80% of aspiring doctors stay in the university system

The open semester in Medicine is preparing for an encore. As confirmed by Minister Anna Maria Bernini in an interview published in yesterday's Sole 24 Ore, the model introduced last year (and hinged on a downstream barrier based on the results of three examinations instead of upstream through the old entrance tests) will be substantially replicated in 2026/27. While waiting for the new decree to arrive with the announced changes (starting with the inclusion of doctors and high school professors in the commissions and the postponement to January of at least one roll call), it is possible to take stock of how things have gone in recent months.

The reform, thanks also to the double initial enrolment and the parachute of related courses as a default Plan B, ensures the traceability of individual careers. And, regardless of how one feels about the new type of programmed access, this in itself constitutes a value for a country with double-digit university drop-out rates between the first and second year. For example, at 13.3% in state universities according to the latest Anvur report on higher education.

From the figures processed by Cineca on input from the Mur, we discover that of the 63,918 students enrolled in the open semester of Medicine, Dentistry or Veterinary Medicine, 52,521 have actually tried, taking at least one exam out of the three required by law (Biology, Chemistry and Physics). The other 11,397 were either enrolled in their first year (4,978) or in a year following their first year (3,467) of another course or, to a lesser extent (2,952), were not recorded in the student register.

If we focus on the 52,000 and more with one or more examinations taken, it turns out that 17,157 (equal to 99.3% of the places available for Italian-language courses at state universities) entered Medicine, 1,028 entered Dentistry (with a coverage of the initial availability of 88.3%) and 1,254 entered Veterinary Medicine (equal to 99.1% of the available slots). Thus, 19,439 places were filled with the single ranking list drawn up at the end of the first semester.

If we add to this count the 12,710 currently attending a related course in the health, biomedical, veterinary or pharmaceutical area and the 8,779 enrolled in another faculty, it turns out that 80% of aspiring doctors are still within the university system. Another 20% are not. We are talking about 11,000 young people who could now be redirected by individual universities. Or at least that is the hope expressed by the minister to this newspaper.