The MMA Foundation (MMAF) provides four-year partial scholarships to nine medical students at Mayo Medical School and the University of Minnesota School of Medicine - Duluth and Twin Cities campuses. Scholarships are awarded to outstanding medical students from medically underserved communities, or on the basis of merit or financial need.
Working through the Mayo Foundation and the University’s Minnesota Medical Foundation (MMF), MMAF awards a total of $40,000 in scholarships annually. This amount will increase in the future as funds become available.
Transition from Student Loans to Scholarships
In 2006, MMAF awarded its first scholarships. That same year, MMAF decided to end its longstanding program of educational loans for medical students.
MMAF was founded by leaders who recognized the importance of ensuring that medical students had the financial resources to make it through medical school without having to worry about making the rent or buying groceries. So, throughout MMAF’s early decades, the foundation provided educational loans that could be paid off after the young physician began to practice. That way, the foundation could provide assistance to many medical students and still maintain the pool of funding for future medical students.
By the middle of this decade, a number of factors emerged that led to changes in the way MMAF helps medical students. Medical school tuition had climbed steadily and by 2005 had exceeded $100,000 for four years of tuition alone. MMAF loans of just $2,000 - $3,000 a year were not enough to make a real impact. Besides, MMAF loans had become redundant with the commercial marketplace that was providing much of the financing for medical education.
The increase in tuition over the years came with consequences. One of the most concerning was the increase in educational debt that medical students accumulated. At least one estimate in June of 2008 put the average debt of a graduating medical student at $180,000. The critical shortage of primary care physicians is being exacerbated as this unprecedented debt load becomes an increasingly important consideration in medical students’ choice of specialty.
Because of that and other concerns, the MMAF changed its support for medical students to scholarships in 2006. Scholarships provide a host of benefits over the old loan program. Scholarships reduce student debt, there’s no accumulating interest to pay off later and scholarships allow recipients more freedom of choice as they consider a specialty. For the foundation, there’s no need to manage the selection process. Recipients are selected by the medical schools using MMAF criteria. There are no ongoing loan management costs. Finally, scholarship criteria can be adjusted to address important issues in medicine such as the crises in primary care and in rural medicine or the need for more physicians from diverse cultural communities.
Next fall, medical school tuition at the University of Minnesota will be $138,000 for four years.
You can make a difference for a medical student at the U of M or Mayo Medical School. Make a gift to MMAF’s scholarship fund today. Click here and designate a gift to Medical Student Financial Assistance.