Should the people who benefited from free university PAY

[Conrod]

You are not legally obliged to go to University though are you.

My comment was sarcastic - I think the whole thread is silly.

[milquetoast1]

That's what we pay National Insurance for.

 

People who become unemployed have no choice, but people who go to Uni do.

The OP is proposing a retrospective tax. People don't have a choice of whether they went to university or not.

 

[Brunette]

Don't forget to charge all the people who had a university education and have subsequently died - it should surely come out of their estate?

 

And then there's all the people who had free dental check ups until the charges were brought in. They must owe loads now that we all have to pay.....

 

Although - you used to have to pay for a dog license and now you don't. Can I claim a refund for money we shelled out for the family mutt in the 1980's?

 

I could go on....but I'm sure that there are plenty of examples which show how utterly stupid it would be to attempt to back-date any new government initiatives!

[chem1st]

It was a tongue in cheek comment.

 

Of course I don't think we should, any more than we should charge people who studied for 'proper' degrees 20 or 30 years ago and who now contribute heartily to society through their taxes.

 

Instead, we should drastically reduce the number of university places and provide degree education for free, so that only those few suited to an academic career win places.

 

Found something I agree with you on.

[Rupert_Baehr]

. .

[Conrod]

Found something I agree with you on.

I think we all share more common ground than we realise, it's just that internet chat fora exaggerate the divides.

[chem1st]

I think we all share more common ground than we realise, it's just that internet chat fora exaggerate the divides.

 

The rational of this thread, is we will have people saying, well the graduates earned more and paid a higher rate of tax, which is all well and good, and a fair argument to make.

 

Yet these people are also responsible for the states debt, just as much as the younger generation.

 

If people earn more with a degree, then a higher tax rate is already enough. There should not be an intergenerational increased rate of tax for the next generation issued through the guise of student loans.

[Obelix]

How about adding 1% to Degree students tax contributions, 1.5% to a Masters student and 2% to a PHD students pay packet?

 

We add 20% already - it's called higher rate tax.

 

Graduates earn more, and therefore pay more tax. It gets collected back without any extra effort. S'easy...

[Tomataheeed]

Yes, I'm aware that society does need classics graduates, arts graduates, archaeologists, historians and the myriad of other pure academic graduates, but it does not need (and cannot afford) thousands of people with irrelevant qualifications. There would always be an adequate supply of academics (there has been for the last many hundreds of years without government funding, so why should that change?)

 

Perhaps more incentive to get people doing maths, physics, chemistry, engineering etc... Perhaps some courses should have no fees. We need more engineers, make it cheaper than less useful degrees.

[Tomataheeed]

I heard an interesting radio programme about how it works in the USA. The high fees at HArvard and Yale - $60,000 a year I think, are only paid by the very rich. Most people get scholarships and various forms of financial assistance. The rich subsidise the talented.