Spoiler alert: It’s not good.
I’ve spent way too much time writing 21 pages about my experience with the medical university of Pécs, intended to give potential students a look into the life of a student at POTE. You’ll find it in the sidebar.
I also want other students to be able to share their opinion about the university with potential students here. The only thing I require of you is to answer the simple question of “would you recommend this university to a friend or not”. Other than that, you can write whatever you want. Both positive and negative experiences are welcome of course. If you want do to so, message me (email or messenger) with what you want posted and whether you want to be anonymous or not.
Thank you for writing what everyone else are too scared to say out loud! You are a hero for sharing this!
Wow! Such a great effort writing so many pages…
As a former student representative, we tried to give constructive feedback, criticism both to the actual dean and the “forever vice dean of education” Herr Czopf. We were really hopeful at the beginning, since it seemed we’ve beed listened and they seriously considered what we proposed.
We had lot of promises, especially from Herr C. Nothing, again, nothing happened. I am talking about over 10 years of experience. I still follow what happenes there.
Indeed, there were amazing individual, or institutional solutions during COVID-19, but it really depended on those people, or institutes, who invested the energy, not the leadership. Now, that the pandemic is over, they want to bring back everything as it was… Completely nonsense! This uni is still way behind comparing to other universities regarding digital, online solutions.
I understand that there are some standards what a medical school should keep. I agree that a medical school should be hard and challenging, since it is a very complex, difficult and responsible profession. But world changed and a responsible educational institute must catch up. Just like many others around.
Nothing will change until Herr C. is in his position.
Thanks so much for such an honest, detailed post.
Unfortunately, you posted it after receiving the degree. It weakens the value a little bit, but I fu mpletely understand. Lot of students afraid to raise their voice because of fearing realistic consequences: being fired from exams, and as a result repeating a very expensive year here. Just like us, teachers. We afraid to loose our jobs.
Regarding the controversial requirements from different professors: yes, we know about it but there are too many powerful old people here who can do practically anything. Just as racist/sexist comments/actions. Even though leadership is strictly against it theoretically, it is not enough to call in the guy and say it is not right. As far as I know in Norway just one comment is enough to fire a teacher. Here as far as I see, it is never gonna happen.
English, German proficiency of the teachers: yes, that is another strong point. However, we do not have such governmental supported English training for everyone as you have in Norway. However, your point is right. Unfortunately, we are happy to have enough teachers to hold classes. Language proficiency is a secondary issue.
Regarding lexical requirements: you might not remember most of it after couple weeks, but it is proven that memorizing huge amount of data helps to develop more sinapses in the brain. So you will be actually smarter.
Everything is about money. And you, international students bring a lot in. This uni offers a relatively cheap diploma still. There will not be any significant change unless a., mass of students stand for change (not gonna happen, because everyone afraid, and the dean will just jell at you), b, international students’ number drops significantly.
Thank you for your reply.
I don’t blame teachers for poor foreign language proficiency; it’s a fault of the system. Many teachers are very good in English (don’t know anything about German), you included, based on your comment.
Let’s hope this post and these comments influence potential students to think twice before applying here. You say that pote offers a relatively cheap education, which might be true compared to English or American universities, but it’s not true compared to equivalent and comparable European universities in Poland, Slovakia, etc., especially considering most students in Pécs must repeat a year, whereas this is not the case in the aforementioned countries.
From what I’ve been told, the last few years there’s been a dip in students applying for POTE. If this keeps up, the leadership and system might actually have to implement changes for the better. Let’s hope this is true, for the sake of the students.
@YoungAnatomist, I don’t understand why the value of Nikolas’ input will decrease just because he already received the degree. On the contrary, it makes his input more valuable. Now he knows exactly which material was redundant and unnecessary and aspects that the University of Pecs needs to change. Why would he waste so much time writing his experience if he already graduated? This just shows that he really cares about the current students and future students. If he was writing this as a current student, you will probably say that his comments are of little value because he is not doing well at this university. I agree with Nickolas 100% about all the downsides that he mentioned.
