Home Depot founder Ken Langone donates $200 million to make free tuition permanent at NYU Long Island School of Medicine 

NYU Long Island School of Medicine has received a $200 million donation from Long Island native Ken Langone and his wife, Elaine, to fund full-tuition scholarships for all students.

Elaine Langone made the announcement at the “white coat ceremony” where 24 first-year students at the Mineola school received their lab coats. The Langones’ donation and other gifts created an endowment that funds the scholarships in perpetuity, NYU Langone Health said.

This year, annual tuition would be $59,738 without the grants. The school has provided full-tuition grants to all students since it opened in 2019, but previously it did not have an endowment to make them a permanent feature of the school.

The donation “has an enormous impact,” Dr. Robert I. Grossman, CEO of NYU Langone Health and dean of NYU’s two medical schools in Manhattan and Mineola, said in an interview before the announcement. “A lot of these students, their families have been working like crazy to support them, and this just… unburdens part of their life.”

At the Langones’ request, the school has been renamed the NYU Grossman Long Island School of Medicine. The change honors Grossman for his “leadership skills, his passion for first-class medicine, world-class medicine, his commitment to quality of care,” Ken  Langone said.

The Langones gave about $100 million to make NYU’s medical school in Manhattan tuition-free for all students in 2018, the year before the Long Island medical school opened. 

Home Depot founder sees benefits

Langone, the billionaire co-founder of Home Depot and chairman of the NYU Langone board, called the medical education funding “the best thing I ever did besides marrying my wife.” The pair will mark their 67th anniversary in September, he said. “My wife and I meet with these kids that are working ... to be great doctors, and it only fortifies my enthusiasm,” he said in an interview. “They want to go out and change the world.”

The school draws many students from Long Island who are likely to stay and practice medicine here, which would benefit the region, Langone said.

The Mineola school fields applications from about 4,000 aspiring doctors a year, NYU Langone said. Nearly one-third of its students come from racial or ethnic groups that are under-represented in medicine, the school said. Typically, Black, Hispanic and Native American doctors are considered under-represented. More than 1 in 4  students at the school faces financial hardships, and more than 1 in 5  is a first-generation college student.

Many of the 73 students at the Long Island medical school have faced financial difficulties, and they “are so grateful to have the tuition-free education,” said Dr. Gladys M. Ayala, dean and chief academic officer at the Mineola school, which offers a three-year program focused on primary care.

The funding “really allows them to seek disciplines like the ones in primary care that may not have the highest salaries attached to them,” without having to worry about repaying heavy debts, Ayala said. The school also provides additional grants to cover living expenses for students in need, she said.

Primary care shortage looming

The nation is expected to face a shortage of 17,000 to 48,000 primary care doctors by 2034, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Across the country, medical students graduate with a median debt of $200,000, including loans from pre-medical education, the association reported. A few medical schools, including the one at Columbia University, offer full scholarships to certain students based on need or merit, but “there are very few free rides,” said Julie Fresne, senior director of the student financial and career advising service at the association.

Among the Long Island school's first-year students is Diego Alvarez Vega, 23, who recently moved from Manhattan into medical student housing in Mineola.

Growing up in Puerto Rico, Vega said he “got to see both the good and bad sides of health care” when his mother spent about two years taking him to doctors to seek treatment for his small stature starting when he was in third or fourth grade. Some dismissed her concerns or misdiagnosed him, he said. At one appointment, a doctor said it might be too late for treatment and his mother burst into tears, he recalled. Finally they found a doctor who diagnosed and treated his growth hormone deficiency — but that doctor didn’t take insurance, he said. His parents managed to pay for the monthly visits, he said, but others on the island were less fortunate and “just had to go about their daily life with their conditions, not really knowing what was wrong.”

Vega went on to major in neuroscience and behavior at Columbia University. He plans to become a pediatrician and practice in Puerto Rico, he said. He considered attending medical school in Puerto Rico since it would be much more affordable, but he felt it “might not necessarily give me the resources or the tools" to address the inequities faced by many on the island, he said.

The full tuition scholarship at NYU “was just such a blessing,” he said. “If it had been any other school in the United States that didn't provide financial aid or didn't provide free tuition like this one, I feel that I wouldn't really have been able to accept the offers simply because financially it wouldn't have made sense for me and my family.”

By Maura McDermott

maura.mcdermott@newsday.commauramcdermott

Maura McDermott covers health care and other business news on Long Island.