Uni Fees

[Panjy]

The thing that annoys me most about it is that it plays into the hands of the rich. Will £9k a year fees put Mr Cameron and his cronies off sending their kids to uni - no i don\'t think so. And you can guarentee his kids won\'t be having to take out £5k a year in student loans to pay for their living costs either.
Will £9k a year fees + £5k a year student loans put off kids from poorer backgrounds - of course it will.
 
Same old tory story - look after their own

[TRex]

Bobbit - Your first post on the subject was bang on... :Thumbs-up

[jetpilot]

The thing that annoys me most about it is that it plays into the hands of the rich. Will £9k a year fees put Mr Cameron and his cronies off sending their kids to uni - no i don\'t think so. And you can guarentee his kids won\'t be having to take out £5k a year in student loans to pay for their living costs either.
Will £9k a year fees + £5k a year student loans put off kids from poorer backgrounds - of course it will.
 
Same old tory story - look after their own

Maybe this is the exact point, it will most likely put people off, not necessarily the poor, but the ones who decide that whatever total costs they have at the end dont stack up to their potential earnings from gaining a degree in say "floristry".  So isnt that a good thing, cuts are being made in spending unilaterally so why should students have an easy ride??

It does seem there is a common theme within these posts that there is objection to some student lifestyles and i am still 100% sure the kids that know they have the opportunity to earn considerable amounts of money will still do those degrees be they rich or poor! As i said in my first post, if someone gave me the tools to earn for example £50k a year for life for an investment of £27k only payable when i actually start earning that money i would be all over it.

It would be very interesting to see the exact amounts repayable as you earn!

[jinx]

...confusing education with career development. They are not the same thing.

What we are looking at is not radical change; it is book-keeping. What\'s happening now won\'t even deliver a better class of sausage machine. Excellence is elitist because we aren\'t all the same but if the UK wants an education system to provide the next generation of professionals, academics and thinkers it has to stop thinking short term.  

And for the \'get realists\' who think personal debt mountains will deliver better education...
Strip professional / vocational training courses currently masquerading as degrees out of the university system. The sort of stuff Jit referred to - geared to a given profession or industry.
Decommission universities that were once top class technical colleges or polytechnics and recreate those parallel tiers to offer the industry or job focused courses, making the qualifications from these transportable into academic post-graduate courses at Universities (capital U).

Create, develop and promote \'apprenticeship\' schemes that train people FOR work - AT work.  The scheme would apply to white collar/professional jobs as well as crafts/trades. Find a new word to describe the scheme so that people get the \'boiler suit\' image out of their mind.  

Use an element of corporation tax as well as graduate/income tax to cross fund some kinds of training schemes while providing tax breaks for businesses running entry level training schemes to school/college leavers either in-house or contracted out to colleges.

Undertake a complete review of education from Kindergarten upwards and restructure it as one, integrated, system. As there is only ONE budget, stop fragmenting it with illusory choice
Re-educate the educators and be clear about their roles and responsibilities.
Stop trying to run education like a business, measuring the performance of the system with a crude ROI index with the national, political and public gaze rooted to next year\'s bottom line. Sometimes obtaining best value means rebuilding from the ground floor.

That is a start and a bit more than fiddling the books to shuffle off an expensive responsibility. A university degree should NOT be thought of as the modern equivalent of basic literacy. We have to adjust our national perspective on education because while employers continue to promote the idea that a \'degree\' is essential to get a decent job, a generation who are stuck between that rock and a £18-27K hard place - believe they are being shafted. I think they are probably right.  

The \'pull the ladder up\' attitude is not useful or constructive and about as  meaningful as damning all students as work-shy drunkards - that is a description of ALL youth.  How you determine the employment or educational status of a mob - be they in London, a university town or even the seaside - is a completely other problem. Obviously the present system is broken...it  produces students who do not understand that swinging off war memorials, vandalising statues or bashing up a royal Rolls Royce are not good ways to gather public sympathy.  On the other hand we allegedly now have a police force who think a wheelchair user at a demonstration is fair game and who, the media would have us believe, can\'t communicate with one another - never mind the rest of us. Don\'t panic though... they have a fast-track graduate programme. :2Confused

[Panjy]

Maybe this is the exact point, it will most likely put people off, not necessarily the poor, but the ones who decide that whatever total costs they have at the end dont stack up to their potential earnings from gaining a degree in say "floristry". So isnt that a good thing, cuts are being made in spending unilaterally so why should students have an easy ride??
 

What makes you think a kid with parents who earn 100k + will have to even consider the financial implications? The rich will continue to go because its still easily affordable for them - so only the less well off will be put off. Is that fair, no, it just creates a two tier society & workforce.
 
