Will next year's rise in UK tuition fees change the demographic of future medical and dental students?

Dear Sir

When a student is deciding whether to enter higher education, especially onto slightly longer courses such as medicine and dentistry, they must take into account the costs and long-term debt that they will incur. The worry of debt will be much more pronounced in students entering higher education from 2012 onwards with the introduction of the much publicised tuition fee increase which could see students paying up to £9000 a year.

The media has given us the politician's points of views about how this is a fairer finance system for students, how it is more affordable for the nation and how previous tuition fee rises have not discouraged poorer students to apply (Vasagar & Shephard 2010). However, we are interested to find out whether the rise in tuition fees will change the diversity of future medical and dental professionals.

We set out to investigate whether the demographic of future medical and dental students will change by asking current medical and dental students to complete an anonymous questionnaire on what their decisions on entering higher education would have been had they had to pay higher tuition fees. The questionnaire was completed by 298 students at the University of Birmingham with a range of year groups and a good sample from both medical and dental students.

The results showed that 28.5% of the current students would not have entered their course had the tuition fees been £9000 per year. On further analysis of this subgroup, a significantly higher proportion were from low-socioeconomic groups and interestingly 64% of this subgroup were female.

This cross-sectional study gives evidence that the diversity of future doctors and dentists will change with the tuition fee rise and that this may promote elitism in these professions.