Free Tuition at New York City Medical School

Students attending the Albert Einstein College of Medicine will no longer have to pay tuition.

Don’t worry, your tax dollars will not be paying for this shocking change in tuition. The school recently received a $1 billion donation to pay for the tuition.

Ruth Gottesman, a chairperson of the board of trustees at the college, the largest donation to a United States medical school in history.

Albert Einstein College of Medicine announces it will offer free tuition after receiving a $1 billion gift from Dr. Ruth Gottesman. pic.twitter.com/suYZ4doO7A

— Good Morning America (@GMA) February 27, 2024

The tuition for this school was roughly $59,000, leaving many students with upwards of $200,000 of student debt from medical school.

NPR has more on the school’s comments about the surprising donation:

“This donation radically revolutionizes our ability to continue attracting students who are committed to our mission, not just those who can afford it,” the school said. “Additionally, it will free up and lift our students, enabling them to pursue projects and ideas that might otherwise be prohibitive.”

BBC News has more to add:

Dr Gottesman, now 93, began working at the school in 1968. She studied learning disabilities, ran literacy programmes and developed widely used screening and evaluation protocols.

Her late husband, David “Sandy” Gottesman, founded a prominent investment house and was an early investor in Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet’s multinational conglomerate. He died in September 2022 at the age of 96.

“I am very thankful to my late husband, Sandy, for leaving these funds in my care, and l feel blessed to be given the great privilege of making this gift to such a worthy cause,” she added.

In an interview with the New York Times, she recalled that her late husband had left her a “whole portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway stock” when he died with the instructions to “do whatever you think is right with it”.

David Gottesman was no stranger to the investment world, who made early investments in the Berkshire Hathaway Inc.

David Gottesman invested in Berkshire Hathaway in 1968 and held on. His wife now has $11.7B of the stock; the stock is up ~30,000x in these 56 years.

His wife is donating $1B to the Einstein College of Medicine to make tuition free. pic.twitter.com/n9Ul8S5Bvx

— Sheel Mohnot (@pitdesi) February 26, 2024

Fortune adds some more information about David Gottesman’s involvement in the school:

His early investments in Berkshire Hathaway Inc. gave him a net worth of almost $3 billion as of mid-2022, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

David Gottesman, known as Sandy, ran the investment firm First Manhattan and was chairman of Yeshiva University’s board of trustees.

An earlier gift by the couple helped create the Ruth L. and David S. Gottesman Institute for Stem Cell Research and Regenerative Medicine.

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Many people have taken to X to react to this shocking donation:

This is truly a gift from a humanitarian! Not concerned about putting her name on the building, but giving students a top quality medical education free of debt. Amazing.

— Russ Colvin (@wrcolvin5) February 26, 2024

The people of the Bronx are eternally grateful for the generosity of Dr. Ruth Gottesman, whose donation to a Bronx-based institution, the Einstein College of Medicine, has no precedent in the history of our borough. pic.twitter.com/rwpb42INBW

— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) February 26, 2024

Will this donation spark more down the road? Time will surely tell but it already inspired DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen to increase his donations.

Fortune adds more on the specifics of the donations:

Medical schools are notoriously expensive, often saddling doctors with exorbitant student loans. That has led at least one other billionaire donor, DreamWorks co-founder David Geffen, to start paying for tuition for medical students — in his case, at UCLA.

People should never expect to have a free tuition, but billion dollar donations can surely make a significant impact!