Loans for medical students: the issue of manageability.
Unless there is a shift in student aid policy for medical students to a greater proportion of scholarships or grants, increased student borrowing is inevitable. This paper is concerned with the structure of student loan programs and with altering the repayment features of the programs for the convenience of the student borrower. In this context the Guaranteed Student Loan Program is analyzed and its current limitations discussed. A variant of the GSL program having an income contingent repayment feature is proposed. Computer simulations of loan repayments with the proposed income contingent variant and the current program using current and projected data on physicians' incomes are developed. Based on the results of these simulations, some conclusions regarding the manageability of repayments with the proposed loan program are presented.
D003201:Computers; D005249:Fees and Charges; D005544:Forecasting; D006801:Humans; D007182:Income; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010820:Physicians; D013337:Students, Medical; D014146:Training Support; D014481:United States