New Med Schools lock out home students

[giveandtake]

Story in the Sunday Times yesterday.

Brunel and Chester will only train lucrative international students, who pay £45,000 per year.

Presumably, the students will be taught by a fair number of medical professors; the latter trained by the tax funded NHS; in taxpayer funded hospitals and grant supported institutions.

Meanwhile, homegrown pupils with A stars and first class degrees, are left to wither on the vine, such is the ridiculous competition for places.

This is shameful and demotivating/insulting to our students, led to believe that merit and hard work may give them a chance at a medical career.

Once trained, what is to prevent the newly trained fledgling medics from returning overseas?

@titchy when they’ve already set up the medical schools with enough tutors and clinical placements it IS as simple as let more UK students train - then they have 5 years to add more F1 placements and places that aren’t currently teaching hospitals… doesn’t seem to insurmountable when we are short thousands upon thousands of doctors. Just that the tories have no will to actually staff or fund the NHS. These new med schools were set up to train UK students to work in the NHS - the gap is funding.

I understand the home student cap is linked to number of F1 places, so.......Why can the government increase F1 spaces? Is there something I'm missing?

The story stands up.

It's corroborated on the universities' own websites.
NHS resources (taxpayer funded) will be used to train rich overseas students on courses that home students (children of British taxpayers) are locked out of.
Will the respective governments of the overseas students be making a contribution to our NHS?

Is there something I'm missing?

A government which instituted austerity 12 years ago, and compounded the problem by an inability to plan - or perhaps a deliberate decision not to.

Of course the story stands up - it's true! But it's not the universities fault and the Times shouldn't be trying to spin it that way.

Yes the barriers can be overcome - by expanding not only F1 places in five years time (wouldn't wanna be one of the 'extra' med students unis were forced to take during the A level fiasco though), but placements for students on clinical years. Again though, that comes at a price, and the price is that fewer patients are seen when doctors have students to train. What's the solution to that - recruiting from overseas!

So yes, recruit more overseas doctors to free up placement capacity, and throw £££££ at unis and hospitals to enable more students to be taught, and once taught, to retain them.

Government can solve this. Write to your MP. Don't blame unis or hospitals because our hands are tied.

Sorry mean to say can't

Also, if the rationale is that the F1 places are linked to home students intake numbers, why are international students except from this? There is no guarantee they will return to their home countries? They may stay and compete for F1 places too?

OP it is actually sickening, it's depressing that the youth of this country, as well all non affluent people, are so done over by this current government. The youth have no hope for a brighter and better future, low wages, high house prices, poor jobs/training, the list goes on.

The only hope is that the Tories will be out in 2 years, never to return. I just don't trust that majority of people will vote in their best interests, they likely will have forgetful memories, and be like Turkeys voting for Christmas in a decade or so again.

Hospitals/doctors are limited by practicalities of number of trainees. As someone said above, training someone means they have less time to see patients.

These unis have gone to great lengths to set up these courses and arrange placements and staff the courses. So the hard work is done. The NHS doctors are already taking time out to train these international students. It makes ZERO sense to deny UK students these places for the sake of max £20million for 100 more UK doctors - we need them! They will pay taxes in the UK and save lives and help prop up the NHS. How much did truss just wipe off the UK economy?

I read this yesterday. The Times says the issue is that the government is not funding UK students for these courses.

I don't know anything about it other than what I read but I assumed that that was because the new courses are graduate entry and the vast majority of UK graduates would already have exhausted their eligibility for student loans.

I read this article earlier. I think people should start asking a few questions before they let medical students in on their appointments. No patients to practice on = no course.

It would be fantastic if UK can profit from international demand for medical school places & use that profit to support domestic medical student places (or NHS or other public goods). I have long thought Uk could be like Cuba & make a lot of money out of training doctors from overseas. I am still asking, nobody has answered, what happens to the £45k tuition, what is that being spent on? Who profits since you're so sure that someone is profiting, who or what institution & what will they do with the profit?

But fewer students means fewer doctors in the future as they have to train to get the required experience etc. Refusing them treating you will just delay their training and eventual qualifying. You'll never know which of them are intending to leave the UK once qualified.

