Want your children to be able to go to uni?

Sorry for having a point of view, Doris.

But I am very convicted to the notion that you should only study for something that will pay back, if you are expecting public funds. You will have a very hard time convincing me otherwise.

I am a teacher, but worked for many years in industry beforehand. I think this is a win-win, from both the funding point of view and experience.

However, it would be pretty easy for government to waive the fees or pay off loans of future public employees.

Sorry - 'your' referred to amerryscot, not Doris!

Well said, Doris,I'm a teacher, and whilst I'm not very well paid, I regard my work as socially useful.

By your reckoning, that was irresponsible, and I had a moral duty to earn as much as possible.

Extending this logic, are you happy for your kids to be taught only by the dregs, the ones too stupid to get a proper job earning a 'good' wage?

jackstarbright, I agree that it is harder for kids from worse schools to get into university, and I agree that situation neds to be rectified.

What I don't get is why you think that making students pay more for their education is going to make it fairer or easier for poor students; it's just going to add another, insurmountable barrier to those already there.

Surely it is better to look at how to improve schools, and how to ensure that no-one is disadvantaged by their background?

Who knows they may even start charging for school education one day. There'll probably be a basic voucher for an academy and if you want extra or better than a basic education, you'll probably have to top it up with another loan.

loads of typo's sorry it's been a long day...

merryscot what a shortsighted view- you're proposing students should only do a degree that will result in a career with a real prospect of wealth.

How do you propose to do to educate the teachers, social workers, nurses, physiotherapists, OT's of the future as I'm sure that wages in these professions wouldn't meet your demanding requirements. When would it be a problem for you ... when you need to access these services and they're are either too few qualified staff to meet the need or the service falls woefully short due to the lack of education, in those brought in on the cheap to do the job.

As for 'providing for' a university education for my children that is EXACTLY what I am so upset about my parents strauggled to help me through uni, but there is now way I will be able to do the same for my DC's.

granted - but in reality our education is extremely socially polarised.

A school leaver is dependant on their A'levels grades to get into University. Do you think all pupils have the same quality of education? Where a child goes to school is very dependant on their parents income.

The best schools offer 3 sciences at GCSE, choice of foreign language and even Latin. Whilst the most deprived schools often don't have qualified science teachers and may only a few language teachers.

According to Sutton Trust research (based on the current fee level) if a school leaver from a poor home gets reasonable A-levels - then they are very likely to go on to University. It's the fact that too small a percentage get as far as their A levels which is the biggest barrier.

So, no I'm not confusing 'equality of opportunity' with 'equality of outcome'.

There are already bursaries.

But stop that mentality and work out a way to either provide for your children, or have them do courses that will pay back.]

The only worries are when you want to do a mickey mouse degreet that you can't afford to fund yourself.

The reason that people are concerned for their small children, as I am with mine (although they're not that small)is that it tends to be the case that once hard-won rights have gone they are difficult to get back. No-one wants their children to start their working life with massive debts - and education benefits society as a whole not just the person who undertakes it.

amerryscot - you conveniently forgot to answer my point about bursaries...

Thing is the amount borrowed will exceed the proposed 27K for tution fees as this does not come close to the amount a student would need to live at uni (which back in the loden days was what I used my student loan for.

There will be debts above and beyond this.

GAL you are not the only one concerned about your KS1 child I too am concerned have 3 dd's and can not see how they would cope with the implications of such debt.

I am a nurse did my degree but would have struggled for many many years to pay back a debt this size, and for those who say you wouldn't have to pay it back until you earn x amount what about the interest acruing? I'm not sure what rate is proposed (6%??)

I would never have been able to clear my debt and therefore not have been able to buy my own property...

This proposal does unfairly penalise those who wish to enter careers where a degree is required and prospects of high salaries are limited or in the distant future of career progression.

(Oh and as a side issue we are saddling English students with this debt but Scottish and Welsh students will incurr nothing of the sort (Scotaland nothing/ wales remain capped at current rate)

oh AND UNIVERSITY STUDENTS FROM OVERSEAS WILL PAY A LOWER RATE THAN ENGLISH STUDENTS... That surely is a fucked up system!!!!

jackstarbright - you confuse equality of outcome with equality of opportunity.

We currently have (approximate) equality of opportunity ie everyone has the same opportunity to apply and go to university - it is not dependent on parental wealth or social class. (And yes, I realise it is not perfect, but at least parental wealth need not be the primary deciding factor, as would be the case once the new fees were introduced.)

