Since May 1976, UNDSMHS has awarded more than 1,000 M.D. degrees. In 1970, three years before the North Dakota Legislature voted to change the two-year medical education program to a four-year M.D. degree-granting program, fewer than 20 percent of physicians in North Dakota were alumni of the school. Today, more than 40 percent of practicing physicians in the state have received some or all of their training through the UND School of Medicine and Health Sciences during the same period. The number of physicians has increased nearly threefold.