Booming Economy Offers Larger Rewards for Less Study
After four hard years of medical school, pulling all-nighters and memorizing the names of 206 bones and 650 individual muscles, Susan Taylor has a $35,000-a-year job as a resident doctor at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and heavy student loans to repay.
For her, workdays often meld into work nights with non-stop shifts. Leisure time is often spent grabbing some extra Zs to make up for sleep deprivation.
If Taylor had invested all her time, money and education into developing a new business or web site, she might now be the owner of a flashy BMW and a Santa Monica home.
Sometimes she looks at her college classmates and wonders if she made the right call.
“One of my friends working in business just took a year-long honeymoon around the world. She has been in the business world making money while I’ve been building up my $100,000 student-loan debt,” said Taylor, a 27-year-old Los Angeles native who considered a business major but ended up with a degree in biology from UC Santa Barbara.
While there always will be those wanting to become doctors, medical school applications have fallen 18% in the past four years, from an all-time high of 46,968 in 1996 to 38,534 in 1999, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges, the clearinghouse for applications to 125 U.S. medical schools.
The trend is no different in Southern California, where applications have dropped 16% since 1996 at the Keck School of Medicine at USC and a whopping 37% since 1995 at the UCI School of Medicine. Applications have held steady at UCLA Medical School.
Ralph E. Purdy, associate dean at UCI’s College of Medicine, says the economy has a lot to do with the decline in numbers. In a healthy economy, he said, those who are considering a career in medicine may take into consideration that business or other vocations require fewer years of training, which means they can start making money sooner.
“I think you look at the Internet and at the stock market and everybody seems to be getting rich off this stuff,” said Lester Cheng, a 28-year-old resident physician at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. “Those people who thought medicine may have been a prosperous career say, ‘Hey, I can do something else, spending less time in school and making more money.’ ”
And these days, that’s true in lots of cases. While physicians’ salaries often run well into the six figures, the founder of an Internet startup has the potential to make several times that,and not have to listen to complaints from sick people.
Meanwhile, aspiring doctors spend four years in medical school, one year as a low-paid intern earning $30,000, and two years as a $35,000-a-year resident physician before becoming a full-fledged doctor.
By that time, the average medical school loan is between $120,000 and $200,000, not including interest, while starting salaries hover at $80,000 to $100,000.
In many ways, it’s like taking out a mortgage for a long-term education that leaves some students wondering if they made the right move.
“I do know this was the worst financial decision I’ve ever made,” said Ken Carson, a fourth-year medical student at USC. “I figure I’m going to be 34 years old when I finish my residency and a three-year fellowship. Meanwhile my college roommate is doing web design and climbing the corporate ladder.”
But Carson doesn’t regret his decision. He graduated as a business major from USC, but after spending some time in the hospital for a long-term illness, he was convinced he wanted to be a doctor.
If a heavy debt load isn’t enough to scare off some prospects, there’s always the horror stories of malpractice lawsuits and meddling health maintenance organizations that have lowered starting pay and taken over much of the decision-making process.
“I’m sure that applicants out there are hearing negative words about managed care and about the life of a physician,” UCI’s Purdy said. “This raises a concern whether it is as wonderful to be a doctor now as it was 15 to 20 years ago.”
At USC, Robert Winikowski, director of admissions at the medical school, has seen many students with an interest in medicine take related career paths, seeking jobs in hospital administration, public health or with HMOs. “The compensation may be the same or better, and they will come out with less debt and spend less time in school,” he said.
Winikowski said students are also deterred by the tough competition to get into medical school. For this fall’s incoming class, USC had 5,466 applications for 150 openings. Across town, UCLA Medical School had 5,517 applications for 121 slots.
And though some of the best and brightest are being lured away by the Internet and the corporate world, many medical professionals don’t believe the quality of young doctors is suffering.
“I’m not seeing the caliber of the students or the medical school applicants going down at all,” said Dr. Denise Sur, director of the family practice residency program at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center. “I’m seeing more of a commitment to serve the under-served and care for patients.” n
