Am I missing something re tuition fees...

[Pheebe]

OK so tuition fees are not repayable until AFTER uni and AFTER you are earning over a certain amount

So why should your families pre-uni economic status be taken into account? Surely support for disadvantaged students should be focused on ensuring they have access and maintenance grants to support their daily living expenses while they are studying. Once they have their degree surely they on an equal footing to all other graduates?

Two students, both in a 40K job, one from a 'poor' background one from a 'professional' background. Who is more disadvantaged at that point by having to pay off 30K worth of debt?

What am I missing?

That's exactly it loz.

If I compare me at 17 to me at 21, there's a huge difference. At 21, I could see quite clearly that it would be a bad idea to go for 6 credit cards and a Northern Rock mortgage, but I did have some sense of what was happening. At 17, I really didn't know what would happen with all the variables that adults deal with - taxes, benefits, interest rates and so on.

I do think though that Xenia would be making a lot of sense if she were talking about a teenager starting up a business, and I wonder if that's her experience?

I personally do not think that the Welsh fees will be sustainable. I really think that by 2015 say they will creep up. Remember when fees first rose the WAG did the same and kept them low for a bit. When the cap on numbers came in the WAG again did not use it but they do now.

Fees will not necessarily be 9k but it costs apparently around £8100 a year to 'process' a student. So many will be risen.

Christmas - universities have no idea what they are doing yet. Talks are obviously going on. We have no idea how this will impact upon what fees are charged, what numbers we take ... our jobs.

I was talking to a colleague this morning about the post grad fees - no one has said what will happen to these. In the worst case they will go up to 9k but loans will have to be private. The masters market at least will potentially be destroyed.

As an aside I think there needs to be far better career planning in schools. I am just realising now that I would be better off in a different discipline - perhaps medicine or engineering as funding in my area is limited. I am 28 and have years of experience in academia and I am only just working this out properly.

Students will need to know honest information about what a degree can do for them, how they get to be where they want to be, the competition, the pay, the cost and so on.

It is quite interesting about this £40k threshold. Most of my friends have degrees including my DH (all in our 40s). Only one of us earns more than £40k.

Ooo, I've been luvvied. :)

I feel very strongly about this, as I was in academia for a long time (got out to have children - I couldn't think of any good way to combine the two and stay sane), and we have many friends who are in academia and struggling. These are really good people. :(

Every weekend we thank our lucky stars that DH has got out and is in a regular job. And I mean that literally. Every weekend we are grateful that he is able to spend time with the children, and not spend all his time squirreled away working on a grant proposal.

How nuts is that? That the system is set up so poorly for academics that a man who has a first from a Russell Group uni, and a PhD from another Russell Group uni is desperate not to stay in academia.

Mrstittlemouse, exactly. I am working on a grant application as we speak. On sunday afternoon, with three DC's home - and I'm supposed to be on mat leave! But if I don't write and get something I won't have a job to come back to

peppa - I am 30 and thought seriously last year about leaving academia. (Though now have supposedly - cuts-allowing - permanent job so have deferred that decision for now.) Interestingly, almost all my female friends who did PhDs with me have moved out of academia in the last two years, or are in the process of doing so; almost none of the men have. (And it's not just a child-care thing as actually relatively few of my close female friends have kids yet.)

Where do you (they) go from academia?
Just askin'...

Mixture of things: school teaching, publishing, writing/translating, civil service, media, some have retrained as various things (lawyer, therapist) - these are all friends in arts/humanities. Obviously in the sciences there's usually a range of industry options too.

... well Melezka, I went to R&D for a multinational after academia... got out because of fixed term contracts, grant application anxiety, academic bitchiness and unrealistic demanding students who already thought they had 'bought' their degree ok it was a minority but I could see where this was headed. I wanted to work in a more team oriented, business driven environment but I did do this before I was 30. If you came to the company I work for later than 30 it is unlikely that the salary would match academia.

I don't tink it's that hard to work out jobs. If I in the 1970s could find it out without the internet surely today's teenagers can - we are talking about the brightest - the ones who wil go to university. Why can't they do wehat i did in the 70s, get on a bicycle or walk and go to a library and get out the book i read then called What people earn - or these days just look on the internet? Anyway the issue of the poor being assumed to be so stupid they need protectino from their incorrect assumptions about student fees is presumably demeaning for them as is the assumption that if their whole family work in call centres or are on the dole that they cannot work out a doctor might earn more than a cleaner or a partner at a leading accountancy firm might just happen to earn more than a university lecturer.

Yes but there are lots of quite strange or niche jobs which are just not visible, don't really appear in any information and certainly I never thought of them when I was thinking of going to university (the first time).
For example, I used to work with a lot of puppeteers. Lots of them are quite poor, some are doing ok, and I know of one who is currently driving round LA in a Rolls-Royce.

Oh. I want to retrain as an LA living Rolls driving puppeteer. Is there a degree I can do in that?

Some young people, including the brightest, are interested in outcomes which are more complex than pure earning power.

WilfShelf - totally not.

I agree Wilfshelf and lots of us change over time as well.

I have posted this but there seems to be parallel threads.

I always wanted to teach, but there was a time in my life when I wanted money more than a teaching career - so I worked in the city. This lasted a few years until I worked out money did not make me happy and that having a vocation would bring me more happiness than a six figure salary. So I quite and went into teaching. I had the same IQ throughout this process.

Now I don't give two hoots about money as long as there is food on the table.

Of course they are. I don't principally work for the money. I work at what I find intrinsically interesting and intellectual challenging.

