Rotterdam medical students offer cash to jump training queues

Medical students in Rotterdam are offering each other thousands of euros to move up the queue for the hospital training they need to qualify as doctors amid a shortage of spaces.

The bids – one as high as €2,000, according to news website NU.nl – after the lottery system for places at Erasmus MC left hundreds of students waiting months, some more than a year, to begin.

The medicine master’s is built mostly around clinical placements in hospital departments. Each department can take a limited number of trainees, so start dates are drawn by lottery, and pulling the short straw can cost the better part of a year.

This time the draw went badly for a lot of them. Of the roughly 380 students who entered, about a quarter can’t start until autumn 2027 and 35% not until 2028, NU.nl reported, citing an email sent to students.

Richer students paying ahead
Students have bought and sold Rotterdam start dates before. Medisch Contact, a medical journal, documented the trade in 2020, when the medical faculty’s student council warned it let wealthier students buy their way ahead.

Erasmus MC told NU.nl it did not want money deciding who trains first, and said it would look at tightening the rules on swaps. It called the shortage of places temporary: extra students are graduating amid a switch to a new curriculum.

Students who wait longest can sometimes claim compensation from a university fund that covers study delays outside their control. The Netherlands is already facing a shortage of doctors, particularly neurologists.