Among the 36 top scorers on the 2016 national college entrance exam, or Gaokao, not a single one plans to choose the medical science major.
On June 26, Beijing News joined the official website of the State Family Planning Commission, the Chinese Alumni Network and the State Statistical Bureau to broadcast the results of a survey. The results showed that from 2010 to 2014, 600,000 people earned the qualifications necessary to become provisionally licensed medical practioners, but only one sixth of those practitioners went on to become fully licensed physicians.
The top three majors preferred by "Gaokao champions" are: business administration, economics and electronic information engineering. Medical science ranked 17, which means only 1.2 percent of survey respondents chose that major.
Jiang Jingyu, a 2015 Gaokao champion in science, entered the medical discipline at Tsinghua University. Her choice was so unusual that it was actually reported in the news. From Jiang's perspective, patients want outstanding doctors. In order for outstanding doctors to exist, there must be people who dedicate themselves to the discipline.
In this year's Hong Kong Diploma of Secondary Education (DSE) exams, among the top four scorers, three decided to become doctors, while the other wanted to be a lawyer. This is not an aberration. In fact, in 2014, five of the 12 best students on the exam entered Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, within the University of Hong Kong.
According to Hong Kong media, being a doctor is considered a highly respectable and stable occupation with a relatively high salary in Hong Kong. Students who are willing to study medicine are perceived as outstanding and elite.
A medical school lecturer explained that it takes between five and eight years for a medical student to become a doctor. That length of times allows for both classroom education and clinical practice. Nevertheless, compared with doctors in the U.S. and Hong Kong, doctors in Chinese mainland are not yet being given proper recognition. Their incomes cannot match their workloads, which is one consideration that many students cite as they make decisions about the future.
Recently, the enrollment of medical students has been reasonably stable. However, a heavy workload, high pressures and big risks are all obstacles on the path toward becoming a physician.
