This paper recognises the complexities of the current political, professional and economic agendas. Its chief concern is to maintain the quality of student learning while ensuring the development of competent practitioners and as such, while accepting the government and professional strategies, we suggest that students should exit the programme after less than three years if they achieve competency. In the words of former RCN assistant director of nurse education Sally Thomson (Alderman and Knight 1999): 'Quality is a better measure than quantity.' The profession has chosen to go down a competency based route; the amount of time taken, therefore, should become less significant. The approach suggested by the authors would maximise the number of students achieving registration without compromising standards or intensifying the existing stressors of registered staff. It should also ease the financial burden on many students and save public money, such as the 24 weeks of bursary for each student, and should increase the number of graduates as students are helped financially to complete the programme's degree component. Failure to consider this proposal seriously, we believe, might result in more students, less supervision, poorer quality placements, worse learning and less competence.