UKFPO will not score additional or intercalated degrees from 2023

This will discourage students even more from pursuing academic medicine - the clinical academic workforce is ageing and in decline and this will only make it worse.

I personally think it's a major shame that recognition will be lost for this. I wonder what will happen at medical schools where intercalating is presently compulsory? It is after all an extra £9000+ personal costs for people to do an extra year. At core and ST3 level, academic qualifications are already worth only a small amount compared with QI projects and teaching - and as somebody above pointed out, these already count for less and less with time.

Academic jobs are indeed already oversubscribed as there are so few of them, but saying that sort of thing seems to assume that a BSc doesn't add anything unless you go into an academic job. I personally learnt a lot of transferrable knowledge and skills which I still use today; the idea that a year's worth of additional education is worth as much as doing a rubbishy QI project, or indeed worth nothing at all doesn't really sit right for me. I have so many gripes with the application process but at least it has (up until now) attempted to reward people for success in multiple different domains. Why should the academic domain suddenly now be worth nothing? And it puts even more emphasis on the indiscriminatory SJT!

I personally think it's a major shame that recognition will be lost for this. I wonder what will happen at medical schools where intercalating is presently compulsory? It is after all an extra £9000+ personal costs for people to do an extra year. At core and ST3 level, academic qualifications are already worth only a small amount compared with QI projects and teaching - and as somebody above pointed out, these already count for less and less with time.

Academic jobs are indeed already oversubscribed as there are so few of them, but saying that sort of thing seems to assume that a BSc doesn't add anything unless you go into an academic job. I personally learnt a lot of transferrable knowledge and skills which I still use today; the idea that a year's worth of additional education is worth as much as doing a rubbishy QI project, or indeed worth nothing at all doesn't really sit right for me. I have so many gripes with the application process but at least it has (up until now) attempted to reward people for success in multiple different domains. Why should the academic domain suddenly now be worth nothing? And it puts even more emphasis on the indiscriminatory SJT!

Loads of people miss out on intercalation for this reason! I do agree that this is better for widening participation.

Isn't this a bit of a perverse way of thinking? Given student loans are available, so participation is open to everyone. If you DO invest an extra year of time (and loans) in a BSc, you could argue that you'd hope to see some return on it in your career. And if you don't, then you don't, and you've saved the money.

ehhhh? what's perverse about it?

Don't think it's unreasonable that folk don't want more debt on their heads? You can get the return with skills, don't need it for points for FY1/FY2.

Perverse in the sense that you're essentially saying people who put the extra effort in shouldn't get any benefits for that, in order to ensure that people who didn't want to incur the extra costs (despite these costs being in the form of a loan, ie not exclusionary of anyone in particular) are able to benefit exactly the same as those who did, despite not having done the same amount of work.

Perverse in the sense that you're essentially saying people who put the extra effort in shouldn't get any benefits for that, in order to ensure that people who didn't want to incur the extra costs (despite these costs being in the form of a loan, ie not exclusionary of anyone in particular) are able to benefit exactly the same as those who did, despite not having done the same amount of work. I don't think you can really make that argument and say that it's widening participation, I mean you could just as well say it's discouraging people from participating in the opportunities offered by BScs, by removing any recognition of it whatsoever. Now that it adds nothing, there's genuinely no reason to incur the costs of it, and if by your argument people who are less well off originally are more reluctant to add to their loans(?) than others, those people are now even more disincentivised to take the opportunity. It's a bit of a race to the bottom - on the basis of a premise that I don't even entirely agree with (that only wealthy people intercalate - that in my experience is not true!).

This will discourage students even more from pursuing academic medicine - the clinical academic workforce is ageing and in decline and this will only make it worse.

Loads of people miss out on intercalation for this reason! I do agree that this is better for widening participation.

They should scrap the system of ranking you within your individual medical school cohort. If they want to use exam rankings, they should use a national exam.

Do people actually think of it like this?
Yes everyone has to work "junior doctor years" in terms of foundation, but I have found its very varied in terms how long people are junior doctors for. Currently a radiology trainee having come straight from foundation, so essentially only worked 2 years before taking a registrar training post. Most people took atleast 1 f3 year, quite a few took several more and/or partially trained in other specialities.

To medical students: I'm not sure its very useful thinking of it in terms of missing out on consultant/senior GP salaries as tomorrow is guaranteed to noone, perhaps base your decisions on what intercalating actually means to you. (I intercalated so by this logic I have lost out on a year's pay as a consultant radiologist) but perhaps that was one of the things that helped get onto the training path of my choice. I'll never know. Most people I know are in no rush to become a consultant given that that will be the bulk of their career.

Also, the duration of training varies hugely between specialities (e.g 3 years for GP to 8 years for paeds etc) and I wouldn't advocate choosing a speciality solely due to how many years you'll miss out on senior pay...
just my 2 cents! Good luck everyone deciding x

This is what I said on the med students thread. Hopefully it will come with the UKMLA.