Scholarships increasingly important as students grapple with rising cost of tuition

Medical school is an increasingly expensive proposition, with most UofL students now budgeting between $120,000 and $190,000 for a four-year degree.

The good news is that financial aid is available through federally subsidized loans, which help students pay for tuition, books, fees, equipment and living expenses during those four years when they don’t have time to hold down a regular job.

The bad news is that loans leave the majority of graduates saddled with tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt, which can take a decade or longer to pay off, said Leslie Kaelin, director of the Financial Aid Office in UofL’s School of Medicine.

Of the 152 new physicians who graduated from UofL in 2008, the vast majority — 135 — left school owing an average of $142,959 in student loans, Kaelin said. Overall, UofL medical students borrowed a whopping $18.4 million through the federal student loan program in 2007-08 alone.

“I can truly say that anyone, from any background, can pay for medical school today, thanks to the financial aid that’s available from federal student loans,” Kaelin said. “On the other hand, $142,000 is a lot of debt to be carrying when you’re just beginning your professional career.”

That number would be substantially higher, Kaelin said, if it weren’t for nearly $2 million in scholarships available to UofL students each year.

Those scholarships, which range in value from $500 per year to full tuition plus stipends, are increasingly important as costs have risen at a rate of 7 percent or more annually for the past 15 years.

Scholarships come from a variety of sources, including foundations, corporations, the U.S. military services and individuals like UofL alumni who want to give something back to their university, Kaelin said.

Eligibility is sometimes restricted to particular groups — minority and rural students, for example, or applicants to UofL’s M.D.-Ph.D. dual-degree program — while other scholarships are open to any student who meets stipulated academic criteria.

For the 2007-08 school year, 137 students received a scholarship of some type, Kaelin said, and that number will be increasing soon, thanks to two new scholarships established in 2008.

The first was created in January by Thomas Shown, M.D., a 1961 graduate of the School of Medicine who practiced urology in Winston-Salem, N.C., for 30 years after serving nine years in the U.S. Army Medical Corps. Shown has donated $35,000 to the university to establish an endowment and to fund a $2,000 scholarship that will be awarded annually to a first-year, non-traditional medical student.

“My contemporaries and I are from the so-called golden age of medicine, and we’ve been paid very well,” Shown said. “I’d like to use those resources to help someone else come along, and maybe they will do the same thing for the next generation of physicians.

“Being a doctor is an amazing power, and scholarships help channel that power to others so they help even more people.”

The second new scholarship was established in February by Schwartz & Associates, a local insurance company that provides medical malpractice coverage to physicians across the state.

Schwartz & Associates has donated $27,500 to the university to establish an endowment and to fund a $500 scholarship that will be awarded annually to a third-year medical student who demonstrates outstanding achievement in the medical humanities, an area in which UofL is placing increased focus.

“We are pleased to offer this scholarship, which will help students address the rising costs of medical education,” said Matt B. Schwartz, president of Schwartz & Associates. “We also are pleased that this scholarship will support UofL’s medical humanities program, and its goal of educating well-rounded, ethical physicians whose training will lend itself to a humanistic approach to patient care.”

For more information on philanthropic opportunities, contact the UofL Health Sciences Center Development Office at (502) 852-7001.