There were 650 first-year medical students in Berlin last year. (symbolic image)
© dpa
According to a study, Berlin is in a comparatively good position in terms of the number of medical study places on offer in relation to its population. There are enormous differences between the federal states - and too few young doctors overall to remedy the shortage of doctors, according to an evaluation by the Center for Higher Education Development (CHE) in Gütersloh.
Looking ahead to the 2024 academic year, around 650 first-semester students could start human medicine in Berlin. According to the study, that is 17 medical study places per 100,000 inhabitants. This means that Berlin performs relatively well compared to other federal states.
The supply is even better in Saarland and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. In the two frontrunners, state universities offer 29 and 26 medical study places for first-semester students per 100,000 inhabitants respectively. Hamburg and Saxony-Anhalt (19 each) and Hesse (18) are also ahead of Berlin, while the rest of the federal states are behind Berlin. Bremen and Brandenburg do not yet offer any medical study places at their state universities. In Brandenburg, the first doctors are not due to be trained at the Medical University of Lausitz until the winter semester 2026/27.
According to the CHE in Gütersloh, studying medicine is one of the most popular subjects among prospective students in Germany - and at the same time, it is particularly difficult to get a place here. In the winter semester 2024/25, around 10,000 first-semester students were able to secure a place to study medicine at a university - around 20,000 applicants were left empty-handed.