Michael Bloomberg Donates $1 Billion to Provide Free Tuition for Future Doctors at Johns Hopkins

July 10, 2024 journo

Bloomberg Philanthropies announced Monday a new $1 billion gift to make medical school free at Johns Hopkins University for a majority of students, while also increasing financial aid for students at its schools of nursing and public health.

The announcement was made in Michael R. Bloomberg’s (JHU ’64) annual letter on philanthropy in the Bloomberg Philanthropies 2023-2024 Annual Report released today.

Currently, nearly two-thirds of all students seeking an M.D. from Johns Hopkins qualify for financial aid, and future doctors graduate from Hopkins with an average total student loan debt of approximately $104,000.

Beginning in the fall of 2024, Johns Hopkins will offer free tuition for medical students coming from families earning less than $300,000 a year, which represents about 95% of all Americans. On top of tuition, Johns Hopkins will cover living expenses and fees for students from families who earn less than $175,000 a year.

“As the U.S. 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,” said Mr. Bloomberg.

“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.”

By the foundation’s reckoning, the gift will bring the average student loan debt for the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine down to $60,279 by 2029 while students from the vast majority of American families will pay nothing at all. This new gift ensures the most talented aspiring doctors representing the broadest range of socio-economic backgrounds will have the opportunity to graduate debt-free from Johns Hopkins.

And to further address recent declines in U.S. health, the gift will increase financial aid for students at its School of Nursing and the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The gift will also increase financial aid for low and middle-income students pursuing graduate degrees at Johns Hopkins’ School of Education, Whiting School of Engineering, Carey School of Business, School of Advanced International Studies, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Peabody Institute, and the upcoming School of Government and Policy. This generous aid will help Johns Hopkins attract more of the nation’s brightest students to pursue the fields that most inspire them, rather than ones that will best enable them to repay graduate school loans.

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This is the second of two 10-figure donations from Bloomberg Philanthropies to Johns Hopkins, having already contributed a historic $1.8 billion to Johns Hopkins in 2018 to try and ensure that undergraduate students are accepted regardless of their family’s income, permanently establishing need-blind admissions.

“That gift lowered the net cost of attendance—the actual cost that most families pay—by 40% and had a transformative impact on the makeup of the Johns Hopkins student body. Students with the greatest financial need now represent 21% of the Johns Hopkins student body, compared with 9% a decade ago, a higher percentage of high-need students than there is at Harvard, Princeton, MIT, and nearly every other Ivy League and Ivy League-adjacent institution,” the foundation claimed in a statement on the $1 billion gift.

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“As Johns Hopkins has become more economically diverse, it has also become more selective, attracting and enrolling more of the nation’s top students, including many from lower-income families who might not have applied before.”

Last year, the former mayor of New York donated over $3 billion to charity, making him one of the most prolific American philanthropists that year.

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