The University is considering replacing the Medical and Veterinary Science Tripos (MVST) with separate degrees in Medical Science and Veterinary Science, according to minutes from meetings of the Senior Tutors’ Committee.

The proposal was raised in a meeting of the committee’s Standing Committee on Education on the 14th of October. The Standing Committee approved the principle that the tripos should be split but noted that the change would create “difficulties of resource” for the Faculty of Biology which would need to be resolved, though it did conclude that “issues of resource should not be the driving factor in putting the proposals forward.”

Speaking to Varsity, Dr David Bainbridge, the Admissions Subject Convenor in Veterinary Medicine at the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience, explained the reasoning for the change: “The possibility of splitting the MVST has been around for some time, but we felt that there were now compelling reasons to go for the change – based on all stages of the educational process – recruitment, admissions, teaching, assessment and validation by external professional bodies.

“This change will allow us to focus on the vet course for its own sake – promoting it as students' chance to study a very practically-focused Vet Medicine course at the world's best science university, and benefit fully from the general biomedical educational experience available here.

“It's important to us that vet students retain access to a range of third year BA courses, so they will still be co-taught with medics and natural scientists much of the time, but there will be less need to consider ‘parity’ between the medic and vet cohorts when planning courses.

“Also, admissions and assessment practices can now usefully diverge over time. For example, with the split, we can start using the new Natural Sciences Admissions Assessment for vet applicants instead of the Biomedical Admissions Tests (BMAT) - a clear indication that being good at science/maths subjects is the key to gaining a place on our course.”

In response to a query about the “difficulties of resource” which were alluded to in relation to the Faculty of Biology, he explained: “The Faculty's concerns related mainly to increased administrative load - the one-off work involved in restructuring the Faculty's website, and the recurrent work related to running two sets of Tripos exams where only one existed in the past.”

He added: “Now we feel these concerns have been addressed, it seems very likely this change will go ahead.”

The Standing Committee additionally endorsed the idea that the entry requirement for the new Veterinary Science Tripos should be A*AA, one grade below the current A*A*A requirement for MVST.

It is possible that this is intended to halt the decline in veterinary applications to Cambridge: in 2016, the University admitted 25 per cent fewer vets than it had planned for. The Department of Veterinary Medicine did not respond to Varsity’s request for comment on this issue.

On the 28th of October, the recommendations of the Standing Committee were endorsed by the entire Senior Tutors’ Committee, which agreed to refer its decision to the General Board of Education. It was noted in Standing Committee minutes that the General Board is thought to be in favour of the change.