While most of you work with patients/clients my client base are our student nurses.
Prior to working for EIT I worked for another academic institution. They had an open entry type of enrollment - we (my colleagues and I) saw it as "bums on seats" policy. They did not interview potential students for the nursing degree it was basically first in first served. Sounds pretty cool but it was really a bit of a nightmare. We had students that could barely string words together to make a sentences trying to complete a degree level course. We had many discussions about whether it was morally right to accept people on to a course if they didn't have the academic ability to complete the course. We were taking huge amounts of money off students for fees and then setting them up to fail.
But the powers that be said "everyone has a right to have a go" - yes I do agree with that but they should also be directed in to the right level of study. One example is a student that was failing all papers she was eventually counselled off the course the next time we saw her was a couple of years later and she was graduating with level one numeracy and literacy!!
Hi Shelagh
ReplyDeleteYes having worked in nursing education for a wee while there are ethical issues re open entry, especially into a degree programme. I think if anyone can enter, there needs to be a lot of support in place for students to learn how to write etc. The difficulty is students have to learn how to study and cope with academic work on top of the content of the courses.
Fortunately at EIT we have always had the usual tertiary entry requirements. We also have a 6 month Certificate programme for those who need to upskills before they enter the programme.
Thanks for raising this issue
Ruth
A student who was in Pre Health with me struggled through it we managed to work together with him and get him to pass, but during the first year of the degree programme he was always behind, stressed and didn't understand or get papers in on time. It was awful to see too, as he was paying such a lot of money to attend the course and also he was not supported often with his learning. However we were all too caught up trying to do our own learning/ assignments that there is only so much you can do. I think you are right though that it becomes a real dilemma. In the end he scraped through year 1 but failed too many courses and placements in year 2 to continue. But left instead with a very large student loan. I always felt as though it should not have gone on so long as it wasn't fair. When I was in year 3 I saw him again repeating year 1 and I really wondered then how that was going to be different as he was still struggling! So its a very interesting discussion Shelagh you have raised.
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