Vision says:
Obviously the high attrition rates on Nursing courses are a national problem, not one solely confined to the University of York. Nevertheless, it is worrying that the Health Sciences Department dropout rate dwarfs that of other University departments so much.
Even taking into account the various ways in which Health Sciences courses differ from some other degrees here, such high levels of dissatisfaction surely require further investigation, and some attempt at rectifying the situation.
Justifications like students choosing the wrong career path or being unsuited to the academic system are fair enough, but to say that for all students accepted to complete the course would be inappropriate suggests that some aspect of the system is fundamentally flawed.
When the national benchmark price for each nursing student as of 2011 is £7,843 per year of study, drop out rates as high as 50% result in a huge waste of money, for students, universities and the NHS.
While the situation is obviously unacceptable, Vision are pleased to see that some progress is slowly being made, and attrition rates are already lower than they were at their peak in 2006. Hopefully more work can be done in the future.
Thumbs up to:
Congratulations to all the third years on campus completing their degrees and getting ready to graduate. Especially deserving of accolade will be any finalists who manage to check of everything on the Facebook list by Thursday. Quite frankly, if you can say you’ve managed the “Crate Escape”, done a ladyboy in under 20 seconds and completed “The Holy Trinity” it probably doesn’t matter much what class of degree you get.
Also deserving of praise this week is outgoing Democracy and Services Officer Dan Walker, and everybody else involved in orchestrating what was by all accounts a truly cracking Summer Ball. All the booked acts turned up and put on outstanding performances, with headliners The Subways supported by Dionne Bromfield, Darwin Deez and Nero. All in all a fantastic night was had by all, and the end of the year was seen out in style.
Thumbs down to:
Hang your heads in shame, Halifax hooligans. It wasn’t funny to storm the library last year and it isn’t funny now. Vision are unimpressed with the Halifax football team’s “bantz, lol” World Tour that saw them throwing chairs around the library and egging Derwent students. Make utter fools of yourself if you really want to guys, but in future could you hold off until after our exams are out of the way? Ta.
Thumbs also down to the poor uptake of this year’s hitch to Paris. While the lack of interest in what promised to be an amazing trip is no doubt disappointing for the new RAG committee, it’s undeniably due in no small part to poor organisation; the committee elections didn’t leave enough time to coordinate the trip properly, and the lack of publicity for the trip didn’t leave enough time for people to sign up. Vision really hopes that the new RAG team take something from these mishaps and has great success with all their other hitches abroad.