Giving Compass' Take:

• New York University School of Medicine is offering full scholarships for future students with the hopes of addressing doctor shortages and diversifying the medical field. 

• Only a little more than 8 percent of physicians are black, and less than 7 percent are Latino. How will this scholarship lead to more diversity and why is it necessary?

• Read more about the NYU scholarships to medical school. 

Medical school costs a lot of money that a lot of people don’t have. That often means students do a bit of cost-benefit analysis: Is it worth it to take on hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt now for the possibility of making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year later?

New York University’s School of Medicine is trying remove that calculation as a factor in students’ career decision making. The school announced that it will provide all new, future, and current students a full-tuition scholarship—financial need and merit aside, meaning wealthy students and low-income students alike will receive it. The scholarship doesn’t cover the rest of the costs associated with college—housing, food, childcare—but it takes $55,018 a year out of the picture.

The school will need to raise $600 million to fund the project—$450 million of which it says has already been raised.

But beyond simply making it easier to pursue a career in medicine, perhaps removing at least a portion of the debt associated with medical school—the median debt of a student graduating from a private medical school is more than $200,000—will also allow students to chase less-lucrative yet socially important fields of medicine.

And if other institutions follow NYU’s lead, that may help put a dent in the dearth of diversity in a field in which a little more than 8 percent of physicians are black and less than 7 percent are Latino.

“Tuition-free medical education goes beyond the merit and financial scholarships, and debt cancellations that other academic centers have traditionally favored,” Rafael Rivera, the associate dean for admissions and financial aid at the medical school, said in a statement. “More importantly,” he continued, “it addresses both physician shortages and diversity.”

Read the full article about free medical school tuition by Adam Harris at The Atlantic