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Free Tuition; False Economy?

NPR

New York University's School of Medicine recently announced that every one of its students will receive their education for free. They will graduate with no debt. As the school's benefactor, Ken Langone put it,

"The day they get their diploma, they owe nobody nothing."

NYU says medicine isn't diverse enough, in part because the high price of medical school dissuades people from low income backgrounds, who are often people of color. NYU also said the high cost of med school skews graduates to higher-paying specialties and away from primary care.

Economists says offering free tuition is a waste of money because it doesn't target incentives correctly and the data suggests that NYU is wrong to assume that tuition costs push graduates into more lucrative career trajectories.

But hey, free tuition!

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Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.
Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.
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