Open Letter to Support Cambridge Vet School

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piebaldproblems

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Seems a weird decision. I know unis are really, really struggling for money but Oxford and Cambridge are loaded! My uni sacked half our lecturers, including our star lecturer who had just been given an OBE for her work. I was furious but there's not a lot you can do about it as a student. If I was a vet student at Cambridge I'd be beyond furious. This is a whole different league.
 
Much smaller classes than elsewhere - so it must cost them ££ to run and they are surrounded by very good alternative referral options for cases, except for large animal as we don’t really have much about - friend is in year 6, large in the vet school has mostly consisted of pet goats, and a reindeer 😅.
 
Bristol split the commercial clinics/laboratory side from the school for financial reasons while I was there and they have since quit equine too.

Yes the colleges have ££ but I wonder if they are also struggling to actually get enough practice to train students with 🤷‍♀️
 
Oh dear probably lost a lot of international students following Brexit like many other universities, Cambridge also won’t be cheap to run as the staff will be nightly experienced with strong research backgrounds and cost substantially more than other universities (I work for a university myself so am all too aware of the issues facing them). No universities are immune sadly and I expect the vet schools running costs are a LOT higher than other courses given the equipment, research costs, maintenance etc.

From memory the vet school campus is on the edge of Cambridge and the cynic in me wonders if they’ve had offers for the land?? If the uni needs cash they may be selling bits of the campus off to raise funds for the rest of the university!!
 
Look forward to seeing eventyvet's post on the matter.

Even the richest universities are businesses - google tells me an average year is only 70 students, that seems small/not worth the costs of running such an intensive course.
 
70 students is over £650k a year in student fees, does the university see 100% of that income? What would the running costs be of the unit?
 
HopOnTrot said:
70 students is over £650k a year in student fees, does the university see 100% of that income? What would the running costs be of the unit?
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I'd be surprised if £650k covered the staffing costs of the department, let alone anything else.
 
Anyone else remember the TV programme Vet School back in the 90s?? I think it was filmed in Liverpool? Loved that!!!
 
HopOnTrot said:
70 students is over £650k a year in student fees, does the university see 100% of that income? What would the running costs be of the unit?
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70 students x 6 as every year has 70 students doesn't it? Students pay fees of 9.5k give or take, so that's an income of over £4000000 if that's right
 
I'm Dun said:
70 students x 6 as every year has 70 students doesn't it? Students pay fees of 9.5k give or take, so that's an income of over £4000000 if that's right
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Student fees for home students doesn't cover the cost of running the course. Every student is taught at a loss to the university. Vet tuition actually costs more - more lecturers, costly facilities and equipment and so on. That's why it's so important that British universities attract international students and this has been in decline since shortly before 2016, when Nationalism reared its ugly head and it went off a cliff after Brexit. The course itself still tends to attract white middle class English females (I can't speak for every university, but we get a lot more female than male applicants, now). I don't work in the vet school now as of a year ago, but when I did there were less than a handful of international students across all 5 cohorts of roughly 600 students. We operate a devolved model, where the practical elements mostly take place with clinical partners, which reduces overheads, plus we also have a strong innovation set up, which generates income. Cambridge still clings to the outdated natural sciences model, which is strong on theory, but I certainly wouldn't choose it as a school. I considered Cambridge for Medicine way back in the day, and didn't like their model for that. Too theoretical and crammed in to a condensed term. Blatantly marketed at smart students, not great for producing either doctors or vets!

As Ester says, they have been pulled up in their RCVS accreditation, failing to meet a two thirds of the standards (there are 77). They are over £1m in debt (just the vet course, not the Uni - that's about £50m!). It's not looking good. The mud has been slung since the conditional accreditation (it's being reviewed again in the autumn) and this speculation is going to seriously affect applications.

Edited the correct spelling of Ester. Soz! I hate it when people mis-spell my name!
 
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Interesting what you say about Cambridge medical students, having worked with a lot of them in their training and also post qualification I totally agree and would NOT choose to do Medicine at Cambridge!!

Its a shame that these 'red brick' Universities do not change with the times, I run a health course at another university and we are always changing how we run it to keep up! It seems the name keeps people coming.

Its a shame to lose any course, particularly a veterinary one but it sounds like its fate is sealed to be honest, sorry OP!
 
Fransurrey thanks for the details on the accreditation point, I knew there were issues but wasn’t sure how it worked.
 
Bobthecob15 said:
Interesting what you say about Cambridge medical students, having worked with a lot of them in their training and also post qualification I totally agree and would NOT choose to do Medicine at Cambridge!!

