to want to teach the MNetters some basic economics about higher education funding

[witchwithallthetrimmings]

but don't know where to start. there is so much wrong thinking here not only about the economics (the costs and benefits and how they are shared) but also about the facts.

It is very important to remember that university students aren't only paying for the contact time in their fees. A substantial portion goes on library resources; institutional journal subscriptions are an enormous cost. And, believe me, the quality of your degree depends on your university having access to a wide variety of journals.

DH works in a post-1992 university and he finds it very difficult to write his courses because the university just doesn't subscribe to very many of the journals in his subject are. This means that the students can't get access to them, and so he can't put them on the reading list. You don't go to university to be taught everything; you go to be introduced to debates and literatures and to develop the skills to find out about them independently. Lectures are supposed to give you a way into the debates and literatures so that you can head off to the library (usually in online form these days admittedly) and read about them yourself.

edam - the problem is that Labour stipulated a very low maximum fee level so universities cut their cloth to fit the price they were allowed to charge. That meant quality fell.

That said, the debacle of 'For Profit Education' companies in the USA is very informative. There, students from relatively poor backgrounds are cold called and hard sold degree/diploma courses and recruited to fill classes. The students pay fees using Government sponsored loans but the quality of the courses is very poor in many cases and many students leave without a qualification. Even if they do stay to the end many find the degree/diploma they get is useless and they remain jobless. As a result, there is a high rate of default on the Govt loans they get.

If we are not careful, the UK is really only a few steps away from this scenario and many of the old Poly universities are already, in effect, just recruiting any student they can get from here or overseas to fill courses and classes to cover their overhead costs.

Also, lab-based courses are incredibly expensive to run. There are all sorts of costs beyond simply paying the teaching staff in each class.

I agree that certain subjects cost a lot for few contact hours. I remember we were when we had to pay £500 to the uni for our year abroad for "administration costs". I received one letter during my 18 months abroad - a very expensive letter! (this was in 2002 btw)

Having said that, I don't regret going to uni. Repaying the loan is a pain, but my degree opened many doors for me and I am in a very good job which would not have been possible without my degree.

In France (where I live/work), 5 years study after A levels is required in a lot of high-powered jobs. Even if you have 20 years experience, if you don't have the 5 years study, you won't get the promotion. So, some adults go back to uni part-time to get those precious extra years.

Besides which, 15 hours contact time means a lot more time for the teacher to work!

Thing is, it takes a long time to prepare the material for 15 hours contact time. University lecturers don't have a standardised curriculum or pre-made course materials to work with. It takes a long time to properly design and research a course. There are also administrative duties associated with teaching and students to see for academic support and/or pastoral care.

Then there's the time allocated for research, and the time spend bidding for funding to pay for that research (which is mostly wasted as they only fund 20% of bids, even if they say the bids are in principle fundable).

On the outside, 15 hours of contact time sounds like nothing, but there's a lot going on in the background to make that 15 hours happen.

The £500 admin costs for a year abroad, however, is taking the piss.

a) that student debt is bad - er yes it is. I came out of uni with around £15k in debt. (Which I paid interest on equivalent to inflation). Whilst I paid off that debt, I couldn't save money to put on a deposit for a house. So I ended up getting a 100% mortgage (which I've now reduced to 80% thank god).

b) that most people are worse off than they would be had they not gone to uni - I have no idea. Financially I was for a bit but I managed to get a graduate job. Many of my peers didn't and ended up with jobs they could have done without a degree.

c) that tuition fees have to be paid before graduation. When I went to uni, they had to be paid during the academic year.

a) It's better not to have debt than to have it, but debts run up as an investment in your education and future career through doing a good degree can be viewed in a different light to just frittering the money away with nothing to show for it.

b) Some people may be financially worse off than if they hadn't gone to university and some may not be. But I would argue that you can take away a lot more from a university level education than enhanced career prospects. I went to a good university from a deprived background. Before uni I had never met anyone from overseas, or interacted much with the middle and upper classes. Working and socialising at uni gave me confidence to interact with anyone and more insight into the world than I could ever have gained by taking a job in the predominantly white british daily mail land where I grew up. I have no idea how to quantify that learning but it fundamentally changed my outlook on life. DH was the same and he says that his ability to connect with people from all walks of life is the most useful business and life skill he learned.

c) no idea.

