Uni Fees

[jetpilot]

They are probably requirements because references now mean absolutely diddly squat, i was in my local trade paint supplier the other and the manager was explaining how a recent employee got caught by cctv cameras with his hand in the till, although he had been told by law that the cameras were there, now the manager is getting asked for references from new job applications but he actually cant put that he was caught stealing, he can only be factual about this guys good points!!!!

[shaunwil]

He can refuse to give him one though.

Shaun

[TiddlesRX7]

Yeah you can\'t give someone a bad referance. You can how ever refuse to give one at all. It pretty obvious if someone refuses to give a referance that its because the said person had faults.

[jetpilot]

How about also, heavily discounting (as in free) nursing, medical, teaching etc and other other degrees that benefits the country?

[captainbizzaro]

Even the poor Royal Roller has lost it\'s job because of the riots after Camilla was "poked with a stick".

[od404]

Some very good points being raised, so I thought I would add a couple of my thoughts and experiences.  :Typing
 
Having finished my Masters in Engineering four years ago, I left uni with just over £16,000 of debt in student loans (including the calculated interest).  My first wage, was £21k a year which at the time was well above the threshold for paying my loan back, but in these new plans would be just on the cusp.  Earning that much I paid back about £60-£70 a month towards my loan, which looking back, was an insignificant amount.  It had no effect on my ability to have a comfortable standard of living (I rented my own 2 bed flat, could run a car, and socialise how and when I wanted).
 
Under the current proposals, paying back £7 a month (I keep thinking this must be a typo, or incorrect) is going to have even less of an impact on a graduate\'s standard of living.  My only concern is that putting the payback rate so low will effectively mean the debt won\'t be cleared in a lifetime (unless it ramps up more with earnings than it does in the current system).  At this point it becomes debateable whether the loan has any affect on the individual at all.  Yes for a 3yr degree you could have £27k debt, but if you\'re paying back so little it doesn\'t affect your standard of living, is the total debt really that bad?
 
I think headlines of the total debt will put people off, but maybe because the information coming out doesn\'t give prospective students any idea of how it will actually affect their lives after uni and I think this is where the governmant has really dropped the ball.

[Bobbit]

How about also, heavily discounting (as in free) nursing, medical, teaching etc and other other degrees that benefits the country?

Nice idea, but now you\'ll open a new can of worms as the government decides which courses are of benefit and which are not, and going back to Nik\'s point of a degree being a way of showing potentially which people can learn to a set level, as apposed to what they actually learn, then this would be a very large can of worms. Also you\'ll get people who do what my sister did and study to get a degree in midwifery and then sod off to live in another country as their new found degree gives them more points for emigration, thus meaning we foot the bill for their learning and then another country benefits from this and our government have no way of getting their money back.
But if we can solve these issues I think it\'s actually quite a good idea and could be a soultion or at least help the current situation.

Also in responce to what Shaun said about idiots in hoods and choosing between drugs and University.

These idiots (good choice of words BTW) are just that idiots, if they think the only options in life are selling drugs or going to university then i dont think they are really university candidates to begin with. Ok so they had a valid point about the money given out if they study (£30 per week but I forget the name for it at the mo) and I think this is a good idea to help those with lower earnings to study at college etc, but in terms of degrees/university and protesting, i think they just wanted to protest and used any excuse for their behaviour.

But as it stands, in my opinion, the whole education systems is set up to teach people in a fairly rigid fashion. But as we now know there are many different ways in which people learn and how ours brains work. Some people prefer a hands on approach, some need to think things through, some need to understand why before how, some need to know how before why etc. The current way most learning is delivered is skewed towards those that learn in one set way and these people will usually perform much better in exams, but then you have those that needs a hands on approach and they will always struggle to get a degree and display to employers that they can learn but in a different way that we currently teach. So in effect they are penalised for how their minds works and will not get such high grades, thus meaning employers may over look them for someone who has the higher grades but may not be as suitable for the role.
And yes I am talking about myself here too, I am not a stupid person but I hate sitting in a room while someone reads out loud from a text book, mainly as I have a fairly high speed of reading and I get frustrated waiting while people catch up and my attention wanders but also because I learn quite quickly from hands on experience which is usually only a small part of any learning plan. So i feel the education systems has let me down and I guess I do feel resentment/jealousy towards those that ask me to pay for other people to use systems that did not help me.

[jetpilot]

Some very good points being raised, so I thought I would add a couple of my thoughts and experiences.

I think. although unsure, it is an extra £7 a month on current payback total!

Could i ask, having been there and done it, a degree, would you have not done it if the fees were what they are going to be now?

Bobbit, i think it would be easy to say, if you subsequently took those skills abroad, you would be liable for the relevant course costs.

