A cross-disciplinary assessment of student loans debt, financial support for study and career preferences upon graduation
Craig S Webster, Christopher Ling, Mark Barrow, Phillippa Poole, Marcus Henning
We explored relationships between student loans debt, financial support and career preferences upon graduation in 2,405 students across all healthcare disciplines offered at the Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland. Students in health sciences, nursing and pharmacy typically accrue levels of student loans debt of around $15,000 to $29,999, while optometry students accrue debt around $15,000 higher. Medical students show debt distributed around both ends of the scale at $0 and $90,000 or more. All students typically access three sources of financial support during study. Career preferences at graduation were found to reduce to four categories for all health disciplines, and five significant effects were found, involving students in health sciences, medicine and pharmacy, relating the number of sources of financial support to a category of career preference. No significant effects were found related to level of student loans debt. Our results suggest that financial support is a more strongly determining factor in career choices than the level of student loans debt.