When my daughters started at our state med school, the Dean gave an opening address to the students and reminded them that the state was investing $100,000/year in the education of each & every student in the class. The Dean also express his hope that after residency, they would repay their “debt” by returning to the state to practice medicine.
Opening a medical school requires enormous capital. At least $50M-$150M.
To be considered for LCME recognition, new medical schools must show they have the financial resources at hand to pay for the first 5 years of operations–this includes the acquisition & maintenance of the physical classroom site (including lab spaces), appropriate educational resources & technologies (for ex, sim labs, standardized patients, research lab equipment, cadavers, educational software, etc), deans & other administrators’ salaries & benefits, faculty salaries and benefits, support staff salaries and benefits, information technology infrastructure, library and information services (including journal subscriptions which run into tens or even hundreds of thousands of $$/year),