Earn-as-you-learn plan for medical students

The new syllabus should help cash-strapped students pay their way and improve their employability.

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Medical schools will offer combined degrees to help students survive and provide them with fallback skills in case their medical careers go tits up, it has emerged.

Vice Chancellor Professor Candid told The Medical Republic: “In the past you graduated from medical school with a medical degree. But a lot of students these days are strapped for cash and are finding it increasingly difficult to support themselves through the course.

“That’s when we hit on the idea of combining the traditional medical degree with paid vocational work-experience.”

Fourth and fifth-year medical students will now be able to combine academic subjects like biochemistry and clinical genetics with a suite of vocational modules including “Barista”, “Waitress”, “Dog walker” and “DJ”.

Emmie, a fourth-year medical student from Sydney, told TMR: “I was finding it really hard to study, pay rent and afford my weekly shop, so the new modules were a godsend. I originally planned to do the lap-dancing module for 15 credits but after speaking with my parents I decided to play it safe and opted for library shelving instead.”

“We think the modules will provide students with much needed industry experience” explained the Professor, “which will improve their interpersonal skills and boost their employability. More importantly, they’ll actually get paid for the work they do, which will help them finance over 3000 hours of clinical placements.”

Ollie, a fifth-year student, said: “Next year I’ll graduate with an MBBSMix, which is a joint honours in medicine, surgery and mixology, the fine art of cocktail making. And if this whole medicine malarkey doesn’t work out at least I’ll have a useful skill to fall back on.”