Medical students drawn to Eastern Europe

Lower fees, cheaper living, and less-stringent entry requirements are attracting many foreign medical students to eastern European universities.

Medical students drawn to eastern Europe

Sitting in a café in Bratislava, Slovakia, Dr. Peter Labas, who lectures to foreign students at the local University Hospital, thinks hard after being asked about the growing number of foreign students coming to study in eastern Europe: “I think what is happening is that a lot of students are just asking themselves ‘why not?’ After all, the cost of studying medicine is sometimes high in their own countries, and compared with somewhere like America, or western Europe, the cost of living is much lower here. There are lots of courses in English now, the qualifications the students get are internationally recognised, and the quality of teaching is comparable with anywhere else. Many students will weigh all that up and just choose to come here.”

Medical students

Medical schools from Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the Balkan states have seen a strong rise in foreign student numbers in recent years. According to statistics from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, between 2005 and 2011, the number of foreign students grew by 21% in Hungary, and by 50% in the Czech Republic. In Slovakia, the number grew 80% between 2005 and 2010.

Medical students

Research from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) shows that most of these students came for degrees in medicine and health care. In Slovakia, for instance, 45% of foreign students were attending a course in a field of health care in 2010. In Hungary, the figure was 42%. In western countries such as Germany and Canada, it was between 6% and 9%.

The costs of tuition are also generally much lower in the region. In Slovakia, students pay a maximum of €9 000 a year for a medical degree in English. Costs at Hungarian universities are €1000—2000 per year higher. In Romania, the annual fee is around €5000, while in Bulgaria it is 8,000 per year.

Medical students

Under communism, eastern European countries were a popular destination for medical studies for students from other communist countries and low-income nations. That remained the case for many years after the Iron Curtain fell as students in high-income countries continued to see universities and medical schools in their home nations as the natural place to pursue their medical education. But universities say that in recent years they have seen more and more students from places such as the USA, Canada, Britain, and other western European states.

“Students from these countries are in the minority of foreign students, but they are definitely coming”, says Labas, who sees many come through the doors at the University Hospital, one of Slovakia’s largest teaching hospitals. “Personally, I have noticed that there are now British, Canadian, American, and some Japanese students on our courses, although students from other Asian countries make up the majority of the foreign students here.”

Medical students

Cheaper living and lower fees are key factors in students’ decisions to come to the region, but are not always the deciding factor. Fahd Skiredt came from his home country, Morocco, to Iasi in northern Romania to study medicine at the city’s University of Medicine and Pharmacy. He tells The Lancet that he had wanted to study initially in his own country but that he had picked a Romanian university because the entrance requirements were much less strict than those at home: “The grades I needed from high school to study back in Morocco were too high. It wasn’t so hard to get in here [Romania].”

Of 6000 students at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Iasi, more than 2000 are foreign. Demand from foreign students has seen the university create an extra 100 places on courses for students for the coming academic year. Unlike native students, those from abroad do not need to take exams to get a place at the university—where courses are offered in Romanian, English, and French— and are admitted on the basis of their high-school grades and a letter of recommendation.