And i\'m not sure why folk are only concentrating on the tuition fees. Students have to live whilst at university which is a minimum £5k a year in rent/food etc. This will also have to be borrowed for those that chose a degree like i did (engineering - 4 years, so more like £36k fees & £20k loan) that won\'t allow them the time to have a part time job. So the debt they leave uni with will be huge :2Confused
And they definately won\'t be coming out on £50k a year - it could be 20 years before they earn that sort of money, if they ever do.
 
I totally agree that there are some really wishy washy degress out there and the skills learnt from them don\'t add much value to our society.
I also agree that many go to uni more for the experience than to get some useful work skills from it. But don\'t tar all students with the same brush.
There are many subjects taught, engineering being one, that add significant value to our society and are incredibly hard going to complete (hardest & most stressful thing i\'ve done in my life by a country mile - i was a builder for ten years before going back to education).
 
If we really want to add value to our society & economy in the long term we need to be encouraging more people to study subjects that will add value in the future. We also need to be limiting the number of upstart uni\'s & non value adding courses. We shouldn\'t be penalising all students & potentially putting off many talented people from poorer backgrounds but continue to let better off kids study whatever they like at the expense of their parents. How does that help us going forward?

[Nik da Greek]

Anyway we only had a few people say how we would fund Unis instead of a fee raise, cmon some more views on that please.

Since you\'re so obsessed with this, I would have thought the answer would be obvious to someone who is University-educated :rollin Abandoning the Trident replacement project would seem a good start...

The bottom line is that if you ask this question people will answer with whatever they dislike the most in society at the time, I guess many would bleat on about stopping benefits for scroungers because they\'ve been brainwashed to say it by the media. A more honest answer is that no-one knows how to pay for it, because no-one outside government has any clear idea of how the finances of the country work, how much it\'s costing to do what and how much could realistically be diverted by, for example, making MPs pay for their own long lunches rather than have them on junket account lol. I suspect that even those in government don\'t have a very clear idea about it either, which is why they make such a bad job of it

Seems to me that no-one has yet come up with any good answer as to why degrees shouldn\'t be state-funded other than extremely mean-spiritied whinging about how someone did an easier degree than me, why should I pay for others\' education, it\'s not fair all students do is flop about drinking heavily and I had to work for a living. These are hardly arguments, rather just a depressing iteration of human nature. Presumably because modern culture forbids racism or being mean to cripples we have to find other targets of opportunity, and it\'s always acceptable to hate students, isn\'t it?

Just in case anyone wishes to discount my ramblings as coming from an ex-Butterfly Appreciation Sciences degree student defending the three years, I spent at Uni at your expense, I\'d just like to make it clear that I never went. I left school and went and got a job and used that to pay for being extremely plssed and out of my face  for quite some years...like Jinx so rightly pointed out, this is not the behaviour of students, it is the behaviour of youth

[jetpilot]

What makes you think a kid with parents who earn 100k + will have to even consider the financial implications? The rich will continue to go because its still easily affordable for them - so only the less well off will be put off. Is that fair, no, it just creates a two tier society & workforce.

They wont, im not discussing that, but a percentage of the rich have worked hard to be able to not worry about the implications and the rich are already paying more in taxes. Whichever way you cut it, life will not be equal or fair, like Nu Labia wanted, there will be rich, there will be poor, end of, and i am neither!  

Probably the worst hit as ever is the middle classes, people that work hard for their wage and will have to make difficult decisions about their childs future!

I know some incredibly hard working people that are paying for themselves to go to Uni, i also know a batch who went because it was expected of the them by their parents and who werent sure what they wanted to do and also know a batch who went for the "social" aspect!

I have always maintained there are some valuable degrees (to society) and feel they will still go despite the increase, but also think there will now be a lot that will feel their chosen degree is not worth the "costs" and subsequently will either get out to work or do another degree worthy of the increased costs.

Society isnt equal and isnt fair and never will be.

[jinx]

Society isnt equal and isnt fair and never will be.

Very true but transferring the cost of education to the individual is not exactly a charter for minimising the disadvantages inherent in it.  

Don\'t just focus on the price - look beyond the costs and think about value.  Those soft courses so widely detested are cheap to run. It does not cost much to think about the media but a science degree demands lab time that soaks up resources etc. Which ones are going to cost more? Transferring the fee burden will not address the issue of worth that apparently anger people here.

An education system boasting an unhealthy percentage of teenagers who hold \'being famous\' as a career aspiration is not going to do much to advance the nation\'s march into the future is it.  If - as suggested - we have arrived at a point where something big has to change, shuffling the numbers about is not going to do it. If the state no longer sees funding higher education as part of its job, resigning responsibility but retaining control over the system is an equation only a politician would think balanced.

[jetpilot]

Very true but transferring the cost of education to the individual is not exactly a charter for minimising the disadvantages inherent in it.

