Four year medical degree: stop using “widening participation” to ȷustify questionable policy

As a doctor who entered medicine through a “widening participation” scheme, I am becoming increasingly incensed by doctors and officials using people from my background as a justification for questionable medical workforce policy.1Widening participation aims to support and encourage students whose personal circumstances puts them at a disadvantage when pursuing higher education. We already know the policy approaches that are successful—outreach programmes, where students are visited in their schools by students and representatives of universities; contextualised offers, where students’ application scores or offers are benchmarked according to their circumstances and school performance; and, finally, and crucially, maintenance grants. Their removal and replacement with loans from 2016-17 has resulted in students from the lowest income households graduating with the largest student loan balances.2A four year undergraduate medical degree for students from disadvantaged backgrounds has costs in terms of the development of social networks and social capital. Medical students from middle class…
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