Do police and nurse recruits need degrees?

HOME Secretary Priti Patel wants graduate-only police recruits. Does she want a ‘police force’ or a ‘woke force’? A university degree may teach many things but ‘nous’ and ‘common sense’ definitely aren’t on the curriculum.

J. WALMSLEY, Bury, Gtr Manchester.

I AM an ex-metropolitan Police officer who retired in 2007. Insisting on a university degree entrance requirement for recruits is complete nonsense. The composition of police personnel is supposed to reflect the public they serve, not some elite intellectual club.

Name and address supplied.

FURTHER to Richard Littlejohn’s article last week about graduates in policing (which also relates to nurses) and the story about failing maternity services, my husband trained as an RMN, then SRN in the 1960s.

Training was a mix of school blocks and ‘hands-on’ work in wards. This produced dedicated, knowledgeable and practical nurses. If you then wanted to be a midwife, this was a specialism that you were seconded into and trained for, after your full nurse training.

Why did this change? I only recently learnt that midwives now qualify, via degree, purely as midwives — no nursing qualification necessary. Is there maybe a link here to failing maternity services? Also, a graduate might deem themself to be ‘above’ basic nursing care because they have a degree, albeit including practical placements. Lots of potentially excellent nurses must be deterred by having to study for a degree. This belief in a degree being necessary is not always good progress, as well as the burden of debt it brings. Maybe our new Health Secretary can shake things up for the better.

B. W., Morecambe, Lancs.