To believe £27k University debt will put children off?

[Mitmoo]

I am a graduate so value education but now we've seen that so many universities will be charging £9k a year that it will make todays pupils think that a degree just isn't worth the cost?

I know it doesn't have to be paid back until they are earning £21k or thereabouts but they are looking at 20 odd years of debt, more for some and no option to pay it off early if they get a windfall.

Add that to so many graduates not in graduate jobs and others out of work.

AIBU to think we are going to go back to the bad old days when university access won't be based on how smart you are but how much money your parents have?

Thisisanicecage - the grant system was not actually a system that meant everyone could go to University. In fact, only about 5% of the population went to University then. It was hard to get a full grant - most parents had to support their children in addition to grant payments.

I get fed-up reading about how easy things were back then. They weren't for most of us.

Will we come around to the American idea of working your way through college?
I was lucky because the state paid for my education but I felt very beholden to my Local Authority who paid the cheques every year. Felt I had to pay my debt to society iykwim.That sounds very old-fashioned now when people accept handouts with no guilt attached. Not saying that's a bad thing either, just a different mindset.
Anyway, back to the original point, yes I do think it will put students off applying to uni unless they can see a definite career prospect at the end of the course. Only the rich will do Arts subjects like History of Art.
Less well-off kids will have to choose their subjects very carefully and even then they might not get a job in the UK.
Not a rosy picture for the youngsters at school now is it?

I am in two minds about this, I don't really have a issue with paying back my university fees over 20 years. People do this with a mortgage and an education is far more important. My degree has transformed my life and given my dd a standard of living I never had as a child.

However I worry about how it will affect people who want to become teachers and nurses. A teacher may end up on 50K if they go into senior management but most will spend their lives on about 30K. Would you take on that level of debt for that wage?

I also worry if it will put people off. I was lucky that I came from poverty but was able to choose to go to the university I wished and study the course I wanted. I did not come from a family who valued education and it was a hard enough slog therefore getting in as there was no support, infact there was definite resistance. I think I would have given in and gone to work in a bingo hall if I would have faced that level of debt. It would have been the wrong decision but I was a naive 19 year old at a crap school with no support and guidance at home. That would have been a real shame as without boasting I was exceptionally clever and with a lot to offer. We need more people from working class backgrounds to go into teaching, especially women to show children that it can be done and to represent their experiences in the education system.

However as much as I value education I think there should be fewer people going to university.

I was a poor working class kid who did an Arts subject, even 20 years ago I stood out. God knows what I would do if I was going to uni now.

I wanted to teach and tag on the PGCE to my degree but this year the places have been slashed and even with a 2:1 with honours from a top 10 uni, I couldn't get a place this year.

I'm convinced this government is handling the whole university funding situation badly and bitterly regret giving them my X now.

I was in the last year of students before top up fees and paid around £1200 a year, which would normally be covered by a loan (these categorically NOT have to be paid up front). However, my parents were SO poor, that the majority of this was actually paid in a grant.

The real cost, for me, was the maintenance loan. Around £4,500 a year I think it was. I went to university in Brighton, which, in retrospect, was a mistake since it's a very expensive place to live, and you get no extra weighting like you do for London. The loan barely covered the rent. I then had to pay bills/food/travel/books/everything else on top, so I had to get a job.

By third year I was working 20 hours per week to make enough to live on, and I do feel it slightly affected my results. It's very hard to quantify, of course, whether I would have got a first if I hadn't had to work, but it certainly stuck in my craw quite a lot that while I was getting up early every Saturday and Sunday to go to work, all my housemates were just getting in from their nights out, essentially paid for by their parents.

What was even more annoying was those from wealthy backgrounds who took the maintenance loan, didn't need it, and so stuck it in an ISA to make a profit from it. Total abuse of the system as far as I'm concerned.

twinklypearls you managed where I failed.

To be fair, I didn't end up in a bingo hall and do have a great job but I wish I'd had your gumption (to use a very old fashioned word).

Almost everyone I went to uni with took the loans and did the same slacksally, they were amazed to see me actually spending mine.

You sound much more sanguine about it than I am. I found it infuriating.

Thanks Belle, I think gumption sums me up, I will not let the buggers keep me down. I don't earn a fortune but I am proud of what I have achieved, not least because it provides a platform for dd to do even better.

