BP 'cannot find skilled workers'

CLAPTON

ultrawomble wrote: »

As I said above, medicine always takes the brightest and most able students. These numbers don't change.

this is rubbish; there are many many excellent people with excellent qualifications who are refused colleges places. They number of places have been deliberately restricted to limit the supply since the formationof the NHS.


one of the things that one can praise about Labour was they increased the number of places in medical training although it takes a long time to freed through into more consultants

olly300

GingerSte wrote: »

I would also mention that Loughton Monkey's experience with ICI and the like doesn't surprise me. Engineers are seen as a resource, like most people. We are there to get hired and fired as companies see fit to balance the books. This instability is never good for recruiting and retaining good engineers, as they will leave for greener pastures. While I realise that this is true for almost all professions, it doesn't seem to be true for the management. In fact it sometimes seems to me that companies are run for the sole benefit of the management!

Being in IT I work with many engineers. When I ask many of them why they left engineering they all reply "more money".

Other engineers I went to university with, while some of them were on courses sponsored by industry, have virtually all gone into other professions. A few of them change careers as soon as the company they ended up in after graduation announced they were going to make people redundant.

GingerSte wrote: »

EDITED TO ADD: I don't think lower course fees for engineering courses would be a solution (though I'm not sure what is). As an employer / university, would you rather have someone who specifically chose that subject because they wanted to do it, or chose it because it was cheaper than the other courses?

You would get capable people choosing it because it's a good degree that would allow them easy entry into other careers that pay more money.

olly300

CLAPTON wrote: »

one of the things that one can praise about Labour was they increased the number of places in medical training although it takes a long time to freed through into more consultants

Unfortunately Labour didn't increase the number of training places so when they graduated some of them couldn't get training places so went aboard.

Even when the training place numbers where increased it was soon realised that many of them would never be able to become Consultants or Partners in GPs practices due to the higher number of them.

I've had to listen to all this from my doctor friends and family, who were having graduates and junior doctors moaning at them.

ultrawomble

CLAPTON wrote: »

this is rubbish; there are many many excellent people with excellent qualifications who are refused colleges places.

Did I say anything about qualifications? No. I said brightest and most able. Medicine is a both a vocation and a profession. 10 A-levels at grade A does not mean a good doctor.

ultrawomble

olly300 wrote: »

Unfortunately Labour didn't increase the number of training places so when they graduated some of them couldn't get training places so went aboard.

There was actually a surfeit of places but they have to compete with non-UK students:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/oct/19/medical-students-training

geoffky

The middle east swallows up a lot of the people bp are after..plus the wages are a lot better.my mate has just gone out on a 3yr married man agreement as a health and safety inspector at a rate of 160k a year..

CLAPTON

ultrawomble wrote: »

Did I say anything about qualifications? No. I said brightest and most able. Medicine is a both a vocation and a profession. 10 A-levels at grade A does not mean a good doctor.

there is no shortgage of able candidates capable of becoming exellent doctors

depending upon how you define 'brightest and most able' then the number will depend upon the definition
as any able and bright person will work out for themselves

Loughton_Monkey

Pennywise wrote: »

But even if that is the case, why? Why should there be limited entrants into any profession? Surely all that does is reduce competition and keeps the poor and mediocre staff in work when they really deserve to be kicked out, as would happen in any other profession. If that's happening, it sounds like protectionism to me and I thought that kind of thing was frowned upon.

There is a natural tendency in all professions to 'raise the goalposts' from time to time. It can easily be sold as 'increased professionalism' and 'good for the consumer' when behind the scenes the motives can be rather more sinister. They want to keep the numbers small and 'elite' so that rarity alone will keep the price up.

This is a very fine line. None of us wants our heart bypass performed by a lad with only a Biology GCSE and nor do we want out house conveyancing performed by last week's employee of the week at Tesco.

But we should always keep our eye open for those professions who are 'too' skilfull in raising their own barriers....

ultrawomble

CLAPTON wrote: »

there is no shortgage of able candidates capable of becoming exellent doctors

No doubt. But to argue that there's been some conspiracy involving the universities/GMC/governments-of-any-political-persuasion since the formation of the NHS to limit the numbers of UK trained doctors seems frankly ludicrous. I'd love to see some evidence.

olly300

ultrawomble wrote: »

No doubt. But to argue that there's been some conspiracy involving the universities/GMC/governments-of-any-political-persuasion since the formation of the NHS to limit the numbers of UK trained doctors seems frankly ludicrous. I'd love to see some evidence.

Oddly Clapton never argued that.

It was Pennywise who questioned it.

I was told years ago by someone in the profession that certain sectors of their own profession and the government want to limit the number of UK trained doctors however this was mainly due to the cost of training doctors.