by Brooke Bunch

Reach the end of your loan rope? Well now you can breathe a little easier thanks to a new source of medical school loan funding.

With tuition costs rising annually, many medical students reach the maximum for total Stafford loans by their third or fourth year of schooling, cutting them off from further institutional aid before graduation.

“A lot of students need even more loans than ever before,” says Pat Burnett, Ph.D., director of student affairs.

Approximately 93 percent of OU-COM students depend on some kind of financial aid to pay for school and graduate with an average debt of more than $120,000 — in addition to their undergraduate or other graduate school debt.

“With the dramatic decrease in state subsidy to medical schools resulting in much higher tuition, many OU-COM students are in critical need of federal loans,” says Dean Jack Brose, D.O.

To aid medical students in financial dilemmas, the Challenge Loan Match Program was introduced, which matches dollars with the federal Primary Care Loan and Disadvantaged Student Loan Fund. OU-COM has long participated in the program, which provides long-term, low interest rate, matching 9-to-1 loans to medical students who plan to practice primary care.

Medical students receiving a primary care loan must agree to enter and complete residency training in primary care within four years after graduation and practice in primary care for the life of the loan.

Typically the college has been eligible for about $460,000 through this match program. But because of the college’s strong record in training primary care physicians and disadvantaged students, the federal government offered to increase the total money available to OU-COM students to $2.6 million for 2004–05.

To secure the increased match, OU-COM must raise $289,772 in its own matching funds. In the past, the college has covered the lower match threshold with reserve or discretionary dollars. Budget constraints, however, make covering the considerably larger amount virtually impossible.

The Ohio Osteopathic Foundation has pledged to match donations to the program up to $100,000. In October, OOF Chairman Jeffrey Stanley, D.O. (’82), contacted all Ohio D.O.s and OU-COM graduates to contribute the college’s effort to meet the federal match threshold. Near year end, total contributions and pledges had reached about $200,000.

“This is an excellent partnership between OU-COM and the Ohio Osteopathic Foundation,” says Susan Blanchard, assistant dean for development.

If the campaign is successful, every dollar donated to the program will yield $20 in federal loan match dollars. And because, eventually, repaid loans will be credited to the college’s loan fund, the money can be lent again and again.

Anyone wishing to donate to the Challenge Loan Match Program should contact the Office of Development at (740) 593-2151.