The Med School Story

NDR (regional public TV network in Germany) put up an interesting article on doctors and the path to becoming a German doctor.

For the 2017 entry year into medical schools across Germany....there were 43,000 kids applying for positions.  Number accepted?  Roughly 9,000 seats. So three out of four kids were turned away or put onto a priority listing....meaning if they have patience to wait....maybe in the next four to seven years....a seat would become open.

The method of picking?  NDR says that you'd have to finish German-high school with a final grade of '1'....(straight 'A' type student) to get into the selection group.

So a legal complaint has been drawn up against the five German universities which offer medical schools.  The court system?  They will probably require at least 18 months to hear the case, examine the facts, and reach some conclusion.  At the end of this.....they could order the schools to expand, or they could go to the government and suggest adding another school or two. 

Why not expand? 

There was an interview with Bill Gates back in the mid-1990s in Germany.  He'd come to hype up the need for computer engineers over the next decade and tried to speak to German university leadership....who just laughed over the idea of expansion.  They were there to produce quality graduates and not pump people through a education program in four years to be a certified computer engineer.  They didn't see the need to expand. 

Roughly three years later....German software companies were asking for immigration/work visas to bring in people from outside of Germany because they didn't have the number of computer engineers to do the work, and the system was built in such a way that they knew that they would never have enough engineers.  In essence, they were bluntly looking at the university leadership with frustration.

The current cost situation?  That's the interesting part of this story.  Most of the cost is upon the government itself.  So you as a student would end up with a 300 Euro per semester fee situation (figure $350 American).  You could go and attend a school and likely not pay more than 4,000 Euro for the degree.  Living expenses?  Well....that might be another story, but there are government programs to cover much of that cost.

My prediction?  I think that the universities will be told to expand. It won't reach the level where all forty-thousand applicants will be accepted, but I'm taking a guess that the 9,000 current seats will likely double in the next decade due to the court orders.