$150k debt is nothing if you go to a decent medical school.
As I alluded, it's not just the 150k in loans. It's 150k + 7 (or more) years of lost wages. The total economic costs are easily north of half a million dollars, assuming a low-paying 50k/year starting salary with no raises.
Assuming a 50k starting salary with no raises? That's an unrealistic assumption. Most specialists make more than a million a year. I know lots of doctors and none of them are making 50k/year, and they can often pay their debt off in a year or two.
I would not say everyone in medicine could 'easily' make a comparable amount of money in another field. What attracts a lot of people to medicine is the formulaic nature of obtaining money and prestige.
Why not? What skills are required to be successful? How do you think medical students [or those that now pursue it] lack those skills? You're asserting a lot without any basis on this.
Also, your second statement is just way off base. http://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/compensation/2011/ - see slides 16, 17
If people loved the money and the prestige, they wouldn't respond saying "no i would not still choose medicine as a career." Many of the higher-paying specialties (cards, uro, gen surg, rads, plastics, anasthesiologists) responded saying they would not choose medicine again.
Medicine is a formulaic path to money and prestige. That is just a fact. You take classes, you get certain grades, you volunteer at certain things, and you go to certain schools. What other basis do I need to say that? It's not like I can say "medicine is a formulaic route to money" (Harvey et. al, 2004). It would be like citing a physics paper to support my claim that the sky is blue. But come to think of it I actually remember a med school admissions webpage transparently lay out their admissions formula (e.g. 30% MCAT, 20% grades, 20% volunteer service, 15% references, 15% interview).
Becoming rich generally seems to involve a lot of risk taking and street smarts. How is following a formula in a somewhat scientific discipline, even with the hard work, going to cross over great into making money? Becoming a professor also takes a lot of hard work but I'm not convinced that most of my professors would make it big on Wall Street, or otherwise have the skills to make a lot of money. Different jobs, different skills. You're the one making this sort of claim; I'm not convinced.
Although the way med school admissions are going in the US these days (all the extra-curriculars, having to make a good case for yourself, etc), maybe some of them could make a lot of money.
I would guess about 75% of people go into medicine primarily for money, prestige, and the guaranteed nature of the job. It's a way of making money without taking a risk.
Again: evidence?
I don't see where the 'again' comes from. Like I said, a lot of the claims I have made, like routes into medicine being formulaic, is simple fact. It's not like I could cite some source.
In regards to the above figure, yes, it's a guess, and I'm sure the error bars on it are pretty large. I can't see the slides you sent, but based on what you said, they seem to support my original point. If the doctors truly went in it because they were altruistic, why would they later say they wouldn't have gone into medicine again?
My guesses here are based on the many many people I know who either want to do medicine or are medical doctors.
It's the type of job that controlling/protective parents will push their children towards at a very young age.
This is irrelevant.
How it is irrelevant? I'm saying it's a safe profession, so saying it's the type of thing a protective parent would want you to do (and it is!) is pretty relevant to me. It's the type of job a parent would be proud of their kids for doing, and will often push them towards. You think that has no influence on why people eventually seek out medicine as a career?
You seem to have some kind of personal involvement in this argument or to have thought a lot about medicine as career. Is that true?
