything you need to know about how much hope you should have in the medical professional of the future
Click to expand...
Don't worry guys, I'm sure there's a lot more disappointment to be had in the near future.

#KneelBeforeEmperorTrump
trump.png


Maybe we should "stop worrying and learn to love the bomb," as they say -- embrace the madness!:banana:
 
Last edited:
Med Ed said:
There are discussions of the primordial version of this copypasta here (circa 2012) and here (circa 2013-2014). All in all, reposting a bastardized version in a pre-professional forum is a 100% good idea.
Click to expand...
That's some damn fine detective work. All in all, I'd say it's just as good of an idea as bashing your country using tired lines of reasoning. Seems like they'd be the type of person who'd need an explanation for the idiom "the grass is always greener on the other side."
 
Last edited:
nonociceptors said:
That's some damn fine detective work. All in all, I'd say it's just as good of an idea as bashing your country using tired lines of reasoning. Seems like they'd be the type of person who'd need an explanation for the idiom "the grass is always greener on the other side."
Click to expand...
I've been living in CA...grass is supposed to be brown, right?
 
I haven't read this entire thread.. But, I'd be interested to see where the OP got this idea that Clinton will be making med school free... Because that's just not the case. Her free college proposal only applies to public, 2 year colleges. No way it would be free med school for everybody. This isn't the Oprah Winfrey show... :boom:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Mr.Smile12
Bloomberg rescinds free tuition scheme for Hopkins med students (???)
Replies
0
Views
1K
Mr.Smile12
Mr.Smile12
Z
Free time during medical school?
Replies
9
Views
2K
lioneljohn
L
P
Free medical assistant certification program?
Replies
2
Views
2K
systematicX
S
xffan624
Johns Hopkins Medical School to give free tuition to students with income less than $300K
Replies
26
Views
6K
EdgeTrimmer
EdgeTrimmer
Mr.Smile12
Kaiser (Tyson) extends free tuition one more cycle
Replies
1
Views
2K
sarcasmrules
S
Top