Tartu Tamme High School is a state high school offering five different tracks of study. The newest branch of the medical studies track will be veterinary medicine, which the school will teach in collaboration with EMÜ, principal Ain Tõnisson told ERR.

"I believe we'll find a good number of people excited by this," Tõnisson said.

Starting this fall, 15 high school students will visit EMÜ's Institute of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Sciences once a week.

The high schoolers' program will include lectures and seminars, but also opportunities to shadow vet school students and field trips to farms, said Kristel Peetsalu, the chair of Clinical Veterinary Medicine at the university.

"With a bit of a popular science approach," she acknowledged.

"But they will indeed get started just like our students — with anatomy, histology, they'll complete a physiology course, just to get a sense of what veterinary medicine is," she continued. "Veterinary medicine isn't just about treating animals; it involves food security, food hygiene, animal disease control, supervision. It's a very broad major that our students acquire over the course of six years."

Peetsalu added that this study track will also help students decide whether becoming a vet could be a potential career choice.

The Estonian Chamber of Agriculture and Commerce (EPKK) estimates that the country is currently facing a shortage of at least 100 vets across various fields.

According to EPKK chair Edgar Tamp, the reality on the ground shows that many regions and sectors in Estonia have already been hit by the crisis.

"And if we don't see any changes today, the situation will continue to worsen," he warned. "Initiatives like this are a good start, as they help graduates make more informed decisions regarding university and are better prepared when they get there."

Both Tamp and Peetsalu believe that the number of study spots in veterinary medicine needs to be increased, but this cannot be done without additional state funding.

EMÜ's Estonian-language vet school program currently accepts just over 30 students a year. The university also accepts an equal number of students for its tuition-based English-language vet school program. Last year, 20 veterinarians graduated from EMÜ's Estonian-language veterinarian science program.

The Clinical Veterinary Medicine chair acknowledged that there is no shortage of students, and that the competition for vet school remains fierce.

"This isn't really where the problem lies," Peetsalu said. "Fortunately, our dropout rate has decreased over the years as well, so we are looking for precisely the right students, who understand what this six-year program and the effort it requires really means, and who understand how broad [the field of] veterinary medicine is."

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