Outrageous University fees.

[John Dory]

What caused the national debt was not overspending on services but the wreckless gambling of the financial sector, who have strong links to the top dogs in both the Tory and Labour parties. If we weren't all paying for the losses they had incurred, it wouldn't be an issue. Instead they can continue sending their kids to private schools and top universties with their unchangesd wages and bonusses, while the rest of us pay their debts for them by job losses, pay freezes and our taxes being diverted from basic services such as education.

 

Well said.

[HeadingNorth]

I can't for the life of me work out why people think this is a deterrent. The only circumstances under which you'll ever have to pay the fees, is if you are well-off; and yet people are arguing that it's a terrible idea and instead, we should make the well-off people pay for universities. The mind boggles.

[muddycoffee]

I think the real issue about this subject should be why is it neccesary to have such a large proportion of the population wasting their time getting almost worthless degrees. Over the last 10 years I have met lots of people who have degrees in subjects like philosophy and art who have to work as gardeners and answering phones to get a job.

Labour decided that 50% of young people should go to university, all that has happened is massive expansion of university sector on the back of decades of student debt.

Many of these people have wasted their time because they have not improved their employment chances.

[Rupert_Baehr]

I can understand the outrage - nobody wants to see fees rise. As Vince Cable said he went to university at no cost - got a grant etc.

 

But I do think that there's more than a little political showmanship going on and some of the things which are being said are (morethan slightly) ludicrous.

 

F'rinstance: Earlier this afternoon a political commentator was saying that as from next year, the government was changing the way it calculated inflation (for the purpose of calculating increases in the old age pension) from the RPI to the CPI.

 

He was outraged! (He didn't quite foam at the mouth, but he did a pretty good splutter ) "This will mean that on top of losing child benefit, OAPS will find that thier pensiosn will increase by 1% less than they would have done using RPI!"

 

Splutter, splutter splutter (that was me laughing - I was drinking coffee at the time and it went down the wrong way.)

 

How many OAPs are going to lose child benefit? How many OAPS earn enough to lose it ... and how many have children young enough to be eligible to get it?

 

Last week we learnt that some fairly well-off people were going to lose child benefit. Hardly the end of the world, but an excuse for:

 

(a) Righteous indignation from a handful of mothers who were concerned that they would no longer be able to use the CB to pay the fuel costs of running the Chelsea Tractor. - They weren't worried that they would have to stop using it, but rather that they would have to use some of their other money.

 

then

 

(b) More indignation that there would be some people who wouldn't lose the money because they had dual-incomes both of which were lower than the cutoff point.

 

I can see why people might complain that they are losing a benefit, but surely complaining that somebody else isn't is rather petty?

 

Either way, significant numbers of people found that they had an excuse to hop up and down and be indignant.

 

Now we hear about university fees going up. I've no doubt that some people are still hopping up and down about CB, so they may be too busy to get worked up about university fees. (Political timing?)

 

I heard earlier that the Students' Union at Sheffield University had a meeting tonight to discuss the proposed increases in fees.

 

Waste of time, but no doubt a lot of people hopped up and down, spluttered and made a huge fuss.

 

A few questions:

 

1. How much money is Sheffield University going to lose this year? (are they losing any this year? - There have been no announcements.

2. By how much will Sheffield University be increasing its fees? Don't the University have to know how much they will need to raise before they can decide how much they have to charge?

3. Who will pay those increased fees?

 

Given that the changes don't take effect until 2012 at the earliest and it's likely that most of the people who attended the meeting are enrolled as students at the university now, how much extra will they have to pay? Does 'Nothing' sound about right for most of them?

 

If you've just finished GCSEs and you've just started 'A' levels you will probably have to pay the higher fees. I wonder how many of those people were at the meeting?

 

Fees for EU students at Sheffield (and at other English universities) are currently capped at £3800 (or thereabouts.) That is very probably going to change. If fees at Sheffield were to increase to, say, £12000 a year, how would that compare with the fees paid by non-EU students?

 

According to the spluttering political commentator who was so concerned about OAPs losing child benefit (or one of his buddies) foreign students are paying between £20,000 and £30,000 a year RIGHT NOW at some English universities. Are all those foreigners amazingly wealthy, or do they think that what they are paying is value for money?

 

If £30,000 a year would be value for money, how would £12,000 a year be a rip-off? - I'm not advocating the (inevitable) rise in university fees, but UK students will still be paying less than the (Non-EU) foreigners.

 

If English universities are such poor value for money, there is nothing at all to prevent English students from enrolling at far-cheaper universities elsewhere in the EU ... assuming, of course that other European universities are indeed cheaper. Those universities can't charge English students any more than they charge their own students.

