The government’s decision was made in order to grow more local talent, as many are pushed out and go abroad to study, sometimes never to return.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

This coming academic year will mark the last class of new foreign medical school students who will graduate from Israeli universities, as the Ministry of Health has decided that its priority is to groom local talent from 2023 onwards.

“There was no choice,” Ben Gurion University (BGU) President Prof. Daniel Chamovitz told The Jerusalem Post. “We need more Israelis to study medicine here.”

The number of physicians trained has not kept up with the country’s population growth, with Israel ranking near the bottom of doctors per capita among OECD countries, especially in the periphery, the Post noted.

The move is not totally unexpected, given that the Council for Higher Education had recommended it already in 2018. A significant number of Israeli students who study abroad do not return.

The decision will open 130 more spaces annually in BGU, Tel Aviv University (TAU) and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, which have run English-language schools for decades, mainly filled with American and Canadian students.

The Health Ministry also intends to increase the number of classes over the next three years to 300, which would mean 1,200 new Israeli doctors will graduate per year rather than the current 900.

The decision poses a challenge for the Israeli schools in that American students pay the same amount of tuition as they would in their home country, which is approximately $40-50,000 annually. In contrast, medical school in Israel, subsidized by the government, is only about NIS 13,000 ($4,000) per year for Israeli students.

According to the website Doctors Only, it was the sharp drop in revenue that led the Israeli universities to oppose the move until now.

As agreed upon by the Finance Ministry, the Israeli medical schools will therefore receive compensation of NIS 58,000 per student.

TAU’s program, established 45 years ago, is the most venerabled. Its executive dean, Dr. Stephen Lazar, was not enthused by the decision, as reflected in a letter he sent to the current crop of foreign students, the Post reported.

Calling it a “political decision,” he said that the school’s “graduates have been ambassadors for Israel, and they showcase the excellence of medical education at Israeli institutions. Demonstrated successful cooperation of medical institutions in the U.S., Canada and Israel were not considered in this political action.”

Chamovitz’s predecessor, Prof. Rivka Carmi, pointed to a different problem that has yet to be addressed.

“There is a shortage of physicians and a lack of hospitals and professors available for clinical teaching,” she told the Post. “The lack of hospitals for clinical teaching is the bottleneck. A second hospital, in addition to Soroka-University Medical Center, is planned for Beersheba, but that will be built in a decade, if we’re lucky.”

The only hospital built in Israel in the last 40 years was Samson Assuta in Ashdod, which opened its doors in 2017.

“It was the right decision not to accept foreign medical students in the future. I think there is no choice but to be in favor, if you think of the needs of Israel. I say this with a heavy heart,” she added.

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Khamenei called the emigration phenomenon a “case of betrayal and hostility towards the country.”

By World Israel News staff

Just over 33% of Iranians want to emigrate from Iran, Keyou Polling Agency found in a survey conducted earlier this year, nearly one in two (43%) are under thirty.

The poll, published on January 15^th, was translated and presented in Hebrew by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA).

Some 80% of the total polled said this is due to economic reasons such as unemployment, the economic status of the rial, and high housing costs. Surprisingly, only 7% said they would like to leave due to lack of political freedom, and 6% mentioned lack of education. However, 22% mentioned “cultural issues” as one of their reasons for wanting to emigrate.

Despite only 6% listing education as a reason for leaving the country, close to half of those polled have an academic degree, an issue which Iran has been dealing with Iran has been dealing with for many years, according to JCPA. Some 80% of students leave Iran immediately after graduating.

The brain drain phenomenon has only increased amid the coronavirus pandemic and sanctions tightened during the Trump administration. Moreover, despite the pandemic, the academics leaving are namely nurses, doctors, and other medical staff. One in one hundred nurses leave the country a month according to Hamid Azizi, head of the Supreme Council of Nurses.

Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei addressed the brain drain, making promises to encourage students to return to the country, yet ultimately calling the phenomenon a “case of betrayal and hostility towards the country.”

In a similar poll conducted five years ago, only 29% of Iranians expressed a desire to leave Iran. It seems that in light of the sanctions imposed on the state during the Trump administration, the number of citizens – especially young people – who aspire to leave has increased.

Meanwhile, compared to the rest of the Middle East and Africa, only 24% are interested in emigrating from their home country, some 10% less than those in Iran.

According to the JCPA, between 6 and 10 million Iranians have left their country since the establishment of the Islamic regime 43 years ago, and between 150-180 thousand people leave Iran a year.

The Iranian website Asar-Iran wrote that those who do not think about immigration are those with no means, and do not see it as a feasible possibility in their future.

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