Sky Views: Should nurses get free training?

Michelle Clifford, Senior News Correspondent

There isn't a student in the land at, or about to go to university, who would not prefer to be there for free.

Oh that there were no tuition fees. Dream on in those ivory towers.

Fees are here and despite Labour's election promises it is hard to see how even a Corbyn government could realistically provide a loan free degree for every one of the vast number of people now embarking on a higher education.

It does not take a university maths education to see the difficulty.

But are all courses and all students equal?

For the first time this year all nursing and midwifery students will join the ranks paying their way.

Sign up for what was long deemed a vocation and you will have to hand over £9,000 annually for learning.

I'm not telling you it's going to be easy. I'm telling you it's going to be worth it. But what is a nurse worth to any government?

Fees will no longer be paid by Health Education England and bursaries to help with living costs will be scrapped. Nurses in the making will have to take out loans like everyone else.

That has already changed the mind of an 18-year-old I met at the weekend.

Marie had always imagined following her mum's footsteps on to a hospital ward but the thought of qualifying as a nurse saddled with tens of thousands of pounds of debt has put her off.

She is opting for a degree in business instead. She will still have to pay tuition fees but has calculated she will have greater earning potential in the future.

Marie is not alone. The Royal College of Nursing says there has been a 23% drop in applications for graduate nursing courses in 2017 with some universities reporting around half the usual numbers.

Set that against the fact that according to RCN there are currently 40,000 vacant nursing posts in the UK and questions of patient safety flash.

Brexit has done little to help plug the gap. The number of nurses from the EU registering to practice in the UK has fallen by 96% in less than a year.

Just 46 European nurses arrived to work in Britain in April - compared with 1,304 in the month after the referendum according to recent official figures.

But is there a case for treating nurses differently because well, they are different? They are not typical students for all kinds of reasons.

Put aside thoughts of huge cohorts of teenage undergraduates. Nursing students are much more likely to be older - 41% are over 25 and often have families, mortgages, commitments.

They also have one of the highest workloads of university subjects - combining on the job training with study (little room for a bar job or waitressing to supplement their living costs).

And nursing courses are typically longer in terms of duration and yearly requirements - with study lasting well beyond usual semester demands.

And what of the rewards? Well, you do not go into nursing for the huge pay cheque.

The vast majority of qualified nurses are on band 5 so earning between £21,000 and £28,000 a year.

Little wiggle room then financially after rent and bills, especially in London and other big cities. Contemplating debt on top may, and probably is, proving a deterrent.

There is a saying I once saw at a nurse's station when I was myself in hospital for a long period.

It read: "I'm not telling you it's going to be easy. I'm telling you it's going to be worth it."

But what is a nurse worth to any government?

I have been in A&E as a patient. I spent weeks under the watchful eye of intensive care nurses.

I have huge respect for the men and women who do that job at the coalface.

If the awful events of recent weeks remind us of anything, it is of the vital, often life saving service, nurses provide.

And let's remind ourselves they often have to do the jobs many of us would accept no sum of money for doing.

Who would begrudge a nurse in training a free education? I certainly would not.

But then again I was at university in those halcyon days when girls like me actually got a university education pretty much at no cost to me.

Sky Views is a new series of comment pieces by Paste BN editors and correspondents, published daily at 9am.

Previously on Sky Views: Paul Kelso - Can May afford NOT to give 999 heroes a pay rise?