Nurses in England are now graduating with more student debt than doctors, new RCN analysis reveals, despite far shorter courses, and nurses earning hundreds of thousands of pounds less over their careers.
Ahead of the annual Budget, we’re urging the prime minister and chancellor to correct this injustice by forgiving graduate nurses' student loans. We’re also warning unfair debt is harming recruitment and retention, risking plans for a national care service in England.
Years of underinvestment in the profession have left the NHS and social care facing workforce shortages, putting patient care at risk.
Backing nursing is an investment in both the nation's health and future prosperity.
We’re proposing a scheme where a graduate's debt is forgiven in return for working in social care or the NHS. Under our proposal, 30% of the loan would be written off after three years of service, 70% after seven years and 100% after 10 years of working in either sector. We’re also calling for universal, uplifted maintenance grants that reflect the real cost of living.
In 2017, shortly after being elected Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham told the RCN’s annual conference he opposed the introduction of tuition fees for nursing courses and backed a local loan forgiveness scheme for health care graduates in Greater Manchester.
The prime minister must now act on his convictions and ensure the chancellor addresses the wrongs of the debt system.
RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive Professor Nicola Ranger said forgiving nurses’ student debt is a “golden opportunity to build a generation of new nurses fit for a national care service” and also to bolster numbers in the NHS, where there's a shortage of tens of thousands of registered nurses.
She added: “This isn’t about pitting doctors against nurses but tackling a deep injustice which makes it harder to attract and keep the nurses we desperately need.
“The prime minister knows how unfair things are for nurses, but the challenge now is to act. We cannot leave the vision for a national care service, and the fate of vulnerable people, to the whims of a toxic system of debt which only makes safely staffing our services so much harder.
“The evidence is clear: loan forgiveness will deliver better staffed services, improve care and pay for itself over and over again.”
Freedom of Information requests by the RCN to the Student Loans Company show every nursing cohort in England since 2021 – the first to enter the workforce since the nursing bursary was abolished – has graduated with more debt on average than those on medical degrees.
The most recent graduating cohort of nursing students left university with an average of £50,160 debt, while for medics graduating in the same year, the average debt was £47,774.
Additionally, tuition fees for the final two years of a typical six-year medical degree are funded by NHS bursaries, while a nurse’s three-year course is entirely reliant on Student Finance England.
More than twice the proportion of nursing students come from the most deprived areas compared with medical students, according to further RCN analysis of UCAS data. As a result, many are less able to rely on financial support from family and are forced to take out bigger loans.
Estimates by London Economics suggest implementing loan forgiveness this year would result in an extra 12,015 nurses working in the NHS, with staff staying in their jobs for up to a decade longer. If applied to social care, we think this could have similar benefits.
On 24 November, RCN members will go to the Westminster Parliament to call on politicians to back the next generation of nurses. If you've faced challenges with the cost of training, securing a job after qualification, or seen the impact these issues are having on the profession, join us and share your story directly with your MP in Parliament.
Look out for more information coming soon on how to register your interest in attending our parliamentary lobby.