I was never academic, nothing much interested me at school apart from sport. Fortunately my family aware of this and put no real pressure on me to achieve better at school, apart from the usual, you could do better if you wanted to. I actually left school feeling quite despondent, not so much i felt a failure but really wasnt sure what way to turn as to be fair, you are only pushed in one direction at school (well my day anyway) and no other possible talents were nurtured as to be fair they arent catered for!

Apart from basic english skills, reading, writing, spelling etc and basic maths, school was an utter waste or time for me. I have taken nothing from the subjects i chose, Geography, French, Biology and cant even remember what else and had any use from them!

I soon found though i did have skills, everyday was a learning curve and strangely one that i enjoyed. I found i could learn and had an appetite for it, but there is a key point, only in things i was actually interested in. I was happy to read, absorb, write things down for reference, all the things i was "supposed" to do at school! I learned more in a few years than lets say, 10 years at school!

So what does school teach you, in my opinion, school is nothing but a test of your ability to retain and memorise information! It is about conforming to society!

[Bobbit]

Jetpilot, thats exactly my point, school teaches in a set way, and if your brain does not work in that way then you are screwed (that would have been a lot easier to type wouldn\'t it? :Hammer)
And as to moving abroad, how will the government expect to get their money? Sent an invoice and expect the money? I agree that they should pay the money but in the case of my Sis, she had a lot of the course paid for and then buggered off to Oz. The government cant expect to get that money back and just write it off, leaving us to foot the bill. I know it\'s not going to be a lot of people that do that, but the number of people emegrating each year is increasing so we can expect more people to do this.

[od404]

I think. although unsure, it is an extra £7 a month on current payback total!
 
Could i ask, having been there and done it, a degree, would you have not done it if the fees were what they are going to be now?

In my case, I would probably do a degree even with the new fees.  Even a £7 increase in payback at £21k a year doesn\'t really make much of a difference.
 
Now what I\'m not up to speed on is how this affects the ability to pay living costs...
 
When I was at uni the fees were £1100 a year, my loan was £3600 a year (or thereabouts).  My loan actually covered my entire living costs over a year (rent, bills, food etc, but not drinking money).  I was lucky that my parents were able to pay my fees, but my socialising money had to come from working, either during term or at the holidays.
 
Under this new system (and indeed the old system where fees were £3k a year) they talk a lot about loans to cover these, but do the loans have any provision for covering living costs?  Bearing in mind I was doing 40hrs a week in lectures and lab time alone, then probably a further 10-15hrs a week in project and tutorial work on top of that, during term time I did not have time to work a job and the jobs I had during the holidays would never have covered my living costs.  If there is provision for this within the loan and grant system (remember people from poor backgrounds are being offered grants as well as the loans), then all is ok.  If not then I could see people being put off.
 
Again it boils down to a lack of communication, at least to the general public, who on the whole seem pretty ignorant of what the system actually consists of (all they see are the £9k headlines).
 
For me university has allowed me to get a job that I really enjoy and to reach a very good standard of living.  Even with the debt levels being proposed I feel in my case it would still have been worth it as the payback level would not affect either my ability to enjoy my job or my standard of living.

[jetpilot]

Thanks od404, interesting to hear from someone with first hand knowledge and experience, so to the original post buddy, who do you think is doing the protesting, honest people who plan to use Uni as a stepping stone to higher earnings and learning or layabout bums or want a few easy years getting ....ed up at the tax payers expense masquerading behind the guise that they are investing in their and the countries future?

[od404]

There definitely seems to be a mix of people at the protests (which seems to be the case for most protests these days).  On one hand you have the vast majority being made up for by students who appear to just want to be heard (so lots of shouting but not much else), but on the other there are those who seem to have come just to cause trouble.  There will also be people somewhere in the middle, which must make policing these things a complete nightmare.

The other thing (which again is down to very poor communication) is that I wonder if current students (those already within the higher education system and paying fees under the current rules) would even be charged the new fees?  While I was at uni they brought in the £3k fees, but it only applied to those students starting uni for the first time.  Those of us already there stayed with the old system.  If that is the case then probably 70% of people protesting might want to consider whether they needed to be there at all and it would be students currently at 6th form and below who would be affected by this.

[JonR]

Why do we keep referring to them as loans? They aren\'t, they are a tax liability
 
There is no pressure to pay them back (other than if you earn over the required threshold)....they follow you to the grave, and won\'t have an affect when it comes to taking out a personal loan or mortgage.

[od404]

Why do we keep referring to them as loans?  They aren\'t, they are a tax liability

5 letters versus 12? Helps to keep RSI at bay

[JonR]

5 letters versus 12? Helps to keep RSI at bay

lol, that is probably as sound an argument as half of the students who have been interviewed lately have put forward!  And to think these are the cream of our industrial nation!!