to think that it's a really bad thing in the long term if so many young people become inured to debt?

[onimolap]

With the highest proportion ever of young people going to university, and today's announcement on higher tuition fees and higher loan interest repayments for all but the very poorest graduate; what is this situation doing to society's current and likely future attitude to debt?

Is the aim to produce a debt-ridden generation? Or to reduce the numbers going to university?

At what point does the "coping class" run out of ability to cope?

I wish I had known about all the US stuff when applying for uni. Definitely would have tried for a US university over british if I had known (well done careers advisory service)

LRD not necessarily, I am doing mine with 4 children part time evening class; and it isn't that expensive- over three years the total is £2.5k.

Does vary an awful lot by establishment of course: I am lucky that a cheapo uni has a specific interest in my field.

absofcroissant - yep, all of "that stuff" is hard to find out - you could argue of course that if you've got the aptitude for university you should be able to show a little ingenuity! . E.g., I found out that a Uni in Canada does big bursaries for people who come from my home town. Nobody in my home town seemed to know!

Um, winking dosn;t take away a fairly harsh comment you know!

I ahve no idea of Ab's background but people start from different baselines wrt to university, employment etc: as far as I knew at 18 university was an extension of private education utilised entirely by wealthy people buying extra years tuition. My baseline was far lower than most peoples, clearly.

As it happens I think that whilst I should ahve gone to uni at 22, 18 would have been a disaster and better in my thirties than teens tbh, for me anyway.

It wasn't aimed at YOU! It was meant to be very much tongue-in-cheek with regards to the "50% uni attendance" generation!

It is too early to tell if our boys will want to go to university. If they have a career in mind that requires a degree I will encourage university, we won't be in a position to help financially though. Otherwise I will encourage them to choose a career and study part time as dh and I had to do.

Studying subjects like English and History will become the preserve of the rich. If they have a burning desire to study history they will have to work to fund it and study through the OU. Burdening yourself with thousands of pounds worth of debt so you can study a subject that is unlikely to help you get a job is madness.

Our generation had it relatively easy we just didn't realise it at the time.

maybe more people should consider starting their families whil doing full time degrees? you get child care paid from and you only attend uni a few hours a week,both parents get to spend those precious years together? we did this with our two and it worked wonderfully, best thing we ever did

I know that AP, I took it as aimed at Abs.

If it was jokey then excellent news: there are certainly some people on here who haved exactly the same argument with intent. Sorry if I bristled unnecesarily; too many previous bad experiences on hare perhaps.

Interesting wrt to history and english..... wonder how we will fare getting teachers in those subjects in a decade or two? My degree subject is religion and it's one of the worst for employability (unless you want to access teaching or a postgrad); to be honest, whilst i think it hs lots of validity as a living people study, I wouldn;t encourage my boys to study it. Sad really, i'd love them to follow in my footsteps in many ways but it is too limiting.

NP sssshh don;t let on teh secret

Actually it does work well but DH needed to be in work so childcare is a lottery then dependent on family income.

DS1 is going to a career's fair next week. He's only in yr9 but is quite adamant he wants to be an engineer - preferably aero-engineering. There are a couple of engineering companies coming along, one of whom take apprentices on. I am really hoping that he can manage something like that because TBH I dread to think what university will cost him/us.

Oh come on Riven, your DD has only been there two minutes.
How can she know the intelligence of her fellow students?
From conversations?
She won't have seen any of their work.

Seems to me some folk just want to believe that everyone who is rich is actually really thick and spoon fed.

I wonder if how worried this makes you depends on when you studied?

If you had grnats etc it will seem far worse perhaps than if like DH and I you did the loans thing (albeit likely to be far higher costs in the future)?

We've already accepted that education after school costs £££££ so it's just a price hike to us.

I think so, Sancti. I think it also probably depends on what you've seen happen to people your age - if you know loads of people are either out of work or doing jobs that are far less than what they hoped for, it can all seem like a bit of a waste.

Btw - 2.5k, not bad! The twats where I did mine wanted me to prove I had 10k to 'support myself' over a year (and yes, I did tell them where to go!).

It isn't bad is it? It's an evening a week in lectures then an immense lot of home study, and termly assessment; year three is dissertation. All the main bodies in the field come in and lecture so it is really useful for that alone. Oh and it's a ten minute walk away

I was looking at Cardiff as well; they are more expensive but not hugely so. Maybe part time for MA study is indeed the way forwards?

