Anyone discouraged kids from university in light of tuition fee rises?

[Officedepot]

In light of uni fees now being £9k per year (so £27k for three year degree) plus living costs students starting uni now would be coming out with debt over £40k

Anyone actively discouraged kids from going to uni on this basis?

I can understand if they are going to a top uni to study medicine or law etc, but AIBU to suggest if they are going to a rubbish uni to do a pointless degree it should be discouraged.

I have lots of friends who did degrees at second rate unis in random subjects and are still earning a tiny amount in their early 30s.......

[Cantbelieveitsnotbutter]

I didn't go to Uni as I couldn't 'waste' my parents money (that they didn't really have) on a degree that wasn't going to lead me to a high paid job. So unlike alot of my peers I didn't go, I ended up earning more and having a better career then alot of them who chose not to pursue a career specific degree.
I think too many people went as it was the 'done' thing and actually have no benefit from going, other then a rocking few years on the piss
Obviously this is just my experience and I've friends who studied career specifics who benefitted massively (doctors, lawyers and Stock market).

[outtolunchagain]

Chopchop actually if you look at the figures those who won't end up repaying the total include many of the middle level professionals including for example lawyers and accountants ( unless one of the very few who are partners in top city magic circle firms)

[Cantbelieveitsnotbutter]

As for my ds, if he wants to go and it's for the right reasons I'll encourage it. If its just to get out of work, I won't.

[TrazzleMISTLEtoes]

Thanks trills that's what I was getting at.

chopchop yes my loan is debt in the sense that its money I owe, but it's not something I have to pay back regardless of my circumstances, is it?

[ChristmasNamechangeBridezilla]

I won't be discouraging them at all. We have a family building firm both my sons are welcome to join if and when they want to so there is a backup in place if things go wrong or if they are not academically inclined into their teens but I hope they decide to go to university, for the experience as much as the qualification. We'll just have to suck it up and pay whatever it takes tbh.

[curryeater]

yes Hesterton - and this is the worry, isn't it, that this whole thing is a scam that just puts money into the hands of businesses (which is what universities are now), delays young people appearing on unemployment statistics, doesn't massively enrich them in any meaningful sense BUT it is an unavoidable scam, a protection racket that has to be complied with, or you are excluded from all interesting or reasonably paid work and any future formal or informal learning opportunities.

[curryeater]

Don't forget that adult education opportunities have been massively scaled back to the point of being barely existent. So if you don't jump through the hoops that make you seem eligible for training or learning (informal or otherwise) facilitated by your employer, there is not much opportunity to do it in your own time outside work. Or so I hear. Anyone who knows differently, or has examples of other ways of doing things - I would love to hear them. I mean non-degree things - I don't mean birkbeck or OU - I mean does anyone know anyone (or are you someone) who has been in a dead end job, kept the job up while learning on the side, and converted the side-learning into a career?

[Hammy02]

I'd be very surprised if the 2nd rate Uni's/colleges still exist in 10 years time. I went to one of these & wish I hadn't bothered. I used to work at a call centre technical help desk and almost everyone there had degrees but the job didn't necessitate any qualifications above GCSE's. For all those saying it is a good 'experience', I'm sure I could think of a hell of a lot better experiences for £30,000.

[herethereandeverywhere]

What concerns me is the impact such a large debt has in such formative years.

I went to Uni without tuition fees and with sponsorship for my post-grad year and still started my working life with c.£20k of debt. (This included borrowing to locate to London where my sponsors had offered me the job, rental bond and deposit on flat, suits for work etc.). It took until I was 30 years old to pay off and that was earning the wage of a city solicitor. My DH and I bought our 1st place using a 95% mortgage and the deposit was his savings (he's from a wealthier family so started out with no student debt). This enabled us to live in a modest 2 bed flat when we decided to try for kids in our early 30s.

So take my example but bring it up to date with at least £40k of debt, rising house prices and much higher deposits demanded for buying a house. Add the variable of a job which may not be in the top 2% of earnings as a city solicitor was. It makes any decision about having children MUCH more difficult (and I would argue from a feminist perspective that accordingly this fees regime disproportionally adversely impacts women). At the time when you are fertile you are still paying your student debt and only able to afford rental accommodation (much more expensive per square foot than a mortgage) - do you take time off for babies and set your career further back AND raise your children in less-than-ideal circumstances OR hope you're still fertile by the time your finances are sorted? Which brings me on the the 3rd option....

...what I like to call the "Kate Middleton degree". My prediction (and a blow for feminism) is we'll be seeing lots more of these, i.e. women choosing their degree/uni based on likelihood of finding a wealthy man to spend the rest of your life with, this rendering the problems in the example above not-applicable.

So, in response to the OP, if I can't help my DDs out when the time comes, I'll certainly be discouraging any degree without clear propects and career path.

[curryeater]

Hammy02, they will exist if people are effectively being forced to go to them (give them money) to enter the job market.

[catgirl1976geesealaying]

I wish I'd done a K-Middy degree

I turned down my offer from St Andrews as I thought it looked dull

Am a fool

[ImperialBlether]

I have two children at university, one studying a part time Masters and one studying a BA. I'm a single parent.

