Universities UK and the Council of Deans of Health, which speaks for university faculties in nursing and midwifery, have been pressing the Treasury to axe bursaries. They have argued that doing so could lead to an increase in the number of trainee nurses because the existing public funding of them puts an artificial cap on how many can be trained, because HEE commissions a set number of training places each year from British universities.
They claim that the huge demand to study nursing – there are between five and 10 applicants for each of the 20,000 places a year – means switching to student loans would not lead to a fall in trainees. “The overdemand for places is so great that [the Treasury thinks] it will be relatively easy to land,” said a source familiar with its thinking.
Universities have also complained that they lose money because the amount HEE pays them for each student nursing place is 8%-12% less than it costs them to provide courses, which run for much more of the year than most degree courses and so are more expensive to put on.
The Department of Health is thought to be relaxed about replacing bursaries with loans because it is concerned that too many publicly funded student nurses do not go on to enter the profession after graduating.
Dame Jessica Corner, chair of the Council of Deans of Health, last month criticised the existing system of funding nurses as “fragile and vulnerable” to pressures affecting the NHS.
Nursing students also suffered “quite a lot of hardship” because the bursaries were “relatively underfunded” compared with undergraduates who relied on student loans, she said.
The RCN is also concerned that bursaries leave many student nurses with too little money to live on.