Please accept my apologies if I am misinterpreting your original submission Mark but I feel you were treading carefully so as not to offend, when really you had serious concerns about podiatry education in general. Maybe it is time to get to grips with the fact that education is the most important component of the podiatry profession whether at U/G, P/G or continuing education short course level. Unfortunately it appears as though the professional councils who should influence education may in reality leave much of the decision making to the academic staff in the various universities. For years I have requested( in Australia) that the profession initiate an external accreditation body to become involved in the accreditation of any new course and to review existing courses when appropriate to do so. We have now got such a body, but as there is a considerable cost in having a course accredited only one course to my knowledge has undergone the process. The high cost of accrediting the course , which the university has to pay, defeats the object of the exercise as the Universities are quite happy to accredit the courses themselves and ignore the external group who in reality may make recommendations the university would rather not here.
Historically the podiatry curriculum in each podiatry program has been developed by the podiatry staff within the guidelines for academic programs in each university. This is why some courses have a strong science, medical core and others may have a stronger  emphasis on behavioral sciences. One university may support a four year program while another refuses to do so. This is why I say it is well beyond the time whereby the profession in collaboration with university staff, decide what constitutes an U/G podiatry program which will best prepare graduates for contemporary podiatry practice and provide a pathway to P/G studies through research programs. While the professional bodies may not be able to influence the universities to include all that is desired, at least it demonstrates that a professional body and the State authorities who register the graduates are working as one to produce both  the best program and graduate possible.
Currently in Australia and it may be the same in the UK, entry to podiatry programs differ in terms of academic qualification and I seriously doubt that any two courses offer anything like similar programs. If entry to courses and course content differ significantly, how can we say the graduates are equally capable of contemporary podiatry practice? If we do accept this scenario then maybe we should be accepting the fact that we are educating and producing some graduates who are capable of working at a level which is beyond that of current practice. Could this be why the attrition rate from the profession is high and more of our graduates are using the course for entry to medicine? As an example we have our students study 3 hours per week for a full semester in pharmacology which is taught at a very high level, with no outlet for using drugs other than those a member of the public can buy in a pharmacy.  
Until we as a profession are willing to sit down with the people who have made a career in education, and discussed where we were, where we are and where we hope to go WITH THE PROFESSION beside us, we will have these discussions for the next foreseeable future. Lets not get too precious, lets just discuss education as people discuss biomechanics, warts and all, because we can always buy some wart off in the pharmacy!!.
Thanks Mark for generating the discussion, feel free to take the gloves off. Cheers Alan   

-----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was distributed by the Podiatry JISCmail list server

All opinions and assertions contained in this message are those of
the original author. The listowner(s) and the JISCmail service take
no responsibility for the content.

to leave the Podiatry email list send a message containing the text
leave podiatry
to [log in to unmask]

Please visit http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk for any further information
-----------------------------------------------------------------