Graduation from medical school and postgraduate work does not always allow the physician to practice. In the United States, licensure to practice medicine is controlled by boards of licensure in each state. The boards set and conduct examinations of applicants to practice within the state, and they examine the credentials of applicants who want licenses earned in other states to be accepted in lieu of examination. The National Board of Medical Examiners holds examinations leading to a degree that is acceptable to most state boards. National laws regulating professional practice cannot be enacted in the United States. In Canada the Medical Council of Canada conducts examinations and enrolls successful candidates on the Canadian medical register, which the provincial governments accept as the main requirement for licensure. In Britain the medical register is kept by the General Medical Council, which supervises the licensing bodies; unregistered practice, however, is not illegal. In some European countries graduation from a state-controlled university or medical school in effect serves as a license to practice; the same is true for Japan.

Economic aspects

The income of a medical school is derived from four principal sources: (1) tuition and fees, (2) endowment income or appropriation from the government (taxation), (3) gifts from private sources, and (4) donation of teachers’ services. Tuition or student fees are large in most English-speaking countries (except in U.S. state universities) and relatively small throughout the rest of the world. Tuition in most American schools, however, rarely makes up more than a small part of total operating expenses. The total cost of maintaining a medical school, if prorated among the students, would produce a figure many times greater than the tuition or other charges paid by each student. The costs of operating medical schools in the United States increased by about 30 times between the late 1950s and the mid-1980s. In the early 2020s, the operating cost per medical student was estimated to be between roughly $90,000 and $118,000 per year, far exceeding the tuition paid by students.

The expenses of medical education fall into two groups: those of the instruction given in the medical sciences and those connected with hospital teaching. In the medical sciences the costs of building maintenance, laboratory equipment and supplies, research expenses, teacher salaries, and employee wages are heavy but comparable to those in other departments of a university. In the clinical subjects all expenses in connection with the care of patients usually are considered as hospital expenses and are not carried on the medical school budget, which is normally reserved for the expenses of teaching and research. Here the heavy expenses are salaries of clinical teachers and the cost of studying cases of illness with a thoroughness appropriate to their use as teaching material.

Scientific and international aspects

Medical education has the double task of passing on to students what is known and of attacking what is still unknown. The cost of medical research is borne by only a few; the benefits are shared by many. There are countries whose citizens are too poor to support physicians or to use them, countries that can support a few physicians but are too poor to maintain a good medical school, countries that can maintain medical schools where what is known can be taught but where no research can be carried out, and a few countries in which teaching and research in medicine can be carried on to the great advantage of the world at large.

A medical school having close geographical as well as administrative relationships with the rest of the university of which it forms a part usually profits by this intimate and easy contact. Medicine cannot wisely be separated from the biological sciences, and it continues to gain immensely from chemistry, physics, mathematics, and psychology, as well as from modern technology. The social sciences contribute by making physicians aware of the need for better distribution of medical care. Contact with teachers and the advancing knowledge in other faculties also may have a corollary effect in advancing medicine.

With the development of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the World Medical Association after World War II, there has been increasing international interest in medical education. WHO conducts a regular program for aiding countries in the development and expansion of their educational facilities. World War II showed the advantages and economy derived from satisfactory systems of medical education: disorders and diseases were more widely and accurately detected among recruits than ever before, health and morale were effectively maintained among combatants, and disease and battle injuries were effectively treated.

Postwar medical education became increasingly oriented toward evidence-based medicine. Advances in molecular biology, genetics, and physiology reshaped medical curricula, with greater focus on cellular mechanisms of disease, while technological innovations modernized clinical teaching. Acceleration in scientific discoveries in fields such as cardiology, neurology, and oncology greatly broadened postgraduate training pathways. In the late 20th century, medical education shifted away from time-based models, where physicians were assumed competent after completing a prescribed curriculum of a fixed duration, toward competency frameworks, based on acquired skills and professional behavior, in addition to knowledge.

Online teaching modules, video-based instruction, and interactive platforms significantly expanded global access to medical training in the 21st century. Competency-based models remained predominant. Especially notable was increased incorporation in medical curricula of advances in the -omics fields and precision medicine, which fueled growth toward personalized medicine, and the application of cutting-edge science to patient care in physician training.