Should the people who benefited from free university PAY

[mossdog]

And don't forget, if we're going to charge people for 3 years of university, we must also charge everybody for 11 or 13 years of school.

11 or 13 years is enough FREE education for anyone!

[mossdog]

Lets not forget that some graduates in the 1960s were taxed by the Wilson Government when Super Tax of up to 95% was levied. The high earners will have paid their education fees back long ago particularly as universities did not have computers and all the other expensive high tech gysmos and were thus cheap to run.

Also there were far less people going to University(and if the truth is known,needed to go to university) than the record breaking education for all fiasco we have today!

Take Hallam for instance which was once a Polytechnic,it has now just become a feeder into the public sector for people with fairly low value degrees.

As the channel 4 documentary stated last night,the public sector needs reducing by 50%............and so do University places!

[SHYTOT]

Also there were far less people going to University(and if the truth is known,needed to go to university) than the record breaking education for all fiasco we have today!

Take Hallam for instance which was once a Polytechnic,it has now just become a feeder into the public sector for people with fairly low value degrees.

As the channel 4 documentary stated last night,the public sector needs reducing by 50%............and so do University places!

 

Sadly yes.

 

At one time you could put on your CV that you had a degree in physics. Now the potential employers ask "yes but where from?"

[TeaFan]

If they don't spend extremely long periods of time on benefits they will. - Through taxes.

 

Graduates (those who graduate with a degree which enables them to get a well-paid job) will also repay much of the money spent on them through increased taxes.

 

The core of the problem, however, is that there isn't much money to spend on anything - let alone money to waste on (not very) 'academic' courses which lead to 'degrees' which are of little or no use to the graduate - or to a potential employer.

 

University funding may need reviewing, but so does the behaviour of the universities themselves and the attitudes of the people who attend them.

 

The previous government abused both HE and FE and used education to manipulate unemployment figures.

 

The post-war Labour government passed the National Service Act in July 1947. They did indeed need people in the armed Forces, but the act also allowed them to manipulate unemployment figures. It took unemployed people off the streets, gave them something to do and reduced the jobless figures. - The downside was that the government had to pay the National Servicemen.

 

Nu-Labour increased the number of people in HE and FE and thus took people off the strets, gave them something to do and reduced the jobless figures. They were smarter (or more cynical) than their predecessors; they didn't pay the students - them made the students pay them.

 

Advances in technology have increased the demand for graduates, but that increase was in the demand for suitably-qualified graduates. Not an increase in the demand for poorly-qualified graduates.

 

The expansion in further education doesn't appear to have been engineered to help universities to meet that demand. Only 2 years ago, Lord Voldemort (aka Mandelson) was complaining that because university courses were too challenging for some of the potential students, the universities should introduce less-demanding courses. (Presumably, to allow them to produce even more inadequately-qualified 'graduates'.)

 

The universities claim that they are indeed meeting the needs of the nation.

 

It is quite clear that they are not.

 

The biggest employer in the UK is the NHS. The NHS cannot recruit sufficient staff from UK HE and FE institutions, so they have to recruit overseas. UK universities aren't meeting the demand of the biggest employer in the country.

 

Numerous other employers have complained that they can't get skilled/qualified employees in the UK and must recruit overseas. There is no shortage of unskilled workers, nor is there a shortage of people with worthless 'degrees' in arcane subjects.

 

If you were to advertise for people with a degree in 'Meeja Studies' 'Underwater basket weaving' or 'Alpine flower arranging' you would probably be inundated with poorly-written applications from semi-literate (but 'degreed') job seekers.

 

It's a free world (Well, the part of it we live in is free.) If you want to do a degree in Meeja Studies - go ahead! - but pay for it yourself, (or alternatively, get an employer who needs Meeja Stiudies graduates to pay for the course on your behalf.)

 

If you want to do a degree in nursing, well the NHS does need nurses. Perhaps the NHS might sponsor you through your degree course?

 

On graduation, you would be required to work as a NHS nurse for, say, 5 years repaying a part of your tuition costs from your salary each year during those 5 years.

 

If you decide (for any reason) that you don't want to work for the NHS you can leave - but you will be required to repay the outstanding amount when you do so.

