Survey of medical student funding
Our 2025 survey of medical student finance has found that inadequate funding in causing real financial hardship. 90% of students told us the funding they receive doesn’t cover their day-to-day costs. And this is jeopardising their studies, with almost half of those who responded to the survey telling us they’ve considered leaving their courses and quitting medicine. We’re calling on the Government to step up and ensure better financial support for students through all their years of study.
About our campaign
2025 survey highlights the worrying impact of unfair funding
The results from the 2025 survey of medical student finances are troubling. In the last survey, conducted in 2022, 44% of medical students reported running out of money during the academic year. Just three years later 92% of survey respondees told us their funding doesn’t cover basic livings costs.
Real hardship is caused by the massive drop in funding that both undergraduate and graduate students experience when they stop receiving full Student Finance maintenance funding and transition into NHS bursary funded years.
Our 2025 survey showed that this drop leaves the average student £3,674 worse off in these years, higher than our initial analysis of £2,766. This means that medical students are struggling financially:
- More than 60% of students reported spending less on essentials and over half of students reported having to use their overdraft to pay for basic purchases.
- 85% of students feel their financial situation is detrimental to their overall educational attainment.
- Over 43% of students have considered leaving the course due to financial pressures.
- Almost two thirds of students are more likely to move and work abroad where pay is higher.
- Students who received free school meals in primary school are far more likely to report that their financial situation is detrimental to their academic attainment at medical school.
Campaign to fix our funding
We are campaigning for medical students to retain their entitlement to full student finance maintenance funding through all their years of study. This would cost the treasury £24 million – this is just 0.12% of Student Finance England’s annual lendings.
In Wales, where students are able to receive a full maintenance loan throughout their NHS Bursary years, the majority of students report being able to cover living costs with their combined loans.
What you can do
Share our campaign
Download and share campaign images and messaging on your Instagram, using the tag #FixOurFunding.
Join our day of action
There will be a major day of action in London on the afternoon of 19 March, plus many additional events, linked to local medical schools, across England on the same day. Let us know if you’re planning to join us and be part of the campaign to stop the drop. Sign up now.
Strengthen our numbers
Urge fellow medical students to join the BMA.
What your medical student committee is doing
Lobbying
The Committee has written multiple times to Ministers in both the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care outlining how disadvantaged medical students are by the existing rules governing student finance and calling for a joint meeting to discuss our proposals.
We have also continued to engage with the NHS Business Services Authority and Student Finance England to familiarise them with our asks, and to work to streamline existing processes.
To take our campaign to the next level, we need your help to make sure our voices are heard. Our campaign must be loud and demand the attention of the government so we can create the change we need to fix our funding.
Read our medical student finance guide
Why is the situation worse in England?
There are big disparities in medical student funding across all four nations (England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) and the funding is highly fragmented. English domiciled medical students studying an undergraduate course in England are eligible for the lowest funding of any UK nation.
In England, this is most notably due to the reduction in funding provided by Student Finance from year 5 onwards for undergraduate-entry and from year 2 onwards for graduate-entry, when students become eligible for the NHS Bursary. This results in an overall drop of £3,979 of available financial support in these years. This is visualised below.
Figure 1 – Graph showing total maintenance funding available to English domiciled students eligible for full maintenance loans over the course of a 5-year undergraduate medicine degree.
Figure 2 – Graph showing total maintenance funding available to English domiciled students eligible for full maintenance loans over the course of a 4-year undergraduate medicine degree.
During NHS-bursary-funded-years, English medical students entitled to the highest rate maintenance loan receive 57.7% less funding than Welsh students receive.
English domiciled medical students receive £24,782 less funding towards living costs during a 6-year undergraduate (including intercalated year) than Welsh domiciled students, as they are entitled to full student finance provision.
