Will more doctors really be really enough?

Medicine students are familiar with long, barbaric and origin Latin titles. Five years ago, a newcomer enriched their lexicon: the numerus apertus. Replacing the famous numerus clausus, It was established by decision of Agnès Buzyn, then Minister of Health.

Since 1971, France has limited the number of students admitted to the second year of medicine. No validation of an exam with a minimum note of 10/20, but a competition, where places are expensive. The enthronement ofapertus Deleted the single national quota: the admission thresholds vary as regional needs.

Today, universities, in connection with regional health agencies, set admissions according to their reception capacities and caregivers in caregivers. This change aimed to pass the number of students from 9,300 in 2019 to 16,000 per year by 2027. A direct response to the shortage of practitioners, especially in rural areas, since 30 % of the French population lives in a medical desert (report by the Senate of March 2022).

The end of the competition

Insufficient, in the eyes of the Minister of Health, Yannick Neuder, who announced his desire to suppress this numerus apertus, To “train more doctors”. In a bill, passed in the Senate on June 18, 2025, the Minister thus suggests reforming access to health studies.

Doctors’ needs, defined each year by regional health bodies, would take precedence over university reception capacities. The second year selection would no longer be based solely on the level of candidates or the real ability of the faculties to train them, but would be modulated according to the needs of each region.

This perspective worries students, deans and doctors. “Training more doctors, we are all for. But is this the right solution to weaken the selection principle? The first year may be exhausting, scary, hard, it prepares us for the reality of long and demanding studies. We do not play with the lives of patients, and we do not cheat with her revisions, ”insists Lisa, a student in the fourth year at the University of Medicine in Rouen (Seine-Maritime).

Lack of means

On the side of the national order of doctors, we observe the same vigilance: “The error made fifty years ago with the numerus clausus should not be repeated, namely to give a political response without serious study of its long -term effects on the health system. We must study demography. Training a doctor takes an average of ten years. Any reform, whether good or bad, has lasting repercussions, ”argues his vice-president, Jean-Marcel Mourgues. Understanding, between the lines, that, according to order, France would risk being in 2035 with … too many doctors!

Universities are under tension. “We are at the maximum of what we can do with our means,” alerts Isabelle Laffont, dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Montpellier-Nîmes. Rooms that are too small, lack of equipment, places in university restaurants, researchers, the difficulties are legion. The conference of deans of medicine, which she chairs, estimates that 500 teachers are missing to supervise the 12,000 students expected at the start of the 2025 school year.

In a context where the state, constrained by debt, imposes budgetary restrictions on higher education, the increase in the number of students increases the pressure on the education system. “We cannot push the walls, points Grégoire, a friend of promotion from Lisa, in Rouen. Already in internship, it happens that we find ourselves in hospitals without supervisors, because the teachers cannot be everywhere … ”