I don't know how the grant/loan system is worked out because it appears to have little bearing on actual costs. My son pays his rent by the term, so he will pay on Monday until his next grant/loan appears in April, I think. He will be left with £300 for that period of four months and that will have to include all of his bills. Luckily he doesn't have to get a bus to university. He can't do this without working part time but I know some students do struggle to get part time work and for some, it's impossible to do, eg if you're studying Medicine.

My daughter works with someone who's training to be a Vet. She is not allowed to work for more than 10 hours per week. She is permanently hungry. When I was at university in the 80s she would not have been hungry and none of us worked during term time.

Having so many students work part time will inevitably have a knock on effect on the number of jobs available for people who aren't students.

[curryeater]

herethereandeverywhere - yes, exactly. I think this whole situation, resonating with the constant older-fertility-panic constantly being whipped up by DM type media, is a direct attack on women's independence, as they feel they have no choice other than to partner up with someone much more financially secure (whether just from a wealthy background, or just 10 years older with a property and a good job) and this puts them at terrible risk of abuse within that partnership, as it was 60 years ago (and for time immemorial) when women had no access to money or security except through marriage and therefore marriage was essentially a tool to distribute women to men to do what they liked with.

[feelathome]

can anyone answer this for me? If you leave uni with say £40k of debt, find a partner and want to buy a house, will any bank lend you a mortgage if you already have £80k of debt between you?

[JenaiMorris]

curry I used my degree to make up for having only three GCSEs, which I studied for PT having left school at 15. I went on to do an Access course. It is now not possible to study for GCSEs at my local college and Access courses have been cut back hugely.

OU isn't for everyone - it's not just about self-discipline it's the lack of human contact. I don't think I'd have done any where near as weell had that been the only option.

[ImperialBlether]

Herethereandeverywhere, I find that a really sexist comment about Kate Middleton degrees. St Andrews is a good university. She would not have got in without good A levels.

Many, many graduates met their partners at university. It's obvious, really, isn't it, that that will happen? This doesn't mean the woman goes there intending to never work again. It means that like-minded people are likely to meet and eventually marry.

It's more likely that a member of the Royal Family would get in on very low grades (ie Prince Charles) than anyone else. I remember Princess Anne with her two grade Es "deciding not to go to Oxford." Clearly she would have been able to go had she wanted to.

[JenaiMorris]

Basically, there is No Way I will discourage ds from applying to university if he finds a course that engages him. I loved my time at university.

[AlanMoore]

We won't discourage our kids from going, however we might not be able to afford for them to go :( if we had an 18yo now, the gap between the loan and the fees is too big for us to cover.

They'll have to live at home (fortunately there are a few unversities within travelling distance) and I hope they'll both get decent part time jobs in sixth form that will carry on into uni or we'll all be eating cold beans out of a tin by the glow of a candle. My friend's GD really struggled to get a job in her university town, as the traditional 'student' part-time work is being fought over by experienced mature types and recent graduates.

I would have suggested a job and OU degree perhaps, if they were motivated and good at time management, but the OU have had to put their fees up so high now that probably won't be any easier for us (I'm doing OU degree just now and it is affordable, but sadly one of my children was two and the other four months at the deadline for transitional fees!).

The world in general is pretty cold in economic terms now. I think it's come as a huge shock as most of us will have baby boomer parents who benefited from practically full employment in the 1960s/student grants, grammar schools etc., bought their own houses, all that caper.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

feel - as I understand it, yes. They don't calculate it like normal debt - they just look at how much comes out of your bank per month.

[Trills]

I agree that is a very unpleasant comment about Kate Middleton.

[Trills]

As I understand it when looking at whether to give you a mortgage lenders simply look at how much income you have after student loan etc is taken out.

Which is probably still more than if you had not gone to university.

That's the point.

If you think that you will have a greater income after the loan repayments are taken out then you should go to university.

If you think you will have less money, don't.

(Ignoring all the other potential benefits of university)

[Hammy02]

The problem is that lots of jobs require degrees that didn't in the past. Nursing, teaching etc. Do we really think standards in these fields have improved since a degree was required? I don't. It is all a big con.

[PolkadotCircus]

I'm more worried about living expenses.

I have 3 dc the same age and we earn over the threshold for them to get maximum loans.We have friends already struggling to help their dc live. Degrees will get harder and hopefully longer hours(if they're to get value for their fees).

I want my dc to be able to put in the same hours of study and thus be able to get as high a degree as those being given the max loans and the richer kids.

It seems to me the squeezed middle kids are yet again penalised not just by getting into a decent uni with zero gov help or a private education but by getting the max out of it and less of a chance of getting a first if they're going to have to work to stay there.We have several friends in higher education who are saying if they don't get a first or 2:1 they might as well not bother going at all.No pressure then!!!!

3 kids- I have no idea how we'll help x3,tbh.

[tyunmite]

If they've got the academic talent, then only a fool wouldn't go to university. The income differential between a graduate and on-graduate over the course of a lifetime is over £100,000 whereas the tuition fees have increased from roughly 10,000 to about 27,000. If you don't get a well paying job then you probably won't have to pay off the whole amount anyway. There is an awful lot of scaremongering by people but the new fees system is far from the monster some people try and describe it as.