Med School Announces Big Financial Aid Break

In an unprecedented initiative to reduce debt levels for medical students, Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey S. Flier announced last week that the school will eliminate the family contribution starting next year for students whose parents earn less than $120,000 annually.

The move means that the Medical School, one of the largest of the elite medical schools, will have a more generous financial aid program than all but a few of the nation’s colleges. The annual cost of attending the Medical School is approximately $65,000, according to school officials.

The initiative represents a 40 percent, or $3 million, increase in Medical School’s aid budget, and will affect one third of the 700 MD students, according to a letter Flier sent to the Medical School community last week.

“From the moment that Jeff Flier was named Dean of Harvard Medical School by President Faust, reducing student indebtedness has been a priority,” said Daniel G. Ennis, the school’s executive dean for administration. “The issue of medical education access and affordability has been a focus for the University, the school, HMS students, faculty, alumni, and friends for some time and it is nice to take an important step towards addressing it.”

Medical education is one of the focus areas targeted by the ongoing strategic planning process that Flier launched last fall, soon after becoming dean last summer. Student debt has been identified as one of the Medical School’s top priorities by groups such as the Strategic Advisory Group on Education (SAGE), one of the committees formed last fall under Flier’s planning process, and the school’s Program in Medical Education.

“The SAGE was charged with looking at the future of HMS education,” SAGE chair Thomas M. Michel ’77 said. “One of the topics that we explored was the issue of medical student debt and its influence on career choice.”

Though medicine has traditionally been a high-paying profession, Flier noted the “recent trend that starting salaries in medicine are lagging increases in educational debt.” He said that he has firsthand experience with the costs of medical education because his daughter recently attended medical school.

“I understand Harvard participates in [financial aid] efforts, but it appears to be insufficient,” Flier said in an interview last July, shortly after being appointed. “Part of my job as dean is to work to raise the funds so that we can reduce the burden of debt on our graduates.”

The Medical School’s expansion is the latest in a series of aid increases across the University, including ones at the College and the Graduate School of Design last semester, and an initiative that Harvard Law School unveiled last week.

In a recent interview, University President Drew G. Faust said financial aid was a “high priority.”

“We’ve been talking to the deans about how to effectively raise funds across the University for financial aid,” Faust said. “It will definitely be a major part of any [capital] campaign as it evolves.”

According to Ennis, the additional funding for the Medical School’s initiative comes from a combination of endowment income and the school’s own funds.

“The Corporation has approved a significant increase in the payout from the endowment for the academic year 2009 which means that we have more money available for this initiative from the School’s financial aid endowments,” Ennis said.

The payout increase for the next academic year was approved for all University endowments and not just for the Medical School or financial aid endowments, according to a Medical School administrator.

The last major financial aid initiative was implemented for the academic year 1997, when the Medical School reduced the annual unit loan from $25,000 to $20,000, according to Ennis.

The size of the unit loan is currently $24,500.

In addition to eliminating the family contribution for those earning less than $120,000 annually, Flier said in his letter that the Medical School would also no longer take into account the income families set aside each year for retirement.

Flier added that the school will continue its work to become more affordable. Noting that the three components of financing a medical education are the family contribution, the loan package, and institutional scholarships, Flier said the Medical School will now turn its attention to improving loan packages.

“We are not done,” Ennis said. “Dean Flier and the HMS community are committed to continuing to raise money for the purpose of reducing medical student indebtedness.”

–Staff writers Clifford M. Marks, Nathan C. Strauss, and Paras D. Bhayani contributed to the reporting of this story.

–Staff writer June Q. Wu can be reached at junewu@fas.harvard.edu.