Its a shame that these 'red brick' Universities do not change with the times, I run a health course at another university and we are always changing how we run it to keep up! It seems the name keeps people coming.

Its a shame to lose any course, particularly a veterinary one but it sounds like its fate is sealed to be honest, sorry OP!
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Just a minor point - Cambridge isn’t a redbrick university. It’s too old to be one, and errr not red either. Did you mean the Russel Group?
 
ester said:
Fransurrey thanks for the details on the accreditation point, I knew there were issues but wasn’t sure how it worked.
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They will only have this grace period to put it right, I think. I only know all about it due to my vet contacts and I still have my Vet Times login! I don't think this situation has arisen before for any vet school, so all eyes are on this!
 
Fransurrey said:
They will only have this grace period to put it right, I think. I only know all about it due to my vet contacts and I still have my Vet Times login! I don't think this situation has arisen before for any vet school, so all eyes are on this!
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I think they were assessed a few weeks/months ago by ECVS and met the standards, would this be in relation to the failure to meet the RCVS accreditation standards?
 
Fransurrey said:
Student fees for home students doesn't cover the cost of running the course. Every student is taught at a loss to the university. Vet tuition actually costs more - more lecturers, costly facilities and equipment and so on. That's why it's so important that British universities attract international students and this has been in decline since shortly before 2016, when Nationalism reared its ugly head and it went off a cliff after Brexit. The course itself still tends to attract white middle class English females (I can't speak for every university, but we get a lot more female than male applicants, now). I don't work in the vet school now as of a year ago, but when I did there were less than a handful of international students across all 5 cohorts of roughly 600 students. We operate a devolved model, where the practical elements mostly take place with clinical partners, which reduces overheads, plus we also have a strong innovation set up, which generates income. Cambridge still clings to the outdated natural sciences model, which is strong on theory, but I certainly wouldn't choose it as a school. I considered Cambridge for Medicine way back in the day, and didn't like their model for that. Too theoretical and crammed in to a condensed term. Blatantly marketed at smart students, not great for producing either doctors or vets!

As Ester says, they have been pulled up in their RCVS accreditation, failing to meet a two thirds of the standards (there are 77). They are over £1m in debt (just the vet course, not the Uni - that's about £50m!). It's not looking good. The mud has been slung since the conditional accreditation (it's being reviewed again in the autumn) and this speculation is going to seriously affect applications.

Edited the correct spelling of Ester. Soz! I hate it when people mis-spell my name!
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Accreditation aside, how is 4 to 5 millions pounds, plus whatever income they have coming in not enough to run a course where the practical stuff is outsourced? It seems crazy to me that they cant make it work financially.
 
I'm Dun said:
Accreditation aside, how is 4 to 5 millions pounds, plus whatever income they have coming in not enough to run a course where the practical stuff is outsourced? It seems crazy to me that they cant make it work financially.
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Without accreditation they have no course anyway. They will be paying the external partners some amount to have the students too, they don’t do it for free. The costs of these courses are eye watering and the loss of international students will be considerable
 
Bobthecob15 said:
Without accreditation they have no course anyway. They will be paying the external partners some amount to have the students too, they don’t do it for free. The costs of these courses are eye watering and the loss of international students will be considerable
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Technically they can still run the course, but the students have to pass an additional exam with the RCVS to get the MRCVS accreditation. It's similar (if not the same, I can't remember) to the exam taken by foreign nationals whose institution is not recognised as RCVS accredited. The UK has agreements with some countries e.g. Australia that their vets are recognised, but most of Asia and Africa are not, for example.

All courses are vulnerable to the downturn in overseas students. From memory (we had presentations on this during all the restructuring that was necessary as a result!) it costs an average of £17,000 to educate a student per year. The example below is £25,000 for a lab-based course.

wonkhe.com

How much does teaching cost?

In wider conversations about university funding cost, price, and value are often used interchangeably. Alex Wilshaw tries to disentangle the cost of delivering higher education
wonkhe.com wonkhe.com
 
BBP said:
I think they were assessed a few weeks/months ago by ECVS and met the standards, would this be in relation to the failure to meet the RCVS accreditation standards?
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ECVS is more of a CPD accreditation for specialists, not for the undergrad programme. You might be confusing it with EAEVS (European Association of Establishments for Veterinary Education), which is the next step of accreditation above RCVS and allows our surgeons to practise anywhere in EU member states (and associates) without additional training/examination. I know this because Surrey has only recently gone through the process (and passed)!
 
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