Medicine: Fees for foreign students to rise

Fees for international students are set to rise before the start of the new academic year. Fees for foreign students at the "Carol Davila" University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest could increase, in the context in which they are higher both at private faculties in Romania and in neighboring countries, said director Viorel Jinga. According to the rector: "International students choose to come to Romania and for this fee of 8,500 euros, the neighbors have much higher fees, both for Bulgarians and Hungarians, of over 10,000 euros. It could be that in the years next, let's increase the fee (...) I saw, for example, that it goes to 10,000 - 11,000 euros. Those from the private sector have already increased the fee for international students G6, the Association of Pharmacy Universities in Romania, which brings together the six large universities - Iasi, Bucharest, Timişoara, Craiova, Cluj and Târgu-Mureş - set these fees together, in order to standardize them at the level of the country, the fees for international students we have already started file-based admissions for these international students and we already have three in place, so it is still a big attraction for students from abroad". Jinga added that the Romanian doctors who choose to leave the country "probably" do so because they want to practice in university centers: "Those who leave do so for the quality, probably, of the environment in which they will work in the future or, perhaps, many want to be in university centers. The density of doctors in university centers is very high. They don't want to go to the cities, even to the county capitals, around Bucharest, they sometimes prefer to go abroad. Through PNRR and through other ways in which county hospitals have obtained a lot of equipment, I believe that, in two or three years, it will be possible to work at county hospitals in the same conditions as in a university hospital (.. .).Things will change for the better, the salaries are, however, quite good. After the seven years of college, after the five years of specialization - residents also have very good salaries - they reach 6,000 - 7,000 net lei, and a specialist doctor has around 10,000 lei". Jinga added that there are many elements of attraction for the university he leads, such as the merit, performance and social scholarships, which benefit both students from the budget and from fees: "And they can compensate, if they have material problems, learning well, these fees they pay. We also have a very important simulation center and the students who are in the entrance exam today will do some first aid techniques, life-saving, cardio-respiratory resuscitation, basic venipuncture techniques, urological examination, gynecological examination, since the first year, to enter the clinical system from the beginning. We have this simulation center, we bought a building with six floors and was equipped with many state-of-the-art devices, with simulators that are very intelligent and that reproduce the clinical environment, the operating environment. We invested 42 million lei in this simulation center, this money is from European projects. (...). We also have a swimming pool, we have dormitories with a lot of places, we even have free places in the dormitories, again they are elements of attraction for our university".

The rector also said that in recent years, there is a tendency for students to choose radiology, endocrinology, cardiology, plastic surgery or dermatology, specialties that allow many to have office activities.