Regarding the controversial requirement of different professors: I do not think it is too challenging to tell the professors to have a meeting and establish a common requirement. In my pathology exam, I mentioned a disease mentioned in the recommended book of the department (Robbins Basic pathology), and the examiner told me that this disease does not exist even after I told him I was 100 percent sure it was in the book. I would like to ask you to picture for a moment the confusion that students face when they read something from the book and the professors tell them that this does not exist or when different professors contradict each other.
Regarding the language proficiency of professors, people are not asking professors to talk like native speakers, it is fine for professors to have some grammar or speaking mistakes, but when their language use is not allowing the students to get their main point, then it is a huge problem. Moreover, they are a lot of language tools nowadays (e.g Grammarly) to help professors to write an understandable ppt and practice their speech/lecture at home so that students can understand them. I really can’t fathom when professors use their ppt for like a decade and every year it contains the same mistakes. I don’t know about Hungary, but at least in my home country, professors are supposed to be role models for students and encourage them to always seek better versions of themselves. Some professor at the University of Pecs gives me the impression that they just want to do the minimal work and are not eager to improve their teaching skills or correct simply grammar/spelling mistakes. Additionally, some other professors’ problem is not their language skills, but how they don’t even understand the material themselves. For example, when I was learning embryology, I asked a professor about things that I did not understand from the lecture slides, this professor read the exactly same thing as what she wrote on the ppt, and did not give any explanation. I told her twice that I still was not understanding, and she got frustrated and told me to ask another professor. In my country, there is a saying that when you cannot explain a certain concept, it means that you do not understand it properly. Therefore, this professor gave me the impression that she herself did not understand the concept that I just asked her. This also happened in the Physiology department and some other departments. Some professors just repeat the same thing that was said in the lecture, and this is not explaining.
Regarding your comment about this university being cheap, it was also mentioned in his experience that in the end, it is not cheap since students have to repeat one or more years due to unreasonable prerequisites. For example, students cannot register for pathology and pathophysiology if they didn’t pass the Biochemistry Final, which makes no sense because biochemistry is not needed for pathology and pathophysiology. (FYI, I did pass every subject so far, so please don’t say this is of little value because I am just frustrated that I didn’t make it).
The most absurd thing that you said, in my opinion, is that memorizing useless facts and information is useful because it is supposed to “make us smarter.” I believe that even if we exclude all the useless facts that we have to memorize, we still have a lot of other important facts that will be enough to “help us to develop more synapses in the brain”. Critical thinking is what can help people get smarter, not memorization. According to the Journal of Advances in Medical Education & Professionalism, critical thinking is more important memorization for medical students because, without it, students cannot use what they memorized and apply it to solve clinical problems and make effective clinical decisions.
Finally, your attitude about nothing will change is the main reason why the this University of Pecs sucks. From your comment, I can feel that you are satisfied with the current situation and unwilling to make any changes. I would like to remind you that admitting that you have a problem is the first step in fixing the problem, so the leadership and professors need to admit that there are just way too many problems with the University of Pecs first. Rest assured that a lot of international students make sure that their friends and siblings do not come to this university.
The way you argue is the exact reason why no change will ever happen, This is your answer after reading a thorough 20 pages review…
1. Nikolas is done with his studies & he can move on to become a great doctor while you stay in this collapsing university to defend it – this just shows that he actually cares.
2.POTE is offering the same low level education as other eastern european universities but x4 the price & x100 the stress.
3. At the end of day you want to produce efficient doctors that can diagnose, treat & give the best care. I can throw any random junk information under the argument of increasing synapses (@6 courses of Public health). The student produced by POTE are totally lost clinically which is the biggest issue.
Thank you for putting so much effort into writing such a detailed description of POTE. It’ll be much easier to explain why students shouldn’t come here by just referring them to this post in the future. The talk at uni is how accurate this description is and how needed it was for someone to speak up.
Thank you!