AIBU to think that it would have been fairer to introduce a graduate tax than increase tuition fees

Or better still make it free again.

No. Because somebody folk will deliberately make sure they don't earn enough to repay.

all university education is beneficial on a societal level, although not all university education leads to quick and guaranteed employment.
the term "mickey mouse" degree is not helpful to an honest discussion on post secondary education.

How does a graduate tax work for people who go to uni but don’t graduate? People who drop out after a year or two, either because they fail, change their minds, have family issues, ill health etc. It’s something I’ve always wondered!

Yet we have more graduates than ever before and employers are still struggling to recruit skilled British people.
Sending more young people away to study psychology or fashion styling isn’t getting us any more engineers or semi conductor scientists.

This - we fund too many people to study in universities, many of whom there's no demand from the job market for. Meanwhile we need more construction workers.

But i paid my fees. I worked bloody long shifts every summer to pay them.

I chose to go to uni having budgeted & saved. Its not fair to impose a tax later on on people who a) already paid their fees/loans back and b) can't turn back time and choose not to go

Which degrees do you consider to be pointless?

Yeah, sure it’s a good thing. So good that you should pay for it yourself. That way you will appreciate the value of it and universities won’t be a conveyor belt of mediocre graduates with pointless degrees. And we’ll actually have people with academic aptitude studying things which are actually valuable to the economy. The same economy which is required to thrive if the public want to keep having freebies.

Haha yeah, I paid off my student loan (3 years UG, no loan for MRes as I had full scholarship, another 4 years accumulating interest through my PhD) and paid enough tax on my bonus (i.e. not my base salary, just my bonus) to repay what the state paid for me to do my PhD (approx 18k tax free stipend a year plus fees) in 3 years of corporate working. They also got 3 publications out of me and two new disease mechanisms. A PhD was a requirement for my job. Glad I don’t have to pay another tax on top of the 45% additional rate I do pay just because I was motivated and hard working enough to get those degrees and leverage them into a high paying job.

What is not right is that my sibling will pay more for their healthcare degree over their lifetime because they’ll never earn enough to clear the interest, which is punitive.

The answer is to get more foreign students in to subsidise home students and reduce the fees and the interest rates. The investment pays for itself. The UK is a knowledge economy and we need more people who are highly educated, not fewer.

Could not agree more OP. People who say it's already a tax - I don't know any other tax where having rich parents (who can therefore pay your fees at 18) opts you out of paying thousands upon thousands in 'tax' later in life. That's our student loans system.

If it was a tax, it'd be evident that graduates are taxed an extortionate rate when all the different types of tax are combined for that cohort. But it isn't actually a tax so the ultimate cumulative impact goes unnoticed. Not to mention the continual changing of the goal posts. When fees went up to £9k a year prospective students were told they wouldn't be charged interest, not long ago it was at 6% for those same students who are charged hundreds of pounds a month to quite literally not even pay off that month's interest. The whole system shows utter contempt for young people.

Yet we have more graduates than ever before and employers are still struggling to recruit skilled British people.

Sending more young people away to study psychology or fashion styling isn’t getting us any more engineers or semi conductor scientists.

We have had a tight labour market & skills shortage for a few yrs, has that changed the number of employers looking for degrees?

Most UK employers don’t operate in a global market. The reason many of them can currently demand graduates is because there are so many of them. Reduce the supply and they’d have to reconsider. After all the UK isn’t exactly an aspirational destination for graduates from elsewhere in the world.

They’d have to. If fewer people are graduates they’d have no choice.

But there won’t be fewer graduates in a global market…

I’m encouraging my DC to look for graduate apprenticeships. It obviously doesn’t work if you want a to be a doctor/dentist/vet, but my employer fully funds the degree, pays a starting salary of £35k pa, gives valuable work experience and a guaranteed job at the end of it.

Yes I am aware, as I dont have a degree but I do have a tertiary education. But the point I make on this was my education was not free just because it was not a degree. I paid a fee. So I'm not sure that shifting from degrees at universities to not degrees at other institutions equals hugely cheaper.

When you look at oecd averages for actual university degrees they are higher than the 15% xenia woukd like. They break down tertiary into the different types.

They don’t need a degree. Eg in DH’s family there are a few property millionaires - their kids and grandkids almost always go into professional apprenticeship schemes and are working in IBM, PWC, and various law firms while getting their degrees subsidised by their employer and their accomodation subsidised by the family business.

Yes, you could go straight into a mc law firm after A-levels but the competition is fierce.

They’d have to. If fewer people are graduates they’d have no choice.

If employers demand grads and still fill their roles then that proves the point - we have enough grads.

If they can’t fill the roles they will have to make a good case that they actually do require a degree (like engineering) or go back to accepting non grads.

For example, we produce far more law grads than training positions. So in that case reducing the number of law grads would be fine.

What about them?. What about educated workers from overseas? The city is full of them, young graduates are competing with them too.

There are so many jobs now being done by graduates where a degree is unnecessary.

I don’t disagree, I just think it’s unrealistic to think employers are going to change their entry requirements even if a load of UK dc refuse to go to university.

Where does this end though? There will always be people who can pay for things outright rather than via a loan (with repayments and interest). What's next? Tax people who are able to buy a house outright because they end up paying less than those who buy via a mortgage?

Wealthy kids have choice. They don’t need a degree. Eg in DH’s family there are a few property millionaires - their kids and grandkids almost always go into professional apprenticeship schemes and are working in IBM, PWC, and various law firms while getting their degrees subsidised by their employer and their accomodation subsidised by the family business.

Are you aware of what 'tertiary education' includes?
From the World Bank
'Post-secondary education, including trade schools and colleges... With the intent of supporting people into work or further study'.

So many degree educated people don't even know this. Huh.

At what point do people start paying the graduate tax? I have a big student loan but don't pay it back as I work part time at the moment due to childcare.

Hmm. I think of bfitain is going to compete globally, then at least hitting oecd averages for tertiary education numbers is a must. 15% would put us with some really poor countries.