Intense competition for places in medical schools in western countries

Intense competition for places in medical schools in western countries is forcing school leavers in western European countries to explore options further east. 18-year-old Miriam Bourne from Cornwall, UK, told the Daily Telegraph, a UK newspaper, that despite getting excellent grades in her school-leaving exams she could not get a place to study medicine at the British universities she applied for, and had instead chosen to go to the Ovidius University in the Romanian city of Constanta.

competition for places in medical schools

The course is recognised by the British General Medical Council.
She had been attracted by the opportunity to study in a different country and at a university with excellent facilities which offered a “hands-on” course and the chance to experience work in a foreign hospital. Vasile Astarastoae, Dean of the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Iasi, tells The Lancet: “More and more foreigners are choosing Romania because their final diploma is recognised around the world and living costs here are lower than in other EU countries”.

But students are not the only ones benefiting financially from coming to eastern Europe. The universities themselves generate substantial revenues from each foreign student they take. The university in Iasi earns more than €10 million per year in fees from foreign students, according to its own internal figures. And this income is crucial in the current economic climate, with governments cutting back on health spending in general and on funding for health workers’ education.

competition for places in medical schools

“At the moment the money made off foreign students is going to almost subsidise the domestic students”, says Mrozek. “As the money made available for teaching gets reduced, the money from foreign students balances this out.”

Universities in the region also say that students are now more aware of the quality of the courses they offer. In the immediate years after the fall of communism little was known in the west about the standards of education at eastern European countries.

But over time the quality of studies offered at educational institutes in the region, some of which are hundreds of years old, has become more widely recognised, especially since the expansion of the European Union (EU) almost a decade ago, which made it easier for health-care workers to move from eastern Europe to the west.

“When you look at a Czech doctor and a German doctor”, explains Mrozek, “there is no difference between them in terms of quality. The doctors that graduate from our schools are just as good as any other doctors, and students who come here know that they will be getting a quality, internationally respected education.”
Qualifications that doctors gain when they graduate from medical schools in the EU are standardised, meaning that someone can qualify as a doctor at a university in Budapest and move straight to Germany, the UK, or anywhere else in western Europe and start work. Wages in such countries are often three or four times higher for similar positions than in eastern Europe.

competition for places in medical schools

Data for the UK—a popular destination for foreign health-care workers—show how more and more doctors are using qualifications from eastern Europe to further careers in the west. According to the UK’s General Medical Council, the number of doctors on their register who gained qualifications from Romania alone rose dramatically from 2007 to 2012, jumping from 567 to 2002.

And the growing interest among foreign students in their courses has not been lost on the region’s universities and some are now targeting courses specifically at foreigners. Comenius Medical University in Slovakia has recently begun a medical degree course aimed at students from former Yugoslav countries.

Its popularity has already been seen with the university registering a third rise in the number of foreign students—almost all of those coming from neighbouring former Yugoslav countries—in the past 3 years.

After the country’s entry to the EU earlier this year, the university is hoping to draw students from other parts of the Union. Spokesperson for the university, Sanja Fabijanic, told Novi List, a Croation newspaper: “Now we want to get more students not just from the former Yugoslavia but from EU countries as well”.
But although the trend of foreign students coming to eastern Europe’s medical schools looks set to continue in the near future, the long-term projections are less clear.

“To what extent this trend is going to grow in the future will be down simply to the economic climate”, explains Mrozek. “People need money to study anywhere, and if countries’ economic situations don’t improve, it’s uncertain how many students will be able to move anywhere abroad to study.”

Intense competition for places in medical schools in western countries

Intense competition for places in medical schools in western countries

Intense competition for places in medical schools in western countries