The last three years has seen two new UK vet schools open their doors to students, namely Harper & Keele in Staffordshire, England and Aberystwyth University in Wales. Now the University of Central Lancashire is set to become the UK’s 11th veterinary school when it opens its doors to vet students in September this year. So just why are there so many UK vet schools opening up? As a veterinary graduate myself, I have a few theories.

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Which vet schools are currently open in the UK?

The vet schools in the UK currently open to students are:

  • Bristol Vet School
  • Cambridge Vet School
  • Edinburgh Vet School
  • Glasgow Vet School
  • The Royal Veterinary College (London)
  • Liverpool Vet School
  • Nottingham Vet School – opened to students 2006
  • Surrey Vet School – opened to students 2014
  • Harper and Keele Vet School (Staffordshire) – opened to students 2020
  • Aberystwyth Vet School – opened to students 2021

At the time of writing this piece, Aberystwyth and Harper & Keele are yet to be accredited by The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS). Students must have completed an RCVS accredited course in order to practice veterinary medicine in the UK. This may seem concerning, but it’s likely that the course will be accredited once the first cohort of students have graduated. If this is not the case, the graduates should be able to sit an exam to gain eligibility to practice veterinary medicine. 

Why are there so many new vet schools?

So just why are there so many new vet schools? Well I think there could be several reasons for the sudden jump in the number of vet schools in recent years.

Vet schools are big business

I think one of the biggest reasons that more vet schools are opening up in the UK is because they must bring in lots of business for the universities who open them. But I am very willing to be proven wrong on this! 

You may be asking yourself exactly how vet schools bring in lots of business. They are expensive to establish and run. They require a large number of highly skilled and qualified staff with experience teaching across the veterinary curriculum including both the pre-clinical and clinical stages and across all animal groups including farm, equine and small animal. And they also require expensive teaching equipment to teach students both theory and hands-on techniques.

Well, veterinary medicine is a long course to study; it usually takes 5-6 years depending on whether students take a gateway course or any extra years. Students will be paying large tuition fees of roughly £9000 a year, and even more for international students (around £40,000 per year). This will be lower for Scottish students attending one of the Scottish universities. But on average, this means that UK students are paying roughly £45,000 for the full degree. 

That’s a lot of money coming in and, as I previously mentioned, international students bring in even more. A degree in veterinary medicine is highly attractive to potential students, in fact, it’s extremely competitive to get a place at a UK vet school. So these courses will never be undersubscribed. 

Veterinary medicine is also highly attractive to the media. Think of how popular programmes like SuperVet and The Yorkshire Vet are now. The media love an opportunity to showcase good news stories about cute animals. The more attention brought to a university the better. It will attract more students to other courses and potentially more funding.  

More pets = need more vets

Another potential reason is because of the increase in pets requiring veterinary treatment. There has been a spike in pet ownership in recent years with the Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association reporting that 3.2 million households in the UK acquired a pet in the first year of the pandemic. 

But more pets means that we need more vets, it’s as simple as that. The spike in pet ownership resulted in an increase in pets requiring both routine veterinary care such as vaccinations, and non-routine care such as treatment for injuries and illness. 

Veterinary practices have struggled to keep up with this new influx and even today the veterinary industry is still struggling to keep pace. The high dropout rates of vets from clinical practice, which I’ll cover next, has only made this worse. 

All of this means an increasing demand for veterinary graduates. Upon graduation they are usually swamped with offers from vet practices around the country who require more staff. So perhaps seeing how employable veterinary graduates are, and that there is a need for more vets, has been motivation for universities to open new vet schools. 

Where have all the vets gone? – The high veterinary dropout rate

Another potential reason is to replace the large number of vets who have dropped out of clinical practice. Veterinary medicine is a stressful job. Vets work long hours and this will often include significant overtime, for which they are rarely compensated – it’s not easy to clock off when you are caring for a sick animal!

Commonly, vets must also deal with angry or frustrated members of the general public who aren’t used to the high cost of healthcare. Many (myself included) become disillusioned with the job and they find a career elsewhere. This has left a significant number of vet practices understaffed and struggling to cope. It’s a vicious cycle, vets leaving puts strain on the staff remaining who may subsequently consider leaving themselves. 

The new influx of vet schools could be an attempt to remedy this by increasing the number of veterinary graduates year on year so that eventually we get to the point where practices are not understaffed. But this is only a small part of the solution – we need to stop vets from leaving the profession in the first place. 

So how do we do this? Well the reason for the high dropout rate is an extremely complex problem and I don’t feel qualified to propose solutions. There could be a number of factors that require change, including improvement of veterinary working conditions and maybe even a re-consideration of veterinary school entry requirements. 

Conclusion

This piece covers my opinion on why there are so many new vet schools in the UK. There could be other reasons – if you can think of any I welcome your comments below! Although I maintain a pessimistic point of view on whether the new vet schools will be effective in increasing the number of vets working in UK practice in the long term, I don’t think the new vet schools are a bad thing. I loved my time at vet school and I am pleased that many more students will get to have the same experience. 

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