The University of Friborg has ended its policy of cantonal preference for the master’s degree in medicine, which had prevailed since the creation of the course in 2019. Seven people will have to leave the canton, which sparks political criticism against a backdrop of a shortage of doctors.
Friborg students who have successfully completed their Bachelor of Medicine will no longer have a guaranteed place in a Master’s degree at UNIFR. Until now, to allocate these forty places, the university based itself on an internal directive whose first criterion was their tax domicile. This policy was intended in particular to avoid departures from outside the canton and thus limit the shortage of doctors.
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But following a complaint in the summer of 2023, which denounced a legal contradiction between this directive and the cantonal ordinance on universities, the Canton brought the institution back to order by requiring it to base itself first place on the notes.
Feared exodus
Consequence: seven Freiburg residents at the start of their third year of Bachelor’s degree learned last month that they will have to continue their course in Basel or Zurich next year. Because UNIFR does not have a partnership with the universities of Lausanne and Geneva, but only with German-speaking and Ticino institutions.
“I learned today that this place is no longer given to me as a priority, so I still feel a great betrayal and constant stress,” testifies one of them in the 7:30 p.m. And if he has to pack up, the young man affirms it: he will not come back. “I am not going to destroy all the ties and landmarks that I will have made in another canton to come back here to Fribourg, when I will have lost everything that attached me here.”
This change looks like a shot in the foot for Fribourg, which wanted to avoid the exodus of doctors with this Master’s degree at home. The Faculty of Medicine itself advises affected students to appeal. And behind the scenes, politics is active. Some aspire to modify the law on the University, which governs the cantonal ordinance.
Partnership with Valais?
“We are really facing a very difficult situation, with the need to train more doctors in the canton to deal with a fairly glaring shortage,” criticizes Simon Zurich, socialist deputy on the Grand Council. According to him, we must quickly increase the number of training places in this Master’s degree. But for this, we also need more internship places in hospitals. And Friborg cannot provide for this alone.
The socialist is therefore banking on the support of other cantons, in particular Valais. State Councilor Mathias Reynard has already expressed his interest: “Not only because we are also a bilingual canton, but in addition, we see an interest in training more young doctors: these are obviously people who could stay in Valais, so it seems to me that it’s a win-win partnership,” he explains.
Such a partnership would therefore not be completely free for Fribourg, because Valais also lacks doctors. But it could have the merit of stemming the bleeding.
TV subject: Muriel Ballaman
Texte web: jop
