h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

So at the moment in the UK the NHS funds student nurse education and we get paid a bursary for which we must work around 37.5 hours a week for around 6 months a year (some uni's may differ but mine has 2 blocks of 12 weeks per year)
now the government decided that it wants to change this and that student nurses should fund this themselves through student loans like the rest of students...

what do you think

The government are very wrong here there are not enough nurses as it is.
Nurses are a different case

Normally its student gets qualifications this leads to a well paid job;

Student nurse gets qualifications this leads to a vocation that has enormous responsibility and half the potential wages of most student graduates.

If we want nurses the country have to pay for "ALL" the training

I think your right Bob but then I'm a student nurse so a little bias
but if your going to charge student nurses the same as other students then surely you could make the argument that they deserve the same graduate level of pay.... then surely that would cost the government more in the long run

They will be expecting the police and firefighters to pay for their own training soon

It's not so difficult to understand, is it?

Q1. Are they already rich?

If Yes, then make them richer

Otherwise, make them poorer.

Q2. Er, that's it.

>>If we want nurses the country have to pay for "ALL" the training


I imagine the government thinks it's much cheaper to entice overseas nurses over here, and indeed we send our emissaries overseas for that specific reason.

With the possibility of bogus qualifications

An education is a human right..and making us pay for a human right seems so wrong.

It all comes down to are we a viable society or a viable business? I know which I'd prefer that we were..and what we were once heading for..

Some families who can afford it send their children to what's called [in the U.S.] private school. This means that public funds are not spent for it. The parents pay the tuition. Students whose parents can't afford private school generally have no choice but to send their kids to public school, which is financed by the community through property taxes.

College is another matter, though. Most nurses are trained at the college or junior college level, so would-be nurses must raise the tuition themselves *or* get a subsidy of some sort *or* get a scholarship.

Now, if nurse training could be done in high school, then tuition problems would be a thing of the past.

>>With the possibility of bogus qualifications

To be fair though, there's always been the issue of the unqualified in hospitals, most notably surgeons!

While the politics behind overseas recruiting is certainly debatable, there doesn't tend to be a problem with the quality we get.

There are a few complications, of course, such as a recognised issue that certain cultures try to marry off members of their family to (comparatively wealthy) Brits.

With my economist's hat on I'd say nurses are a public good and should be funded from the public purse.

I completely don't understand Tories who really want a free market to rule.

If something is scarce (oil, land, gold) it commands a higher price. That is Economics 101. If a skill is scarce or difficult to achieve (surgeon, barrister (?) etc) then they are scarce and in demand and should command a higher price.

Nurses are in demand. We don't have enough of them. Tory economics should say: wow, they're in demand they should be expensive, they should get more money.

If CEOs, senior bankers, etc, aren't offered astronomical sums to do their job apparently they will bail and go somewhere that is prepared to pay that. Footballers are the same, you only have one Messi, Neymar or de Bruyne and therefore they can command a high price. Tickets to a Coldplay gig are seriously limited so the promoter can get away with charging EUR 120 for a standing ticket.

And in each of those cases, the capitalist, free-market answer is: yes, they benefit from their scarcity.

So why does this pretty much hard and fast rule of economics suddenly not apply when it's nurses, junior doctors or teachers?

Some would point to the gender gap that causes members of mostly-female occupational groups [elementary school teachers, librarians, nurses, etc.] to be paid less than people of comparable education and talent in mostly-male occupations. The vestiges of a society with male breadwinner/female homemaker patterns may also be present often enough to give people ammunition for arguing that the man's job is the primary support for a family, while the woman's job supports only her [if she's single] or supplements her man's income [if she's married].

I've even seen the argument that housing prices are getting excruciatingly high because of double-income families who push prices up wherever there are towns with great services like good schools and first-rate cultural/recreational services. We would all like to live in really nice places even I we can barely afford to move there.

I heard an argument once that Nurses can't be paid more because then people would be attracted to nursing due to the pay rather than because they want to be nurses
which I can sort of half get my head around but surely people are turned away from careers like nursing and teaching and librarianing.... if the pay is low

That's how it is now, but many decades ago there were millions of intelligent, talented women who had few other options besides those low-paying careers, so they went with them, to the benefit of society.

