@CayrolBaaaskin - I disagree. I am not saying unis are losing money due to retention of the bursary, it is more about the payment of fees. The majority of student nurse places in Scottish universities are controlled by the Scottish government and Scottish funding council. Due to the ucas system unis can end up with more nursing students than they are paid for. Plus the uni cannot set their own fees - they are capped. Then if students leave the course, the Scottish funding council will try to draw back the money from the uni even though the costs to the uni are the same.
Also - the Scottish bursary is not means tested and Scottish students cannot apply for a student loan. This massively disadvantages students who are from poorer backgrounds, mature students with families etc. A better system would be to abandon the bursary and give loans then if the student works in the NHS they don’t need to pay the loan back. This has been discussed at Scottish government and the response was the SNP will never do this as the bursary is a political winner. Scottish unis lose money year after year due to the system.
Bear in mind the bursary is going up to 10k and it is not unknown for students to join the course then join the healthcare support worker bank at the local hospital and start working (they will get fast tracked as student nurses), stop attending Uni and keep taking the bursary. It can take nearly a year to get a student excluded from the course if they know how to play the system. It’s certainly not perfect.