Sounds nice.

Part-time has ups and downs, I guess. I couldn't do my work now part-time - if I spent 6 years on it, by the time I was done, the work I'd done in the first few years would be out of date!

Mind you, I don't know if you agree but I do think you notice with postgraduates that people treat it far more seriously, far more like a job or like training for work, than they do undergraduate. They know they're paying! The only people I know who've got the casual, party-every-Friday, stay in bed until midday attitudes are the ones whose parents are paying for them (and subsidizing the rest of us )!

I think to do a degree it needs to be creere related and not just go for fun or because your friends are going.

The creeer service should have better information as i have always found it crap.

Child trust funds are meant to help pay for higher education as well as the student working part time.

Also when i went to uni i was very immature and would have done things differently but i was the first in my family to go to uni and i have a business degree i have been an Admin assistant for 7 years i total wasted my oppertunty because i had no guidenance. But i felt like i needed a degree to make up for being dyslexic and to enable me to get any job.

With my children i will use what i have learned to help improve their oppertunities so not a complete waste of time and money.

I will teach my children about different jobs and aim to inhance the cereer he choses. But i agree that the student and pearents should pay.

I do agree; and indeed dh is finding the same with his course- maybe it's a mature student thing? For me, I know that if I finish this I can apply to do my SW training and get into a job that pays enough to cover our especially costly childcare; DH already has a business in his sector but he will get different training and licecnces every year so he can expand what he does (though he is so not doing the pyrotechnics bit from home )

We have goals.

I'm not sure it's a only mature student thing. I had a lad on my course who'd gone through the Scottish system (and I think maybe skipped a year somewhere?) so he was only 20 when we started the masters, but he was as committed and hardworking as anyone else. He just knew there was no loan to fall back on, no bank of mum and dad, no expectation that this was a free piss-up with an essay or two on the side.

i think we all have goals!

I think the OP's right - it's a really bad idea to inculcate our young people with the idea that debt is a way of life. And it's desperately unfair that the generation who benefited from free university education have pulled the drawbridge up behind them - all but a handful of MPs went through for free.

German apprenticeship system sounds great but sadly successive governments decided to starve manufacturing so not sure companies are ready to invest - especially as we are in the middle of a recession.

I'm back.

AlpinePony - I had been living in the UK for three months when I was applying for universities. In the country I came from, you didn't even think about such things until the final few months of your last year of school, and there were only about 10 unis in the whole country to apply to. If you got good marks, you went to one of the three good unis, if not, you tried for the others or went to work. Then I land in the UK, get told three months into adapting to a new continent, schooling system, catching up on missed A Level work and completing GCSEs, that I should start thinking about applying for university, and being sent to careers fairs where there were dozens, if not hundreds of universities to apply to. It was bewildering and overwhelming, and my parents were shag all help (being new to the system and all. Sample advice on choosing where to study "oh, i didn't know York had a University. If I had known I would have advised you to apply - they have a very nice old wall I once walked around". Not. Joking). Am I excused?

As for my concept of who/what/where went to university - all I knew was that it was something I desperately wanted to do, even though it meant I had to wait a year (to be able to be accepted as a Home Student) and do paid work throughout. I did interview at Oxbridge (again, in a totally clueless way - if you're not raised in the system its very bizarre), and had no idea that there were people who were coached for years in order to get in. (I didn't. This may have something to do with my answer to "so, how did your interest in the Civil Rights movement arise?". Answer: "from watching Oprah"). For e.g. my friend's brother got into Oxbridge, but his parents hired a private tutor for two years before to get him through the interview process, help him prepare applications, advise on extra-curricular activities etc. etc.

Gosh. That's, er, quite some careers advice there, Abs! Personally, I treasured being told 'If you want to apply to Oxbridge, LittleRedDragon, you should apply to Oxford - they'll be nicer when they turn you down.' Charmingly supportive!

I don't think it's fair to expect most 17-year-olds to have the maturity and organization (and, often, assertiveness) to work out exactly how best to find the cheap options and apply to the right places. Lots of them will have to contend with bad advice from school or from home or from both. Added to which, it's pretty hard to go against what your parents say if you are 17 and they are financially responsible for you.

Oh NP I know we have goals; I guess I meant that we usually have to be more focussed becuase we are often juggling, work, family etc as well.

Not always, and just my observation.

thats ok, i just jumped apologies