The number of medical school graduates who stay in Illinois after graduating from the state’s public universities is plummeting.
Crain’s Chicago Business reports school officials offer different reasons why, but some point to Illinois’ two-year budget impasse.
The state has two public medical schools: Southern Illinois University’s School of Medicine and the University of Illinois College of Medicine. The number of medical graduates from those schools who stay in Illinois for their residencies has hit a combined all-time low.
Among the students leaving is 27-year-old Matt Soltys. Raised near Springfield, he went to medical school at Southern Illinois but will do his residency at the University of Iowa.
Soltys says it’s frustrating that the state budget impasse might affect his education and patients, so he wanted to go to an institution “that didn’t have those constraints.”