We do not have equality of outcome ie not everyone who applies gets in, as not everyone has equal ability or works equally hard - but surely even the most ardent left-winger, let alone right-winger, would not claim that meritocracy is inherently wrong?

Surely you cannot be arguing that selection based on ability is wrong?

The fee changes would remove equality of opportunity - how well our children do when/if they go to university, obviously, is down to them.

Not sure what you mean by my children getting it free. My DS, who is already at university, has taken out a loan for fees. We do not consider loans to be free, but something that needs to be paid back. Given that he is doing a lucrative degree, that is not a worry for him.

No, amerryscot - who, if your username is correct, will not be needing to practice what they preach, as their children will get it free anyway - you forget that in America, there is a vast range of bursaries for the less well-off students to ensure that anyone who is bright but poor can still access university education.

There is nothing equivalent here.

If you have small children and you are worried about university fees, do what the Americans do and start saving for them. Don't always expect someone else to pick up the tab. Universities are for the benefit of those who attend, so they should pay their own way, imo.

" and we should all pay for preschool and school as well Oh and hospitals "

The point being we all have access to state run schools and hospitals.

Only 35% of school leavers get the opportunity to go to university. When a service is selective (mainly on social class and ability) - then it is fair to fund it from tax revenue? Might there not be fairer ways to spend the £400 per tax payer we currently spend on Uni students?

I'm not sure how the above is the 'right wing' argument many of you appear to see it as.

"I really don't understand the fuss - someone has to pay for university education - surely it should be the people who use it." Yes, and we should all pay for preschool and school as well Oh and hospitals we should pay for those every time we use them from now on.

My apologies GAL - often when a person's first post is to start a politics thread they turn out to be a politroll .

And you did start out being worried about your under 5's chances of going to Uni - which is quite odd (at that stage - my concerns were should they be allowed fruit shoots and can they use the toilet on their own). But I do admire an aspirational parent..

You now appear to have wider concerns. Maybe if you'd started with those, you wouldn't have looked like someone attempting to rally mums into action on behalf of their under five year old dc's.

Thanks Op, for the post and others for the links. Will try to attend one - I'm sick of the papers presenting it as just aload of lazy students moaning; the reality is it is a lot of hard-working parents who will have to be working even harder to allow even one child to go to uni - we have 3 and I can't imagine how we could afford it. Are we supposed to pick between them as to which one is the lucky one???!

There's no way I would be happy with any of my children - or anyone else's - starting their working lives in that kind of debt.

Also, frankly, it's unreasonable for undergraduates to be footing the bill for all the funding for universities - which is what's happening. eg cutting all funding for arts/humanities' subjects. The undergraduates are thereby subsidizing the professors to do their research etc - as an example, I was at Oxford about 20 years ago, and had one hour of tutorials a week - occasionally 1.5 hrs. I had no relevant lectures at all - a few in vaguely related areas were laid on, but added nothing whatsoever to the course. Other than that, I had long reading lists and was told where the library was.

That was the extent of my tuition. This was history, BTW - daresay other subjects had more set hours.

Terms were only 8 weeks long - so total of max 35 tutorials over the year = hourly rate of £257, per tutorial (sometimes shared!).

Good value for money? I think not.

And that's Oxbridge with it's fabled tutorial system, FFS.

Why would anyone pay 9 grand to go to any other university???

Sorry, if we value education in this country, we should fund it, and if we don't, we shouldn't expect poor sodding 18 year-olds to subsidize it.

They are not the only ones to benefit from it - the academics do, the country does - what kind of third-rate diddly-squat country do we want to have?

whittingtonmum, I was not suggesting that the aspirations of our dcs should lessen at all - just the routes of getting there maybe need to change. 20 years ago when I went to Poly, a much smaller % of people when on to Higher education. These days, everyone seems to go and yet there are no jobs for all these graduates.

To me it makes much more sense to invest more in vocational courses at local colleges and to have more work based day release training. I for example did my professional qualificatiins by going to college one afternoon/evening a week.

Of course there are careers where a degree is necessary from the outset, but for many it doesn't hurt to start at the bottom and work your way up, accessing education and training as you need it. My dad for example started as a trainee draughtsman and worked his way up to MD of an engineering firm.

Employers need to find more creative ways of recruiting and training staff - and of course, we still need hairdressers, and plumbers and builders and car repairers. I don't think these jobs should be seen as somehow "lesser" - they are important. Much more important than some of the overpaid paper pushers I work with.