Soaring cost of a medical degree is marginalising poorer students, says leading doctor

Higher fees should be dished out to well-off medical students to provide more places for the students from disadvantaged backgrounds, the chair of the General Medical Council has said.

Dr. Peter Rubin responded to growing concerns about the inaccessibility of medical degrees to young people from traditionally less academic backgrounds by suggesting that the money generated from the topped up fees could be used to create more scholarships. This would make medicine more accessible to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“The UK should follow the example of America, where better-off students subsidise poorer peers” said Dr Rubin.

Research from the British Medical Association (BMA) show that only one in 10 graduates with a medical degree come from the poorest socio-economic background compared to three in 10 students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds taking degrees in other fields.
The BMA’s current estimation of debt that a medical student will accumulate by the end of their degree is £37,000. This is nearly double the average of £23,000 debt that other students face and it is conjectured that figures will continue to rise.

Mairi, a second year student at the University of Manchester, agreed that being put-off by worries about debt was “definitely the case.”

“You can think of other ways of making medicine more accessible to students; the government should have enough money to tackle with it independently.”

Louise McMenemy, Chair of the BMA’s Student Finance Committee, said improving bursaries was a better way of making medicine more accessible without seeming to “penalise one group of students over another.”