Diane says tuition fees hike will price students out of medical degrees
Diane says the Coalition’s decision to raise tuition fees will price many students out of taking medical degrees altogether.
The Coalition announced today that Universities will be able to charge as much as £9,000 a year in tuition fees, but includes no provision for students who take longer degrees, such as trainee doctors who study for 5 years.
An estimate by the British Medical Association (BMA) calculates that many trainee doctors will now leave University in £70,000 of debt.
Diane said:
“The changes are simply not fair. They do not take into account medical students who spend far longer at University, have shorter holidays and must pay for expensive equipment.
I think we will see the numbers of students deciding to study medicine declining drastically as a result of this and it will make it far harder for students from poorer backgrounds, who do not have financial support from their parents, to make the decision to study medicine.
A lack of trained doctors will have a terrible effect on the quality of the NHS and will see a reliance more and more on doctors from abroad.
The Coalition needs to look long and hard at the effects that their decisions will have on the medical profession as a whole, and consider ways of making medical degrees affordable.”
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