For those who qualify for a place at a medical university in Germany, the country's public university system offers free tuition at world-class medical schools to German citizens and international students alike.
But a high-ranking member of the German coalition government's CDU party has suggested re-thinking that as the country grapples with an acute and well-documented shortage of doctors and other medical professionals.
In a recent interview with Bild newspaper, Sepp Müller, deputy chairman of the Christian Democrat (CDU) parliamentary group, said: “Anyone who studies here should practice in rural areas for at least five years. Those who do not want to do so should repay the costs of this first-class education.”
The comments follow revelations that doctors' surgeries in rural areas are closing due to a shortage of general practitioners.
The Federal Ministry of Health recently confirmed that positions for more than 5,000 general practitioners (GP) were vacant in Germany at the end of 2023.
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Now it seems that the CDU's response to the problem is to make international medical students pay for their university tuition if they leave Germany within five years of graduating.
Would the plan work?
The CDU has yet to offer a concrete plan on how international medical students who leave Germany within five years of graduating would be charged. Florian Müller, research policy spokesman for the CDU, told Bild that the federal states should regulate the reimbursement of study costs on their own.
To give a sense of the costs that would be incurred, Germany’s private universities currently charge between €63,000 and €125,000 in total for a medical degree.
It is also unclear whether the CDU’s plan would have any effect on easing the shortage of doctors in Germany.
The proportion of foreign students studying medicine was approximately 8 percent of the total number of medical students in Germany in 2018, according to the report “Wissenschaft weltoffen 2019”. The figure is thought to have risen slightly in the years since.
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