It's nice to be told I don't get economics :)

Actually I'm pro graduate tax (and have been since I was at uni back in year 1 of tuiton fees) because of many of the points made about student debt above. A high level of debt is an enormous psycological barrier to people from poorer backgrounds. If no one you know earns much more than minimum wage 20k is a fortune to have to pay back. It's much more of a 'reasonable' amount to take on if you're surrounded by higher rate tax payers. Still not ideal but more likely yo be worth the risk.

I'm also sick of people talking about their education being free - someone was always paying. Often today's workers by ignoring the upcoming pension crisis (but that's a whole other thread).

Oh and I am definately paying base rate interest on my student loan (think it's determined as the highest rate applied in that year as well!). Extremely annoyed about this as I was sold the loan in 1998 as being based on rate of inflation and I did know the differnce at 18!

Post 1998 loans have interest rates set at the either the retail price index (RPI) or 1% above the Bank of England base rate which ever is lower. Except when the RPI is negative as it was in March 2009 in which case they made it 0%. This last rule they seem to have made up as they've gone along!

Hmm interesting. Will go and investigate paperwork again!

Poorly - fair point about library costs being an issue. Any idea how much the library costs per head?

But I bristle a bit at the idea that students should pay far more than £3k a year for not very much contact time and library on the grounds that university is about independent learning. Of course it is - I have been to university myself - but seems to me there's a mismatch between what students are paying for and what they get.

Mind you, I know a v senior Prof who had to spend a whole day sorting out the mess one of her PhD students had created by changing his thesis after it had been approved... if they'd charged him for her time he'd have been in trouble!

Can you teach me how to use the iron?

It's really complicated.

I only got a degree in Fine Art.

...

Here is the link for the Browne report,

hereview.independent.gov.uk/hereview/report/

there is also a summary at

www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/corporate/docs/s/10-1208es-securing-sustainable-higher-education-browne-report-summary.pdf

It's worth investigating what's about on the continent. Ds in theory goes to uni in 2014, so I am doing some forward planning to get ducks in a row and looking at fees. I've just been having a look at the University of Maastricht where fees are about 1600 euros a year for a BA for EU students; and the main teaching language there is English. There is a BA in Business at Leuven in English, which studies in Denmark, then Leuven, then Coventry, so there is international experience to be gained as well.

edam: I have no idea exactly how much it costs per head, and it would vary enormously between universities as they all subscribe to different journals etc. There are also the costs associated with the library staff and facilities, which increase as they increase the opening hours (and students moan if they don't have long opening hours).

There is also the fact that university staff do spend an enormous time designing and preparing teaching materials/lectures. The teaching costs to the university aren't simply in 'contact time' with lecturers; it takes multiple staff time to design degree structures (and to have your courses approved by the relevant committees), to write lectures (you'd be surprised how long this takes, particularly as good university teaching should be research-led and not some generic curriculum), to prepare reading lists and handouts, to upload materials to the e-learning interface, to organise seminars, tutorials, workshops and labs, to carry out the necessary health and safety checks and paperwork, to brief any postgrads teaching on a course, to design and write the assessment materials (and have them approved by the necessary committees), to mark work, to double mark work and carry out quality assurance checks, to hold examination boards and consider appeals, to organise field trips, to have ad hoc meetings with students that aren't listed in the official course contact hours, to provide pastoral care, and so on... The university fees pay for all this and more.

yy poorly, I do get that education involves a lot more than a lecturer standing in front of a lecture theatre. But I'm not convinced that universities have lived up to their side of the bargain they created when they merrily set off for the marketplace. Seems to be to be an unfair market where one side has all the power. Universities get to withhold degrees from students who don't do what they promised, students don't get to with-hold fees when universities don't deliver (e.g. Cumbria or one of the ex-polys in London that has plunged into financial crisis).

I knew tuition fees were a slippery slope. All that bollocks about a cap - let politicians start charging you and the price will go up and up no matter what they promised in the first place they'll ramp the fee up again and again. They have form on this - right back to the introduction of income tax, described as a short-term temporary measure - IIRC to fight the Napoleonic Wars. (Am not against income tax but it just goes to show.)

(I know a few profs and they do work v. hard. Although one jokes about treating her PhD students as slave labour...)

tyler80- the pre-98 loans get written off when you're 50, or if you die

Foreverastudent

Aargh - I'm posting on too many different tuition fee threads, not sure what the relevance of this statement is?

"the pre-98 loans get written off when you're 50, or if you die"