GU's "dentistry" & "pharmacy" courses : * important for future applicants *
Sorry for the late reply.
rocafella32, understand that I'm not attacking your choice of course.
In fact, I think that it's commendable that you're good enough to have entered a Dental Course.
However, my major gripe is that GU might not be giving dental aspirants a fair headstart. For a vocationally oriented health course like Dentistry, the need for quality clinical experience and exposure, simply cannot be understated. I've not been hearing good things with their cross-subsidisation of other failing faculties & minimalising of dent.sci subjects for cheap generic subjects.
Also, granted it now has a new Medico/Dental building constructed for clinicals, GU still doesn't have the industry connections, clout and support base. How do I know this? Well, I've several friends (non-year 12) doing the course right now at GU because they didn't have the Senior Maths requirement to get into UQ.
Fyi, GU's dental & pharmacy sub-CSP courses are starting a very nasty precedent of shamelessly capitalising on popular courses, by exacting
both Commonwealth support cash and fees from students. Now even CSU and LaTrobe are getting into this scheme by adopting similarly structured Dentistry courses of 3yr csp+2yr fees. Is there a reason why these courses couldn't be made totally CSP or fees-based? Is there a benefit other than enriching the uni by splitting up the course delivery this way for everybody - even the so-called "competitive" applicants? Why's to stop them from making it 2yr CSP & 3yr fees? What's the rationale behind this kind of a course and why are they squeezing *3yrs* worth of specialist clinicals to the last 2 FEEpaying yrs? Don't have to tell you exactly what kind of a dental graduate you're going to get from these kinds of shenanigans.
rocafella32 said:
Bigheadache...youre talking about the fragility of my course because of the cost of the last two years...well from a personal perspective i know FEE-HELP can really help me with that, which makes it basically CSP place again
How is that possible? It's
not CSP- like in terms of $ you will owe because CSP Dentistry costs
$45K but GU's 3+2yr Dent costs
$110K-$120K & a domestic fee place's
$170K.
And if youre saying that the cost of the last two years cheapens the degree, then what do you reckon of all the med and law places being handed out to full fee paying kids...isnt that sorta the same deal???
You see, with the established dent.schs, first, you've got tradition & reputation behind the qualification - for better or worse. With unis like GU, you've zero pedigree & without a doubt everybody knows that you "paid" your way into dental school. Dental school is not medical school...and unfortunately, everyone's still having the opinion that dental students are medical school rejects.
BUT from my perspective im 18, doing Dentistry on the GOLD COAST having the time of my life, and in 5 years or so im prob going to be getting paid quite a lot of money, so i cant really see anything wrong there...can you????
...that's if you get hired over someone from a more established dental school. Selling that might be a tough one, especially if your employer's from one. Needless to say, talking from experience, old boy networks still count for a lot in prestige professions. GU Dental Sch is a huge wildcard given that they're still fumbling about with the course contents & can't tell if they're coming or going. But they're always trying too hard to prove something.
Like, I must say that the course organisation in GU is terrible - you guys had
3 exams back-to-back on a weekend recently, hadn't you? A lot of failures. Even my buddies - straight HD students in a previous course were struggling with inane amount of studies & ridiculous milestones - all in the first semester at that! I hear that they've been cutting costs too by mixing & pawning off all the health-sci students (pharm,dent, physio, etc) to the environmental/life sci dept. Seems they're forcing students to do a whole horde of generic science subjects irrespective of their disciplines not because of "building foundation" but to cross-subsidise financially failing depts due to enrolment drops there in 2006-07.