Hundreds of engineering students in Türkiye are switching to medicine and nursing as advances in artificial intelligence and a slowdown in the technology sector raise doubts about job prospects.
Engineering students accounted for 69 of 105 students seeking to study medicine at Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa. They made up 30 of 82 applicants to the medical faculty at Selçuk University in the central province of Konya and 55 of 130 transfers at Alanya Alaaddin Keykubat University in the southern province of Antalya.
At Çukurova University in the southern province of Adana, 22 of 40 nursing transfers came from engineering. Computer, industrial and software engineering stood out among applicants. Students who switched included some from Boğaziçi, Istanbul Technical and Middle East Technical universities.
“We wish we had chosen medicine,” one commenter wrote on social media.
Medicine is seen as offering quicker entry into work, relatively good pay and high social standing, educator Salim Ünsal said. The cutoff rank for public medical programs tightened from 30,000 in 2022 to 21,600 in 2026, he said.
AI is only part of the shift, Turkish-German University Digital Transformation Application and Research Center Director Müge Klein said. A post-pandemic tech slowdown and global economic uncertainty have curbed hiring, especially for junior developers. Some students are turning to AI and data engineering, while developers can improve their prospects by building skills in data analysis and AI, she said.
Students can transfer if their original university entrance exam score meets the target program’s cutoff for the year they entered university. Differences in coursework may cost them an academic year.
