The feds put a cap on residency funding in 1997, effectively freezing the number of residency slots at hospitals. Unless that changes, some medical school students graduating in the next few years could be left out in the cold, said Dr. Susan Kirk, associate dean of graduate medical education at the University of Virginia Medical Center. “They’ll have pretty high education debt and they will find themselves without a job — which was very, very unusual 10 or 20 years ago,” Kirk said.