 

There is nothing to stop English students from enrolling on courses at universities in non-EU countries either. - Apart from the price.

 

There are some universities in Europe - notably the university in Prague, (which is regarded very highly) which offer courses in English, so the students wouldn't even have to learn Czech.

 

I read an article about 5 years ago which compared the cost of a medical degree in Prague with that in the US and with that in England.

 

The Prague course was far cheaper than the American course and slightly more expensive than a course in England - but as the cost of living in Prague was considerably lower, the overall cost to an English student was about the same as it would've been at home.

 

If UK universities are going to charge more, it will pay to shop around.

 

I've no doubt that when English universities set their fees, they will be aware that students are likely to shop around.

 

I expect that there will be a lot of huffing and puffing and a lot of indignation during the next week.

 

Another bit of political timing. Isn't next Wednesday the day that the government announces the details of the public spending cuts? - If everybody is still hopping up and down about university fees and one or two are still making a fuss about losing child benefit, that should distract people from considering the effect of the public spending cuts.

[Nagel]

You make a good point. However really aside from medicine, law, engineering, science and a couple of other things why do you need to go to uni anyway? Most jobs can be learnt or taught on the job with day release anyway

 

Exactly.

 

The selling of university degrees to people who don't need them and would benefit more by three years other experience is scandalous.

[HeadingNorth]

The selling of university degrees to people who don't need them and would benefit more by three years other experience is scandalous.

 

 

We had many years of the political classes arguing that everyone should be in the top fifty per cent, and that at least fifty per cent of us should be in the top five per cent. It's not so much scandalous, as just completely silly. A qualification that everybody gets is, by definition, completely worthless.

[Suffragette1]

Exactly.

 

The selling of university degrees to people who don't need them and would benefit more by three years other experience is scandalous.

 

Perhaps they will eventually be replaced with accredited (and therefore portable) training programmes offered by employers, the pre-requisite of which will either be good A level results or some kind of aptitude test.

 

It is a shame though as I do like the idea of learning for learning's sake rather than having a purely utilitarian higher education system. My degree hasn't served much purpose, however, I really enjoyed the subject and learned and read a lot that I wouldn't have done otherwise.

 

I worry for my kids, they're both clever and definitely university material. We're middle income and no way could we afford to fund them through a 3 year degree. I hate the idea of them being saddled with so much debt at such a young age.

[Darth Vader]

I would actually say that that would be down to the easily milked benefits system, teenaged pregnancy & alcohol & drug abuse. So far that's produced far more chavs than graduates ...... A clearer and more present danger.

 

With increasingly less families being able to afford to have a child at university, pregnancy and a council house will soon be all they have to aspire to.

[Nagel]

It is a shame though as I do like the idea of learning for learning's sake rather than having a purely utilitarian higher education system. My degree hasn't served much purpose, however, I really enjoyed the subject and learned and read a lot that I wouldn't have done otherwise.

 

Yeah, me too, I think that studying a subject that interests you however impractical or academic is a good thing. I can't see that sort of studying getting any extra funding at the moment, but the Open University should be maintained uncut for people who want to study whatever interests them.

 

I was working with someone who was doing an OU degree in the subject I studied at university and saw his course material. It was extremely academic and rigorous - in a good way. No wonder OU degrees are well respected.

 

I worry for my kids, they're both clever and definitely university material. We're middle income and no way could we afford to fund them through a 3 year degree. I hate the idea of them being saddled with so much debt at such a young age.

 

It's not a difficult choice even for those of us who could afford to subsidise our children's university education.

[nightrider]

I can't believe how much they're wanting for University fees!

It's outragious, not to mention divisive, and I'm amazed students haven't been out on the rampage in protest.

 

If universities can set their own level of fees, soon some universities will be considered so inferior a degree from them will be worthless anyway.

 

Where's the quality control? Value for money etc?

Will a student with 5 hours tuition a week have to pay the same as one with 25 hours? Will the top professors be more expensive than lesser tutors? Will research students still be expected to pay?

 

How many potentially great minds will never get the chance to blossom because thay can't afford to be nurtured in a top University?

 

This is also going to be the biggest stumbling block to social mobility in my lifetime.

 

I think it's a disgrace.

 

What I find a disgrace is all those lib dem MPs saying they will block tuition fees rising, and then at the same time supporting a government that wants to withdraw 75% of state teaching funding for universities and slash spending on research too.

 

You can't have it both ways - either fund universities properly from the taxpayer or students will have to pay to keep things afloat....

 

Personally I disagree with tuition fees, but there is not much choice if other funding streams are effectively removed.