Very true! But as a motoring forum and i am sure most would agree, we are all fed up of being an easy target for the gov to tax to death (lets face it, we moan about it enough)! It would be all too easy for them to say, we have a shortfall on "x", lets tax the motorist again, but maybe giving them credit they are actually looking at what is costing the tax payer lots of money and saying, "x" is costing us lots of money, we need to recoup some of that, so lets increase the costs for "x" itself!

Without making this a taxation debate, i think pretty much everything i enjoy doing is massively taxed, fuel for car and jet ski, smoking, a few beers etc I know these are fully my choice and barring the NHS, i have or do not ask the gov for anything, i didnt go to state school, ive never claimed benefits, rarely call or trouble the police, fire brigade, council, dont use public transport etc etc

And without trying to generalize, if it makes those students i see in town on "easy" degrees having to think a little more about spending their money on drink, drugs etc and "budgeting" a very useful life tool, all the better. As with most things, some will suffer and i feel for them but you cant make everyone happy 100% of the time. :Thumbs-up

[skybusr34]

a perfect example of this is my lodger, he is a school friend of mine.  after going to uni and doing 2 courses from 19 to 24 years old. then getting into even more debt. 36k worth in total. declared bankrupt.

then a string of rubbish jobs. now has started yet another uni degree at 33years old.. in model making. ( cant remember the uni name for it) its a 3 year course, really useful course hey?!?!

he`s got no intention of doing anything with it. its just another way of not getting a job for 3 years at the cost of us tax payers. he sleeps in till 9.30 and is always home on his xbox before i get in from work. (as blitzboy said. full time course with part time hours)

i do think the idea of raising course fees to 9k is way too much ,,, BUT raising the course fee`s will in my opinion make them thik twice about doing a course just to avoid work and actually concentrate on the course if they are there to learn..

i dont have direct first hand knowledge of uni like some on here.( i chose to do apprentiship training for my qualification) but. most of my friends have done the uni thing. and i visited them most weekends and have listened to their stories etc etc.   and i see what career path there oh so important uni qualification has acheieved them

[shaunwil]

I chatted to a lad I tenpin bowl against in a league. He is looking at a degree course in sports science to enable him to become a PE teacher. When I asked him the questions I considered when doing my apprenticeship was the question of availability of jobs, the value of those jobs, basic career path questions. He didn\'t have an answer to those questions. Is part of the failure of the system not making kids think about these questions. If a degree is worth doing for sombody in their lives then the initial costs and the way it is paid for should be considered at the beginning.

Shaun

[skybusr34]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^


thumbs up

[dthebuk]

I just had a thought.

What about charging people based on their result?

the better you do, the less you pay. Gives people incentive to work hard. If people want to scrape by and get drunk all the time they can pay for it.

[jinx]

Without making this a taxation debate, i think pretty much everything i enjoy doing is massively taxed, fuel for car and jet ski, smoking, a few beers etc I know these are fully my choice and barring the NHS, i have or do not ask the gov for anything, i didnt go to state school, ive never claimed benefits, rarely call or trouble the police, fire brigade, council, dont use public transport etc etc
:Thumbs-up

I didn\'t mention taxation in the context of revisiting the structure of the education system as an integrated whole. I probably would not have had any education were it not for state support so I am perhaps overly attached to the concept. Like you, there are aspects of the state\'s functionality that I don\'t and have never used but as a member of a wider group - community/society or whatever you call it -  I do not think it is unfair for me to contribute to their funding or believe that such provisions should be withdrawn from others simply because they can be abused. As I am going to contribute I do like to think the systems in place are effective and fit for purpose.  Even with the government left picking up 40% of the cost I don\'t think that is the case in education.

But the thrust of the discussion seems now be split between denouncing the worthless student body and why or how people can, given the current rules, identify a clear relationship between cost and benefit to them as individuals in applying education (like ointment) to improve future income.  I think that\'s short sighted and ultimately divisive but, as I am not shopping for a degree and as you point out - this is a motoring forum, I\'ll confine myself to the advertisement pages. :WaveBye

[shaunwil]

What also annoys the hell out of me is the degree seems now to be a requirement for the most mundane technical engineering Jobs.

I\'m currently a design engineer for a small company that is part of a much larger one. I\'m probably lucky they took me on because of my experience (Time served machinist, Cad experience, HNC in mechanical engineering) because a lot would have shunned the lack of degree.

The disrespect of anything other than a degree path is a real shame in the UK now. An experience path has much greater benefits of a rounder employee than one that has only seen a class room.

There are exceptions to the rule. We have a lad in our office that is on his gap year. Commutes 40mins a day, never ill, anything that is needed is never a problem. He has learnt a huge amount and has given a great deal back. He is how our students should be in this current climate.

The thing that also got me was the idiots in the hoods and face covered saying its uni or selling drugs on the corner of the street just haven\'t got a clue and will never do anything beneficial with their lives in the long run. Uni is just a get out clause.

Shaun