Significant reductions in study places are planned at the prestigious Charité medical center in Berlin, according to internal documents revealed to the “Tagesspiegel” newspaper. The university hospital intends to decrease its provision of places across several key disciplines, potentially reducing capacity by between ten and fifty percent in the coming year.
The proposed changes will impact a wide range of programs. Human medicine, the foundational field for aspiring doctors, faces a ten percent decrease in places. Bachelor’s programs will also be affected, with planned cuts of 19 percent in Health Sciences, 25 percent in Dentistry and a substantial 50 percent reduction in the Bachelor of Applied Midwifery Science. A Charité spokesperson confirmed these figures in response to inquiries from the newspaper.
The adjustments are driven by a cost-saving initiative from the Berlin Senate, which is reducing state funding for its publicly owned higher education institutions. Charité is slated to lose approximately €22 million from its annual budget of roughly €270 million. Like many clinics, Charité often incurs costs associated with patient care that exceed the payments received from health insurance providers.
The Senate’s announcement in autumn to adjust existing higher education contracts – including the reduction of funding to Charité – reflects the considerable debt burden facing the state. The move follows increased scrutiny of state finances.
In the winter semester of 2024/25, Charité welcomed 325 new students to Human Medicine, 83 to Health Sciences, 68 to the Nursing Bachelor program, 46 to Dentistry and 63 to Applied Midwifery Science. With Master’s and doctoral students included, the Charité currently hosts an average enrollment of nearly 10,000 students, with around 2,000 students typically departing annually and being replaced by new entrants.
Charité management previously highlighted the potential for significant consequences to training programs resulting from the announced cuts. The specifics of how these reductions will be implemented and their long-term impact remain to be seen. The Chair of the Charité’s Supervisory Board is Ina Czyborra (SPD), the Senator for Health and Science.