I do find it infuriating and I used to regularly rant at them at the time. Not least because often those student loans ended up as deposits on a series of buy to lets in a property portfolio that pushed house prices up artificially.

You're making me more angry twinkly, I hadn't even thought of it like that.

Wealthy student tossers are to blame for all the ills in my life.

Thankfully, I teach in a deprived area, so am not helping any of them.

Having been in debt while in a relationship and paid it, just to find myself in debt again when relationship broke down, the thought of getting in more debt, even for a degree, is the only thing that is putting me off.

I dont want to go back to that.

twinkly pearls I do agree with your line
Yes, that sums it up for me too. But I wonder if sometimes hardship when you are young makes you more determined to succeed? I wonder if the next generation become spoilt by "entitlement syndrome" and don't achieve what their parents did? Just a thought to ponder on. Not directed at anyone personally.

I don't know if my dd has entitlement syndrome but I do think she lacks some of the grit that I had even at her age. But that may not be a bad thing, having gumption and grit can make you tougher than you would want to be.

i am absolutley and totally apoplectic about this issue. its not just the TORY wankers who shit on poor people, they have done it without much opposition from that insidious, traitorous lib dem party, the spineless bunch of fuckers.

as if that isn't enough, the poor have been shat on by the last labour govt too with regards to eduction.

it seems no matter where you turn, if you don't have money - but you want education - you have to accept being shit on

open your mouth you poor bastard - cos those politicions -those fat wankers - who may themselves have been poor - they dont give a shit....i mean apart from the big pebble dashing they are doing in your face.

Custardo, what a load of twaddle, the loan schemes treat everyone the same. The reppayments are really very small if people have modest post graduation income and no sane parent, however rich, would finance the fees up front as if they do that then they will have lost out if the student has a low income job or does not work.

EMA was the real scandal. My children's friends who received it treated it a spocket money, and the children whose parents had a few quid more had to go out and get jobs at the weekend. ( which was good for them)

Of course the debt won't put anybody off. And the moon is made of green cheese, the yeti shall lie down with the unicorn and Shergar shall lead them, and Princess Di is on tour with Elvis.

I was just about to let rip at you Andrew, good job I read on.

I hear it all the time as am around teenagers, I also feel sorry for the teacher having to motivate the kids.

Of course the grant system did not mean everyone could go to university, belle, because as you say they university system only took the top 5% academically.

We've swapped this for a system where university is simply the next three years after school.

There are genuine discussions to be had about which is the better system, and better for whom.

But in the 80s university entrance was genuinely almost entirely money-blind at the point of entrance. The grant was calculated precisely from one's parents' income, so amounts ranged from tiny grants to full grants, and with no fees the amounts were coverable by commercial student loans for the few whose parents refused out of principle to support their children post-18.

So while the general expansion is something I'm in two minds about (I worry some people have been sold a very expensive pup), I absolutely stand by my statement that, for Oxbridge and other highly academic universities, it was actually harder for poorer students to go 10 years ago than 20.

I wonder if there will be an increase in young people staying at home and doing an OU degree instead.

It's still a degree after all and you can take as long as you want and maybe work part time round the course and live at home to cut costs.

Or is that a mad idea? We have 3 dc and I was contemplating that as a possibility for them the other day.

The OU degree is not as good as a degree from a university. You don't immerse yourself in your studies in the same manner.

Sorry belle, I've just read back to a PP of yours I x-posted with. You were indeed one of those whose parents refused to cough up. And you chose not to take loans to do it or one of the other ways "people managed".

I really feel for you about the parents bit - I don't know which way I would have jumped in your situation. But the subsequent system (with huge fees to pay on top of maintenance) still had people working through their degrees, so I can't quite see that you'd have been better off under that one.

Really twinkly? I thought it was just as respected as a degree.

My dd is going to university next year, 2012, so will be in the first cohort to have to pay the inflated fees. I can tell you categorically that some students are being put off. There's no doubt about it. I think that was in part the aim of the increase.

Yes the repayments are small but most students on future will be faced with increased or compulsory pension contributions in addition. Also they are absolutely taken into account when applying for a mortgage because the bottom line is anything you have to pay out affects the affordability. It would be a poor lender that didn't take note of that.

Graduate tax would have been better but that wouldn't give them the opportunity to charge interest would it? [cynical]