Blog Post Focus—Should You Go To Medical School To Earn a Lot of Money?
I want to give you my thoughts for considering whether or not medical school is a good option if you want to earn a lot of money. I’ll start by giving you some of my story and then lay out my thoughts point by point.
Ultimate Advice
I have written before that my advice is to go to medical school only under two conditions: One, if it is your only passion; or two, there is nothing else you want to do (https://permanentstudentdoctor.com/should-i-go-to-medical-school/).
However, I have met many physicians who had told me the main reason they went into medicine was to make money. Many of them are successful and happy.
Honestly, almost every medical student or resident I have ever met confided to me that at least part of the reason they went into medicine was for the future salary. Most people have at least some expectation or hope of making a large income with medicine. Few consider how difficult delaying that earning potential and taking on debt is. Delayed income and taking on debt is challenging.
Going into Medicine for Money
Going into medicine for a clear reason is better than a vague reason or being pressured by friends and family. For some reason people criticize going into any profession for money, but especially for medicine. In fact, talking about future salary in medical school can sometimes be frowned upon by other students and administrators and even be followed into residency.
Perhaps it is all a grand plot to keep driving down physician reimbursement, or perhaps it is a fantasy that healthcare providers should be motivated to serve without profit incentive and only from the goodness of their hearts. Anyway, I would criticize going into medicine strictly for the money– not for the desire to make money, but because it’s a long and difficult road to make money. There are probably easier ways to make money, but that will be up to each individual to make that decision.
Medical Education Requires Many to Go into Debt
If you go to medical school to make money you are not alone. However, you likely will have to take on debt for several years before ever making money. According to the linked Forbes article discussing the 2021-2022 academic year (https://www.forbes.com/advisor/student-loans/average-medical-school-debt/), the average undergraduate debt for a college student was around $39,000 for public school or $61,000 for private school and then the average debt for a medical degree was $200,000. That is a lot of loans for a lot of years of schooling.
Then, in residency you will likely make about the median salary for that state (I extrapolate that information from the following two sources showing US income and state income: https://www.statista.com/statistics/203183/percentage-distribution-of-household-income-in-the-us/ and https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/average-salary-by-state/. If residency salary is your only income (no significant other working or other forms of income) then you likely will struggle to pay off any debts (assuming you choose to pay off debts).
Attending Money
Once you are an attending physician you will likely make a large income. However, incomes for physicians differ dramatically, and the average income for physician specialties differ dramatically. Depending on your debt and your income as a physician you may not have a particularly large amount of spending freedom. Or you may be able to get through undergraduate schooling and medical school with little debt while also having a huge income as a fresh attending. Certainly, circumstances differ for each person in medicine.
Conclusion—Go into Medicine for Money?
Ultimately, many people go into medicine for money. I think many people are happy about the incomes they eventually make as attendings, but it is a long, delayed income. You may have other skills that you could leverage to make a really good income without the debt burden incurred by medical school for many attendings. You may have other routes to making good money outside medicine that can come to fruition much sooner and without the years of studying and stress and patient care.
I wouldn’t recommend anybody go into medicine just to earn a lot of money.
Links
See the additional links for more information on student debt for medical students https://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/the-short-list-grad-school/articles/10-medical-schools-where-students-leave-with-the-most-debt (examines particularly expensive institutions) and https://educationdata.org/average-medical-school-debt (which shows the trajectory of debt expected by year for finishing medical school). The following link examines average undergraduate loan debt https://www.bestcolleges.com/research/average-student-loan-debt/.