The Medical School Boom

While the national physician shortage persists, there’s no shortage of new medical schools trying to train more doctors to help close the gap.

So far this year, at least six new medical schools have announced plans to launch degree programs, including the University of Georgia School of Medicine, the University of Missouri School of Medicine’s new Springfield campus and the Lincoln Memorial University–DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine’s new campus in Orange Park, Fla.

Earlier this month, Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia announced plans to open the first four-year medical program in neighboring Delaware, which is among the handful of states without a medical school.

“This past year our medical school [in Philadelphia] admitted 30 students from the state of Delaware, but they may not all go back to practice in Delaware when they finish their training,” Susan C. Aldridge, president of TJU, told Inside Higher Ed. “We know that students are much more likely to stay in the states where they are trained and conduct their residencies.”

And for patients, living in a state or region without a steady stream of new doctors coming out of nearby medical schools and teaching hospitals often makes it difficult to access timely, adequate medical care. “We want to create a pipeline of physicians that will stay in these areas and improve the services and access to health care for rural communities,” said Aldridge, adding that TJU is opening another medical college campus in Allentown, Pa., where there’s also a shortage of physicians.

TJU’s new medical campuses are among the latest in a spate of new medical colleges that have opened—or announced plans to open—over the past several years, including Arizona State University’s John Shufeldt School of Medicine and Medical Engineering, Xavier University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Ohio, and the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Arkansas.

Between 2000 and 2025, 60 new medical schools opened in the United States. As of earlier this year, 210 medical schools were operating across the country, according to the recent data from the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM).

Some of that growth has come from the proliferation of doctor of osteopathic medicine degree programs, which take a different curricular approach than the doctor of medicine degree programs but still produce licensed physicians. Since 1999, the number of campuses offering D.O. programs has increased from 19 to 73; at present, they educate roughly 30 percent of all medical students.

A ‘Maldistribution’ of Doctors

By establishing more D.O. programs, “we’re also trying to solve a maldistribution issue. In some places we have too many doctors concentrated in certain areas because historically so many academic medical centers and M.D. programs have been based at large institutions and in large cities,” Robert Cain, president and CEO of AACOM, told Inside Higher Ed. “Many of our schools are in rural or underserved areas. We’ve opened in places where people didn’t think you could open medical schools, which helps to serve a completely different part of the health-care system.”

The number of both D.O.- and M.D.-granting medical schools is poised to keep growing in coming years, as the United States is projected to face a shortage of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036.

Nearly all the announcements lead with the same message: A new medical school will produce more sorely needed doctors, especially in underserved areas. But other forces are also at play, according to Veronica Catanese, senior director of accreditation services for the AAMC and co-secretary of the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which accredits M.D.-granting schools.

“Health care is a growth industry. There are lots of job opportunities, and it continues to be a big business. Along with that, there are [financial pressures] on the health systems, and that’s driven a lot of regional and national consolidations,” she said in an interview with Inside Higher Ed. “As part of that consolidation, the need to develop a pipeline of health-care professionals, including physicians to be able to staff that catchment area, is a very powerful reason for the development of new medical schools.”

Over the past decade, some large health systems have developed their own medical schools, including the Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine and the Baptist Health Sciences University College of Osteopathic Medicine. And for smaller health systems trying to compete with those larger systems, “the development of a medical school is a way to accomplish that growth,” Catanese added, citing Methodist University Cape Fear Valley Health School of Medicine in North Carolina as one of the most recent examples. “It is a very good credential to have as a health system, and it’s useful in the marketing of the delivery of health care in that area.”

Starting a new medical school or expanding an existing campus footprint is also a growth opportunity for universities, including many navigating tight budgets. “There is a tremendous drive at the university level to increase medical school enrollment, expand regional campus areas and develop other health-professional programs,” Catanese said.

Limited Loans, Residencies

Although these new medical schools are attracting plenty of prospective students—applications climbed more than 5 percent between 2024 and 2025—new federal student loan caps that go into effect next week will also make it harder for students to pay for medical school, which typically costs more than the $200,000 cap.

“The limitations on borrowing are going to cause a restriction in terms of the willingness and ability of some students to pursue medical school,” Catanese said. “It’s impossible to deny that those regulations will have students and their families thinking twice before they enroll.”

And that’s a consideration some new medical schools are contending with as they prepare to recruit their first cohorts of students.

For instance, Xavier University College of Osteopathic Medicine—the first new medical school to open in Ohio in 50 years, which will enroll students at its Cincinnati campus starting in 2027—set its tuition rates near the median of other D.O. programs. But that still leaves students on the hook for about $100,000 to cover the annual cost of attendance, though the school is exploring other options to help students make up the difference.

“We have $8 million in a scholarship endowment to distribute to new students, and that continues to grow,“ said Steve Halm, founding dean of the college. “We’re also putting together a private loan option that will offer much more competitive interest rates compared to the private loans they’d get elsewhere.”

Halm is confident that once the school gets up and running, it will help to ease the physician shortage in southwestern Ohio. “Our goal is to get students who have some kind of connection to Cincinnati,” Halm said. “In building the medical school, we’ve also built relationships with hospitals to help create new residencies … We need more residency opportunities across the nation.”

While new medical school graduates are required to complete a three- to seven-year residency program before becoming fully licensed, residency slots remain limited, in part because the federal government caps the number of openings a teaching hospital can offer. However, hospitals can apply to become a teaching hospital and create some new slots, and last year the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services authorized 400 new residency positions.

Despite those modest gains, the relatively slow growth of residency slots has nonetheless created a “bottleneck” in the physician-training pipeline that no number of new medical schools can solve, said Shaheen Lakhan, former assistant dean of clinical curriculum at the California University of Science and Medicine, which opened in 2018.

“The biggest downside is that medical school expansion can outpace residency expansion,” Lakhan said in an email. “A medical degree alone does not create an independently practicing physician. Residency does.”