 

The NHS could recruit and retain doctors in the same way. (More honest, perhaps, than employing doctors as sub-contractors.)

 

Perhaps University funding should be tagetted? - Let the government provide funding only for those courses which provide people with qualifications the country needs and require other courses to be self-supporting.

 

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?)

 

I agree with lots of this. Surely it's better to provide smaller numbers of degree places to people who are going to make good use of them, thus making the system cheaper and allow the state to pay more of the cost. That way, bright kids from less well off families can still go to uni without having to worry about massive debts at the end of it.

 

We'd also need to have big improvements in schools so that all bright kids from poorer areas could do well enough at school to be considered for university, something which successive governments have failed miserably on.

[mossdog]

I agree with lots of this. Surely it's better to provide smaller numbers of degree places to people who are going to make good use of them, thus making the system cheaper and allow the state to pay more of the cost. That way, bright kids from less well off families can still go to uni without having to worry about massive debts at the end of it.

 

We'd also need to have big improvements in schools so that all bright kids from poorer areas could do well enough at school to be considered for university, something which successive governments have failed miserably on.

The bright kids from any area!.............but not ALL kids!

[Tony]

Many of the folks who didn't go to university when that was free went to technical college or did apprenticeships for which they were not charged. Should we put a retrospective charge on them as well.

... and how about those who paid their own college / polytechnic fees when university was 'free'... should they get a refund with interest?

 

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.

You'll also know that many American parents begin saving for their children's college fund when they are born whereas their counterparts in the UK seems to think that education is some kind of free entitlement programme.

 

This is a trully stupid thread.

[dosxuk]

I agree with lots of this. Surely it's better to provide smaller numbers of degree places to people who are going to make good use of them, thus making the system cheaper and allow the state to pay more of the cost. That way, bright kids from less well off families can still go to uni without having to worry about massive debts at the end of it.

 

Just reducing the number of places will turn university courses into even more of a lottery than it is now.

 

We'd also need to have big improvements in schools so that all bright kids from poorer areas could do well enough at school to be considered for university, something which successive governments have failed miserably on.

 

And this will just create more and more people able to go to University, but not be able to get in because you've slashed the number of places available.

 

If you want to reform the admittance and numbers of university places, you have to start by saying everyone with a degree now has a worthless piece of paper, and reform degrees to be much harder to attain, thereby putting the academic requirements up so that only the brightest students can get places.

[dosxuk]

I still think the fairest payment method is a graduate tax - applicable to all graduates immediately (including MPs, company directors and even those who graduated 50 years ago, and also writing off any outstanding debts current and recent students have) on all earnings above a nationally and annually calulated "non-graduate" salary. This means since graduates on average earn more than non-graduates - only the graduates who are earning more than the average non-graduate pay.

 

I don't agree with this method of transferring the debt of education to individuals, by people who got all the benefits for free - I'm sure that Cameron, Clegg and all their private investors would be quite happy to pay for their degrees out of their earnings since they seem to think that it's a way of motivating students to go to university. Those students who never pay off their full loan just end up costing the tax payer anyway - and the immense amount of money that is being loaned to the students is still coming from the countries coffers - it's just that on paper the debt isn't the country's it's the individual students'. I can't understand why the student needs to be in that loop when it could be done much simpler and fairer.

[Lucifer]

Today, students must pay to go to university.

 

And the proposals mean they shall pay even more tomorrow.

 

What of those who went for free?

 

Surely they should pay for their retrospective benefit?

 

Not so many years ago, people who went to uni free once qualified decided to move abroad because they could get better paid jobs in America and the like so education paid for by tax payers lost out on these graduates ability to contribute to the economy, so you can appreciate why we think they should put some commitment in thmselves. Alternatively they can go abroad to other countries and try for a free education there.

[Tony]

I still think the fairest payment method is a graduate tax - applicable to all graduates immediately (including MPs, company directors and even those who graduated 50 years ago, and also writing off any outstanding debts current and recent students have) on all earnings above a nationally and annually calulated "non-graduate" salary.

 

How are you going to apply your scheme to people who don't work or those who no longer live or pay tax in the UK?

 

What about dead people?