Medical schools: are we paying for education or for technical training?

Abstract

Not the least of the challenges facing medical schools in the UK is an increasing pressure on funding. The first major challenge came from the Research Assessment Exercise in 2001. Research units within higher education in the UK were categorized on a 5-point scale according to the national or international profile of the research that they conducted. The grade awarded determines the research support funding that the institution receives until the next assessment exercise. There was widespread expectation within the sector that units with grades of 3a (research of national significance) through to 5 (research of international importance) would receive funding; the level of funding being adjusted according to the grade obtained. In the event, funding went only to units with grade 5 or 5*. Many medical schools’ research units received grade 4 (research of national importance with some of international importance). These units lost the research support funding and in some cases this led to redundancies among academic staff. The medical schools have been further hit by the Government’s Widening Participation programme. The medical schools, many of which have already established programmes to facilitate the entry of educationally disadvantaged students, support the concept of widening participation in higher education. However, the way the programme is funded has resulted in loss of income of some 5.5% to the medical schools since it is focused on students at the lower end of the ability range rather than targeting students of all abilities who have been prevented from reaching their full potential. It has been suggested that the financial difficulties could be ameliorated if the responsibility for funding of medical education was transferred from the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) to the Department of Health (DoH).