Effect of rising medical student debt on residency specialty selection at the University of Minnesota.

The cost of a medical education continues to increase while the real value of physician compensation is decreasing. The University of Minnesota Medical School is the most expensive public medical school in the country. Rising tuition costs combined with a relative decrease in scholarship money is resulting in dramatic increases in medical student debt. The average debt load of a medical student graduating from the University of Minnesota was dollars 119,868 in 2004 and dollars 132,988 in 2005. Experts in medical education speculate that such heavy debt affects medical students' career choices. However, prior to this study, the relationship between student debt and residency specialty selection at the University of Minnesota had not been analyzed. This study found a significant correlation between debt and specialty selection at the University of Minnesota, Duluth campus, and no significant correlation at the Twin Cities campus in Minneapolis.