Anyway the main change leaving aside the issues of whether it is fair to help the poor or the Scots or the Welsh, is the transfer of funding from public sector to student and I suppose the ability for students more to vote with their feet and thus an introduction more of the market into the system. It was ill be interesting. However if you pay nothing if you pick a job which will pay you virtualyl nothing or you want a degree and then to spend 40 years as a housewife or on the dole, then that's hardly the introduction of market reforms.

Xenia - it's commendable that you managed to find out so much info - I'm sure that bright students do a similar thing, espcially those who are more driven by money. However, there is knowing data and understanding and contextualising information - having a feel for what it means, if you will. It's part role modelling and a bit of networking - I strongly believe it's a key reason why people from working class backgrounds are held back. My instinct is that exposure to a broader spectrum of people would help students from less well off backgrounds more than financial aid. Yes, there will be the odd exception who is clued up but it's a big ask for any 17 year old to gain, via the internet, an appreciation for salary opportunities and how much it costs to live whilst at school. It's great you managed to do this - I have a strong admiration for people who manage to raise themselves beyond what seem to be the limits of their situation.

DD wants to do something vocational, which happens to be well paid. I put the level of debt into this context. If your job earns 10K a year more than you could expect to earn in a call centre etc then that is 300K over 30 years and the debt will be 70K.

Xenia, you have to know the information is there, and you have to have decided already that your parents, teachers and the media may be wrong.

That's a tough thing to do.

It's already common for myths to be repeated as if they were gospel. When my brother went up to university (when tuition fees had just come in), there were loads of articles about how expensive university had become and how students were suffering. My brother's teachers went on to him about how he was not really the kind of student who would ever make much money, and - with his GCSE results - he shouldn't try. Luckily my parents told him he should go. But if you've heard everyone in positions of authority tell you that university is expensive and far beyond your reach, why would it occur to you that they would be lying?

I agree lozster - you're spot on about the need to 'have a feel' for the context of information if you have not already been exposed to a given system. It's a rare sort of intelligence that's good at doing that for a new and unfamiliar field/system/institution quickly - cf. e.g. how many extremely bright academics are pretty bad at writing funding proposals because they find it difficult to absorb and think in the terms and values of a funding body or business. This sort of 'instinct' for the unspoken codes that are governing a new system is different from the information itself. Choosing a career or even broadening your career aspirations is not just about the hard data - it's about imagining a series of very different sorts of social and professional networks for yourself. I think this is hard for everyone actually, not just teenagers. Most people would feel very unsettled if they had to try to do this regularly.

A small-scale example - even amongst teenagers that have the self-confidence/support etc to consider applying for Oxford or Cambridge without any family background, they almost always choose their college because, for instance, the one Oxbridge-educated teacher at their school went there, or their vicar did, or it's the one they were allocated to on an open day. They could sit down with a prospectus and crunch all the data about acceptances/bursary support/cost of accommodation but they tend not to - not because they are not diligent or intelligent but because actually knowing what questions you want to ask of all that available data is generally only something you learn by knowing quite a lot about the system already.

LRD, that is such a difference, isn't it between private a state schools and yet is nothing to do with who pays fees. That's just the sort of thing that could be changed for no cost. Why should any state school be so off putting?

I remebmer a poster on here who had been to open days at 11+ at sttate and private schools and said the careers shown on the walls of the private ones were stuff like medicine etc and the state was plumber, hairdresser etc.

When we plucked the brightest 15% from the state primary to the grammar at 11 this problem did not exist (except for chidlren who always failed even if bright because their family life was so very bad) and it seemed to work a bit better at giving poor children higher aspirations.

of course with 3 chidlern just through university I know what influences chidlren - XYZ went there ( thinking of a friend I know whose daughter was the brightest at her comp - she went to an ex poly to a a subject where the instituatino really matters in that profession and no one stopped her, not her very clever father, not her school, no one... so now she won't succeed in the way she ought or not as easily and that was because of where her friends were going; or teenagers will think XYZ job must be a good one because there is a free expensive car or because I remember one saying you get free clothes (some kindof will never be paid much job in fasion). However if the schools can do their job then I don't think chidlren should be put off my fees. If the teachers are saying it's awful you will pay a fortune then the children will be put off.

I think as well it depends on what your teachers and parents know or are willing to get involved with. I understand enough now to help the DC's I hope make life choices...my parents didn't really guide me or know anything.

I said I wanted to do medicine, they said that's nice rather than guiding me into how to do it. I then said I wanted to do teaching...again that's nice. I actually got as far as a pgce place before realising I could have a career with more money (had first class degree etc). I had to work it out myself though which is quite tough for a teenager who doesnt really understand how the world works.

Where did I mention State schools?

Both my brother and I went to private schools. He was told he wasn't university material and it would be so expensive he'd never pay off the debt (he got a first from Leeds and is doing fine), and I was told I was far too thick to apply to anywhere good. I was also told that Oxbridge was much more expensive than the other universities. Myths abound - it's not just sink schools that peddle them, though I do see why you 'd come to that conclusion.

I wholeheartedly agree that this is something that universities are blamed for, when some schools really do the damage. But I'm sure there are also lots of teachers who are brilliant - and then, do we blame parents for not knowing? I don't think casting about for someone to blame is helpful; much better to stop calling people who don't figure these things out 'stupid' and to start working on ways to get the message across. Imo!

Well I'm doing my bit on gettnig the message across on the thread. I could instead pull up the drawbridge and gloat that these changes might reduce the competition for my children who don't have parental or school prejudice against university entrance.

Anyway it's a bit of a side issue - this extra funding for the poor and the poor old Scots and Welsh who need such a different system presumably because they are do deprived or else because the English choose to pour them money on the Scots and Welsh whilst ensuring English children pay....