<p>I once read somewhere that a significant portion of the income for many medical schools comes from the money earned by some of the faculty seeing patients in the hospital. This will be especially true after this year when the “economic stimulus” money starts to dry out. Is this true?</p>
<p>It appears to me there are many departments in a medical school which has everything to do with medical research, but has not much to do with the MD students on a daily basis. a majority of the faculty in a medical school seems to not teach MD students; they do research. And most researchers who labor in the research groups are not MD students, there may be more PhD (post-docs) than MDs.</p>
<p>This appears to be especially true for top research medical schools. Are these research groups “profitable” enough (purely from the financial point of view) to sustain themselves because of all the research funding the receive from NIH, etc?</p>
<p>Some PI’s seem to be rich enough to take lab members out at the end of year, and they spend a lot of money on the year-end party (like >$100 per person, or over a thousand per party.) If the research group is poor, they can not afford this, like some companies in the industry can. So I think they are reasonably profitable. (Maybe I should not use the word “profitable” for a non-profit organization.)</p>
<p>I thought most med schools rely heavily on fed grant money ( and maybe that’s why they mostly only admit domestic students). I think they also have endowments and donors. I imagine the state ones also get state money. But, I have no real idea.</p>
<p>Medical school funding is distinct from graduate medical education funding: the former derives from diverse sources whereas the latter derives from federal funding to train young (or at least, new) physicians.</p>
<p>Medical school funding sources include tuition, faculty practice revenue, grant money, university endowment income, charitable gifts and state funding. The mix and magnitude of funding sources varies dramatically from institution to institution. </p>
<p>It is interesting to learn that some medical schools were actually shrinking in recent years instead of expanding due to the bad economy. I also did not know the class size of Pritzker is so small (and was shrinking below 100 a year or two ago ago) while Indiana is so large until I read the article in USATODAY that you referred to. Duke Medical School seems to have been shrinking in its size once, claiming that “it could boost its quality” (this may be true) not many years ago. </p>
<p>I heard that it is better not to go to a medical school in an economically depressed state as some funding from that state’s government will likely be cut (heck, the funding may be cut from most state governments – I know Texas cuts the funding) and the funding from the federal government may have no way to go but down due to all the fiscal responsibility talks in the newly elected Congress. Which states are economically depressed states? Nevada and Florida come to my mind. California may not be in such a good shape.</p>
<p>Some posted (in the USATODAY article referred to above) the number of residency slots are not increasing or may even be shrinking. What is the point of increasing the size of students in medical schools without increasing the number of residency slots? How many residency slots are available as of today?</p>