I used to work in a medical school. Finance was not my area but I understood that a very large chunk of the university's funding (from tuition fees/government funding) was handed over to the NHS to cover the cost of taking students on placement. Most of that was spent on teaching students on site, but some was reserved to pay for the cost of cover on exam days when dozens of senior doctors had to cancel clinics, operations etc so they could act as examiners in the OSCEs (clinical exams).

If I have that right, therefore, the NHS will be benefiting financially from these new medical schools in exactly the same way they would from any other medical school.

Can anyone confirm?

But you could refuse students from Medical Schools that don’t train UK students

I answered. The fee goes to the uni. Unis then usually have a somewhat convoluted joint employment of NHS clinicians which fees help pay for.

I am still asking, nobody has answered, what happens to the £45k tuition, what is that being spent on?

@titchy answered this very clearly, @lljkk - the tuition fee goes to the university, which employs the tutors, buys in NHS clinical staff - or they hold lectureships on top of their clinical posts - and provides the expensive buildings, labs, services, libraries etc etc etc etc all required for teaching students.

Absolutely shocking. This government talks of 'levelling up' but it is absolutely meaningless. Not just at the top end for potential medical students but right across the board. The government, and previous governments as well, have always preferred to import fully qualified medics from abroad rather than train our own. Much cheaper! This is another example of this .. get high paying students in from other countries. As a retired teacher I have seen countless very able students unable to get on the courses they want. Not because they are not academically able, but because there are not enough medic training places available, even though the NHS is crying out for them. It's the same a lower academic levels. Conscientious kids with a good string of the right entrance qualifications can't get on to the courses they want because it's cheaper to offer less than we need then import cheaply. The government talks a good talk of a highly skilled highly paid work force but won't fund the qualifications which lift people off the bottom if they can import the skills more cheaply. That's why so many in this country are in none skilled low paid work with little hope that it will be any better for those coming after them

Universities also have to pay hospitals who provide placement. They charge per student per week.

Thank you,@titchy. When writing to our MPs or others in the public domain, a list of particularly salient features of this problem would be helpful to those of us who are not expert. Perhaps it will go beyond points discussed here. Could you please start it?

Many thanks

"I don't know anything about it other than what I read but I assumed that that was because the new courses are graduate entry and the vast majority of UK graduates would already have exhausted their eligibility for student loans."

Graduate entry is just as, if not more, competitive than undergraduate. However, some students will live at home and I believe years two to four are part funded with some element of maintenance loan.

In any event, £9,000 is a lot more achievable than £45,000 per year. (I'm in agreement that many home students get locked out at this level, too, as the poster above says, the fully funded loan option will have been exhausted by the previous three years of study.)

Most post graduate courses require science degrees - Newcastle is one of the few that doesn't - and successful entrants may have several years of health related work experience behind them, PhDs, etc.

ok, so I misunderstood. i thought the thread outrage had something to do with private profit.

I still don't understand how these private medical schools are doing anything wrong. What harm are they doing, do they prevent production of domestic doctors or NHS service delivery?

@lljkk yes to both. They are taking clinical placements that could be used for UK students. And they are costing the NHS as there is a limit on the number of placements possible.

Sorry poetry I'm not going to start a thread with suggestions for writing to MPs! My institution doesn't do medicine and my knowledge is based on other colleagues in the sector and my own knowledge of funding more generally. Plus it's not up there on my list of things to write to my MP about!

That said, there has been some talk of expanding the cap on places - there have been quite a few new places offering medicine in the last few years, many in the north where there has been relatively low provision (Sunderland, Edge Hill - shock horror not RG...) I think the cap will be further expanded in the next few years, and Brunel, Chester and ?Surrey will be the ones who will get the places.

Queen Mary is also aiming to offer a more flexible apprentice model into medicine next year.

Now, what do we do about nursing and midwifery? Same issues there...

I feel terrible for writing it but please god no more students. I cannot bear it. We are so stretched at work that when I get there and have 2 or 3 students my heart sinks. I used to LOVE having A (1) student. Now I have 2 minimum every shift.

I know of people with exemplary A level grades that didn't get into med school. We get the constant refrain of requiring more doctors but when it comes to competition for places it is ridiculously and unfairly competitive. We shouldnt have 4 A star candidates being effectively without university places and taking a year out during formative learning years because of the way medical recruitment works. Our children deserve better.