Outrageous Degree Fees for Would-be Doctors
It's a national disgrace that aspiring doctors of tomorrow are being asked to pay more than a house mortgage for a degree that may leave them unable to practice medicine, AMA President, Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, said today.
The 2007 Good Universities Guide has revealed full fee-paying students will be charged up to $237,000 for a combined Medicine/Arts degree, it was reported today.
"The gap between the level of assistance offered by the Government to full fee-paying students and the cost of degrees is widening," Dr Haikerwal said.
"The maximum loan available is $80,000, leaving up to $157,000 that students or their families must scrape together.
"And yet neither Federal nor State and Territory Governments has guaranteed that full fee-paying students will be able to access internships, the successful completion of which is a prerequisite to being registered to practise medicine.
"At a time when the Government says it's encouraging more students to become doctors, these medical degree fees are at odds with the Australian tradition of a 'fair go'."
According to the Guide, Australia's five most expensive degrees are Medicine/Arts at the University of NSW, at $237,000; Medicine at Bond University, for $233,100; Medicine/Arts at the University of Melbourne, going for $219,100; Medicine at the University of NSW, at $216,000' and Medicine/Law at Monash University, at a price of $214,600.
"With the Government's decision to lift the cap on full fee-paying medicine places to 25 per cent of all medicine places, the number of full fee-paying first-year medicine students could soon rise to over 600," Dr Haikerwal said.
"The AMA is concerned that these aspiring doctors will be wasting their money.
"It's easy at 17 or 18 years of age to get carried away by the dream of becoming a doctor, but what happens when these eager young students transform into jaded graduates without an intern place, without full medical registration, and saddled with an enormous debt?
"Even if they do gain registration, these students are unlikely to be attracted to areas where there is a high need for doctors.
"This will do nothing to address the current shortages of GPs and doctors willing to work in rural areas.
"We urge the Government to abandon its decision to increase full fee-paying places, or, at the very least, to fund clinical places and intern jobs for all medical students."