Evaluation of the Arizona Medical Student Exchange Program

In this article the authors describe and present an evaluation of the Arizona Medical Student Exchange Program of the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. The program is designed to help defray the cost that an Arizona student faces in attending an out-of-state medical school by paying, in the student's behalf, the difference between the resident and nonresident tuition at the out-of-state school. Furthermore, the accepting medical school is paid an additional sum as an inducement to accepts more Arizona students in the future. The program's goal is to increase the number of graduating physicians who will return to practice in Arizona, especially in areas of medical need. While the program apparently has been successful in increasing the number of Arizona students studying medicine and the number of physicians returning to the state--both to metropolitan areas and to areas of medical need--these increases have not kept pace with Arizona's growing population.