- A new survey of 1,000 U.S. healthcare students found more than 1 in 4 have used a sports-betting or prediction-market platform, and among those who do, two-thirds count the winnings as money for school.
- Student bettors favor DraftKings, Kalshi, FanDuel and Polymarket, and most use them at least weekly, several times the rate of typical young adults, yet fewer than half come out ahead.
- The report, from healthcare hiring platform Clasp, ties the behavior to soaring costs; the median four-year price of medical school now approaches $298,000 at public schools.
- The finding lands in Texas, home to the world’s largest medical complex, where there are no legal sportsbooks and healthcare students bet through prediction markets the state cannot regulate.
- It collides with a recent warning from the Texas Medical Association, which urged lawmakers to restrict the very prediction markets now serving as a tuition tool for future doctors and nurses.
HOUSTON – The nurse who takes your blood pressure and the doctor who reads your chart may have helped pay for their training the same way a bettor plays an NFL Sunday. A new survey says a growing share of the country’s future healthcare workers are betting to pay for school, and Texas, with the largest concentration of medical training in the world and no legal sportsbook to its name, sits squarely in the trend.
One in Four, Betting on Tuition
The report comes from Clasp, a Boston company that connects healthcare employers with students in exchange for help repaying their loans, which surveyed 1,000 U.S. healthcare students through the polling firm Pollfish in late June. Its headline finding: more than one in four, 27 percent, have used a prediction-market or sports-betting platform, and among those who have, two-thirds treat their winnings as money for school. Twenty-four percent said the winnings are part of their actual plan to pay for their education; another 43 percent said the money could help.
These are not casual users. The survey found that 73 percent of the student bettors use the platforms at least a few times a week and 15 percent bet daily, rates several times higher than the NCAA has reported among typical 18-to-22-year-olds, where about 14 percent bet that often and 4 percent daily. Their platforms of choice mirror the broader market: 50 percent reported using DraftKings, 45 percent Kalshi, 42 percent FanDuel and 31 percent Polymarket, with some volunteering pick’em apps like PrizePicks and Underdog.
Most Are Barely Breaking Even
The bets are not paying off for most of them. Fewer than half of the student bettors reported coming out ahead, most said they had essentially broken even, and the typical win or loss ran between $100 and $1,000, though one respondent reported winning more than $50,000 and another reported losing in that range. “These students aren’t betting for fun” Clasp chief executive Tess Michaels told CNBC, adding that majority are budgeting winnings into their tuition plans and barely breaking even.
The Pressures Behind the Bets
The driver is cost. The Association of American Medical Colleges puts the median four-year cost of attendance for this year’s medical school class at $297,745 at public schools and $408,150 at private ones, sums that dwarf what a part-time job can cover. Nearly 70 percent of the healthcare students who started betting said they did it to make money for school or living expenses, not entertainment, and close to 30 percent said they cannot reliably cover a single month’s costs. Betting was not even their only stopgap; 56 percent reported leaning on other nontraditional income, from credit cards to paid content on TikTok, YouTube, OnlyFans and Substack.
One detail cuts against the usual profile of a bettor. Eighty-one percent of the survey’s respondents were women, reflecting the makeup of nursing and many healthcare programs, and more than one in five of them reported using betting or prediction platforms, roughly double the rate at which American women bet on sports nationally. The engagement the gambling industry spent years trying to cultivate among women appears to have reached healthcare schools through the side door of tuition anxiety.
What It Means for Texas
For Texas, the national survey is a mirror held up to a state with an outsized reflection. Houston anchors the Texas Medical Center, the largest medical complex in the world, and the state’s universities turn out thousands of nurses and physicians a year. Texas also has no legal sportsbook, retail or mobile, which means the healthcare students here who bet are largely using the channels this site tracks: federally regulated prediction markets in Texas such as Kalshi and Polymarket, which accept users at 18, along with pick’em apps and offshore books. None of it is licensed, taxed or monitored by the state.
The timing is pointed. Only weeks ago, the Texas Medical Association urged state lawmakers to impose an age limit on prediction markets and bar them from advertising to children, warning that early exposure to gambling fuels addiction. Clasp’s survey suggests the worry is neither hypothetical nor confined to teenagers: the state’s future physicians and nurses are already on those same markets, not for entertainment but to stay enrolled. It also echoes recent economic work, including a National Bureau of Economic Research study this year, finding that the spread of betting falls hardest on people already stretched thin.
A Bet Most Will Lose
None of this is settled science. Clasp makes its money helping healthcare employers pay down workers’ student loans, giving it an interest in spotlighting student debt, and the survey is self-reported rather than audited. But its numbers align with a large body of research showing most retail bettors lose over time, and the underlying pressure, the price of a health care degree, is not in dispute.
For now, under the state’s gambling laws, a Texas nursing student can legally trade on tonight’s game at 18, through one of the many gambling sites in Texas the Legislature never authorized, and the odds say she will most likely lose. She is doing it anyway, because the alternative is a bill she cannot pay.