Too Many Medical Graduates - Signs & Symptoms, Diagnosis and Treatment

There will be too many doctors (too soon) in Malaysia, some people believe. As a medical student, I think I should be worried about the prospect of my medical career since it will get much more competitive in the near future. But I'm not. Maybe I'm still in denial of the 'issue', but I'm not concerned about it and I have good reasons for this (will talk about this in another post).

Now, if the surge of medical graduates is a 'symptom', I believe that most people have made the wrong diagnosis. Unfortunately, this may have lead us to 'write' the wrong prescriptions, which (may in turn) bore a poor prognosis for the country. 

Gaga concert analogy

Enough with the medical metaphors. It's time for a thought experiment: Let's assume 'medical degrees' to be concert tickets for a very popular act, say, Lady Gaga; and that there are 2 ways of getting the tickets: 

(1) [free] sponsored tickets in January

(2) [charged] purchasable tickets later in February

The Lady Gaga concert is in March. So, you could either get the (free) sponsored tickets in January, or buy one in February. 

If half of all tickets have already been distributed (for free) in January, what will be left for the others (fans of Gaga) are the tickets in February. However, because only half of the tickets is left, there will be a very high demand for the remaining seats. The organizer knows this, and as expected, they jack up (increase) the price of the February tickets.

And what do you think the organizer would do next? Hold more concerts, of course - until Gaga gets too tired to perform, or her fans get tired of her! 

My speculation

What follows is my speculation to use this Gaga concert metaphor in order to describe our 'too many doctors' issue in Malaysia. Usually, most bright students (not all) opt to study medicine when they apply for scholarship, and they get it. Fortunately for them, the competition for a medical degree sponsorship is greatly eased, because many equally bright students did not apply for scholarship as they are not eligible for it. 

When many seats in the medical course have been taken up by the sponsored students, there will be little left for non-sponsored ones. This ultimately results in an artificially higher 'demand' for the non-sponsored seats. Consequently, private medical schools are able to charge exorbitant fees - and new ones spring into existence with this alluring financial prospect. In other words, they 'hold more concerts'.

My proposal

So should we abolish government sponsorship for medical degree altogether? No!! What I propose is this: give out scholarship to those who cannot afford the fees (below a certain household income bracket) only AFTER they have been accepted by the medical schools. To get back to the Gaga concert analogy above, instead of distributing free/sponsored tickets in January, the sponsor should only pay for those who have competed for the tickets in February (along with everybody else) but could not afford to buy the tickets themselves.

...Of course, my analogies and proposals are far from perfect or foolproof. In the bigger picture, they might apply to other degree courses as well. Those looking for my 'diagnosis' of the issue might be disappointed - come again another time. As much as I'd like to discuss more about this, I think I should rest for now. To be continued...