The instant answer is 'of course they should be paid'. Student nurses aren't just their to learn, they're part of the nursing team, and they deserve a wage. I've been thinking about this, and the job market for HCPs is an odd one.

In countries where the healthcare is private the market employs them and pays well enough for people to get into a lot of debt to go to nursing school. Apparently nurses is one of the most popular degrees and one of the top paying ones http://college.usatoday.com/2014/10/26/same-as-it-ever-was-top-10-most-popular-college-majors/

Here we have a strange sort of market, the government controls the supply, the pay rate and the demand. But people keep getting sick, and the private sector needs nurses too, so at the moment the demand outstrips supply (a bit).

I don't think that fairness comes into the thinking on this. I think it's a matter of supply and demand. And it's a question of 'would we get enough people applying to nursing if there wasn't a busary'.

If it was fairness then medical students would get bursaries as well, though student nurses deliver direct patient care in a way that medical students don't. Medical students also have long courses and don't get the summer holidays.

But medics are willing to go into debt to pay for their courses, and medical schools can fill all their places without a problem.

So I expect that government has (until recently) thought that
people who are thinking of being nurses wouldn't become nurses if they had to pay fees and didn't get a bursary.

From the governments point of view it wants to have plenty of nurses and ideally not pay too much to train them.

Now not everyone who currently does nursing would do it if they had to pay fees/bursaries. Probably you wouldn't get the nurses who already had families and first degrees. But would you get enough people doing it to fill the places? Maybe you would get enough. And if not maybe they could offer a sponsorship scheme whereby some hospitals could sponsor some of their health care assistants to do nursing in exchange for promising to work for them.

Would people apply? I actually think some would. People get into debt to do degrees with far worse prospects than nursing (Art etc).

The university of Bolton started a non-funded nursing degree, along with there local hospital. If I read rightly they were actually given paid jobs as health care assistants, but they would still be getting into debt.

And they got 650 applicants for 25 places.
http://www.fabnhsstuff.net/2015/10/11/update-first-fee-paying-nursing-course-country-university-bolton/

as far as I am aware, medical students do get a bursary it just dosnt cover the entire course three years out of the seven the other four years are expected to be covered by a normal student loan

if people want to apply for a privately funded course (non nhs funded) then thats fine that should be an option but I dont think it should be the only option in the same way i feel that if you get nhs funding you should be expected to work for the nhs for a few years in order to 'repay' that funding in a sense

A difficult one.

A student who studies is going to get a job, hopefully. And by studying it will mean they will be higher up the pecking order.

I was told, when younger, that a bin man (waste collector/dumpster operator) is as vital to our society as a teacher/doctor/nurse, as was possibly shown with the General Strike/three day week, with rubbish building up in the streets.

So. Should nurses be treated differently to other students?

Those who study law have to go through the same process as other students, yet police recruits, soldiers etc are paid.

Personally, I think the most basic training, the first three years, should be the same as a normal student, but outside of industry except, maybe day release, to train them in the basics, then after that, pay them as they get hands-on training.

After all, those on the old 'Sandwich' course didn't get paid, or if they did, it was a pittance. Not like today with a minimum wage.

My sandwich course was withdrawn, unbeknown to me, despite it being the main reason I took it.

MMF

Obviously the engineers should fund the nurses (they fund everyone else), but who should fund the engineers?

In an ideal situation, I would think that the "state" should fund the training and employment of professionals who serve every member of that community in very real health and security ways. This would include nurses and medical doctors, but also fire-fighters, police, paramedic/rescue staff and military. (Military people serve in many more ways than just foreign wars - look at any natural calamity).

The earlier comment about including salaries for police and military - I see a fair reason for that. Of course, I am biased. But from the day any of these people don a uniform, even if not yet fully trained, they can be called to serve without notice. And in most of these circumstances, they place their lives on the line for the general population. As do nurses and doctors, who are faced with everything from manic persons to deadly diseases.

'Who should fund the engineers?' is a good question.
We should all fund them.
Uni should be free for the first degree.