The Rice Management Company is the majority investor in the new $105 million (or $85 million) private, for-profit Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

Its first class of 162 students, chosen from 5,000 applications, begins its studies on August 13.

(Thanks for Alan Shelby's Rice Update for this news.)

The driving force behind this new college is Dan Burrell, who had run the real estate arm of Rosemont Capital, which was founded in 2006 by his Yale classmates Christopher Heinz and Dan Archer.

Rice Management Co. is also the majority investor in Burrell's effort to create a similar osteopathic college in Idaho, after plans for one in Bozemon, Montana, fell through.

Maybe it's a good investment, but I'm skeptical about for-profit medical schools. It looks like this school is focusing on a core need for the U.S. healthcare system (that being a dearth of physicians in rural / underserved areas, such as Southern New Mexico), which is certainly a positive. But the fact is that students at for-profit medical schools (most notably those in the Caribbean) are not competitive residency applicants (and also take on significantly more debt) compared to their peers at non-profit, more established medical schools. There is already a small surplus of med school grad compared to residency positions and the problem is only going to get worse, as med school growth outpaces growth of residency programs.

That's actually a huge problem..... Not enough doctors and more coming, but not enough residency slots for them.

LOTS of 'doctors' don't become physicians.

Yes and Yes.
I would consider this a relatively high risk investment too, and the sort of "shady" undertaking I'd rather not see Rice associated with.
The way I see it, this Burrell fellow isn't trying to go out and do good -- rather he's taking advantage of mediocre students' desperation to get to be doctors. Kinda like Trump University but on a much more ambitious scale...