Graduate funding re-examined
Future graduates who want to retrain as pharmacists in England — but face the possibility that changes in funding will prevent them — have been thrown a lifeline.
In a written reply to a Parliamentary question from Howard
Stoate, chairman
of the All-Party Pharmacy Group, higher education minister Bill Rammell
said last week that the Higher Education Funding Council for England
would review the position of subjects deemed to be of social or economic
importance in the light of data about students entering the courses each
year.
The first review will start in December 2008. “That would
be an opportunity to have another look at pharmacy and other subjects
in
the
light of the data that will then be available,” Mr Rammell said.
Dr Stoate wanted to know what assessment the Department for Innovation,
Universities and Skills had made of the impact on the pharmacy profession
of proposals to cut funding for students who want to study courses of
an equivalent or lower level than qualifications they already have.
Two days earlier, Mr Rammell gave an identical reply to Shadow Secretary
of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills David
Willetts, who
asked whether pharmacy would be added to a list of courses — currently
expected to include medicine, dentistry, social work and teacher training — that
are exempt from the new funding restriction.
Pharmacy academics are concerned that the new funding
restriction will
have an impact on pharmacy departments that have, in the past, offered
undergraduate places to students who already have a degree (PJ,
5/12 January 2008, p14). |
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