Medical Students Still Struggling With Huge Debts, UK

November 14, 2006 – 11:25 am | posted in Medical Students

The average final year medical student owes more than 21,000 pounds, a BMA survey has revealed.

Results from the BMA’s annual medical student finance survey show that students graduating this year (1) owe an average of 21,755 pounds - more than the basic pay of their first job as a junior doctor (2).

The findings are based on questionnaires completed by 1,912 UK medical students between May and September 2006. Nearly all (92%) had a student loan, and six in ten (60%) had an overdraft. Almost one in five (17%) had a bank loan and two thirds (63%) had around a thousand pounds of credit card debt.

One respondent owed 53,350 pounds, over a hundred students owed more than 30,000 pounds, and 13% had debts in excess of 25,000 pounds.

The high debt levels are explained by the fact that medical students study for two or three years longer than those on most other courses, have fewer opportunities to work part-time, and face additional expenses for travel to hospitals, and equipment such as stethoscopes.

Debt levels are likely to get much worse, as the introduction this year of a top-up fee system allows universities to charge a fee up to Â£3,000 per year, as opposed to a flat rate of around 1,175 pounds under the old system. Students studying medicine as a second degree have to pay the new fees upfront each year.

The BMA is calling for NHS bursaries, which some final year students receive, to be made more widely available and for improved student access to hardship funds and other forms of financial support. It also wants a change to the new top-up fee system, to allow graduate students to pay their fees at the end of their course, rather than at the start of each year.

The BMA believes that the high cost of studying medicine is one reason for the social imbalance among medical students - fewer than one in five (13%) of those surveyed came from a family where the main source of income was a ‘blue collar’ job.

Commenting on the survey results, Emily Rigby, chair of the BMA’s Medical Students Committee, said: “This level of debt is deeply worrying for current students, and the future of the medical profession as a whole. Not only does it put further pressure on those already coping with a demanding course, but it may also deter potential students, particularly those from low income backgrounds and graduates, from considering medicine as a career.

“The Government has said it wants to increase the number of UK doctors and to widen participation in medicine. It will fail in both of these aims unless it takes action to tackle the significant financial pressures facing medical students.

“Becoming a doctor should be about your commitment to medicine and patient care, not the amount of money you are prepared to borrow.”

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