US medical school finances

Abstract

The 28th annual review of medical school finances is intended to reflect, through financial analysis of revenues and expenditures, the secular trends in medical education in the United States. The 28-year interval may be viewed as two distinct periods, from academic year 1958-1959 to academic year 1978-1979 and from academic year 1979-1980 to academic year 1986-1987, the latest year for which data are available. The first period can be characterized by huge absolute and relative increases in all aspects of medical education. Some sense of growth in the enterprise over the 20-year interval from 1958-1959 to 1978-1979 may be gleaned from an examination of a few of its dimensions shown in Table 1. The number of schools increased, the number of candidates for professional and academic doctorates doubled and tripled, respectively, and the population of postdoctoral students mushroomed. The eight-year period from 1979-1980 to 1986-1987, on the other hand, exhibits