To think scrapping tuition fees is a terrible idea

[bumbleymummy]

Just that really. Corbin saying he's going to scrap fees from September. Bloody stupid idea and something else that we can't afford to pay for.

I agree with you @bumbley it does look like they are trying to buy the young vote, not forgetting a few years down the line if/when it's not sustainable it will just be retracted.

ps morphene i've a family member who's an academic and he's similarly reported the rise in students begging for grades to be raised, the massive increase in appeals.

I'm not sure if the financial pressure is the complete driver though, or whether as I said too many people are making ill-considered choices.

scandinavian countries can do it because their populations are much less than here, their courses are in far less demand and taught in languages native to that country often. Our courses here in the UK are all taught in English, making them much more appealing on the global stage. Scrapping fees will make it much harder for UK students to get on courses, international students will be seen as easy money by universities, possibly giving them an advantage. They won't be accept every tom, dick and harry from all walks of life. Numbers will be limited, universities will get pickier, and rightly so.

Here is a way in which uni education benefits all of us people in jobs, we don't have to compete for work with the 2 million student who are currently studying. We get higher salaries due to less competition.

not I am not sure what struggling to get a 2:1 signifies at the moment. Mostly the existence of mental health problems. It turns out doing a degree is a very bad idea if you suffer from anxiety or depression at the moment, because there is no support in place either within or outside universities to deal with mental illness.

So that is 10-15% of students being massively short changed right there.

2:1 used to be the grade required to carry on into doing masters or a phd. Not getting a 2:1 meant you were an excellent student who had totally grasped the fundamentals but wasn't perhaps at a high enough level to do further study.

Certainly NOT an indicator that you should never have embarked on teh course in the first place....

student debt has utterly ruined the HE sector. I don't know if it will ever recover tbh.

I think your question has already been answered bumbly, ds1 wants to be a vet because he adores animals, seems to have an affinity and understanding of them and wants to ensure that they are cared for.

He will be taking on a massive amount of debt in order to do a job he feels he will enjoy. He (and dh & I) have given options a great deal of thought but this is what he really wants to do and he is aware of the massive financial undertaking.

As has been pointed out, he is unlikely to earn enough to clear the debt meaning it will be hanging over him for the rest of his life.

The alternative is to do an apprenticeship, around here it's trade, engineering or supermarket work. He is an a* grade student who may - if it wasn't wanted so badly- have decided to skip university due to cost, that would be a shame for him and his future patients.

Free tuition means less debt he may actually be able to repay and less stress for him around his choice.

I agree with you OP, I paid 9k a year to go to Uni and still met people who went purely for the social life to then never use their degrees. This will happen a lot more, I'm now over the threshold and am paying back my loan. Doesn't bother me in the slightest.

However the government should do something about the interest I am paying on the loan. To even start paying off the interest I accrue each money I should be paying over £150 which I'm not. So I'll never pay off my loan.

morphene - no way do 50% get a first!

I did both my degrees " just because". First one because I had no clue what career I wanted and just went on the first one I got at clearing.
The second one ( despite my loan) gave me three times the money I was getting by working.
No way should anyone but me be paying - although I'm still not earning enough to pay it back.

I wonder how many of the people who want tuition fees to continue are a little bit upset by having had to pay tuition fees themselves. I could well understand that, frankly, but obviously isn't a good reason to deny this benefit to others.

Nearly all the social benefits that society had in the fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties have gone and everyone now says they are unaffordable. Where on earth has all the money gone? Obviously this is a rhetorical question, because we know it has and is all going to the banks and the arms industry.

Scholarships would still benefit mostly students from better-off homes where there is enough household income to pay for private tutors or to live in the catchment of the best state schools.

Performing arts students have often paid a fortune for training from specialist schools/teachers and on instruments/residential courses etc.

DS is incredibly lucky to have gone to a specialist unit in a state school but we have still had to scrape to get him an instrument and to take up places on residential course, without which he would have been unlikely to have got into a conservatoire. It's a scandal IMO.

I really don't get the angst about tuition fees putting 'working class' or 'poor' people off applying for university.
No-one has to pay any money up front and no-one has to pay anything back until they earn a certain amount.
So there are absolutely no barriers to anyone going to university, poor or otherwise.
The more I listen to the radio and/or read the news, the more convinced I am that you can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink.
There must be so much money wasted trying to persuade people to do things they either don't want to do or cba to do.
Everyone should have equal opportunities, but if they chose not to take them up, no more money should be spent.
So, young people have been told to register to vote, have been told how to do so and that should be the end of the matter.
Travellers have been told the same.
Yet on Radio 4 this morning, there was endless discussion about how these groups of people could be persuaded to vote, as the take up had been very low.
Lots of money is being spent trying to get these people to register, when it clearly doesn't matter to them. Their choice.
If fewer 'working class' children want to go to university, so be it. There are no barriers to entry - that should be enough.

Well then wouldn't it be better to see more money being spent at secondary level to even the playing field a bit more? Aim for there to be great state schools accessible to all?

No-one has to pay any money up front and no-one has to pay anything back until they earn a certain amount.

Not for tuition fees but you need money to live. Even if you get a full maintenance loan, it still doesn't cover basic rent in many places let alone bills or food and books.

If fewer 'working class' children want to go to university, so be it
Replace "working class" with "black". I mean, there's no barrier to entry, is there?

But you know, this type of data shows that there is a barrier to entry, it just isn't the barrier we think we are examining.

We can't just assume there are no barriers when there clearly are.

I am not sure what struggling to get a 2:1 signifies at the moment. Mostly the existence of mental health problems

Oh please - not the Mumsnet MH thing again And "mostly" ??

Let me be clear that I don't doubt for an instant this is the case for some, but isn't it scampering round the margins of the surreal to suggest that a lack of application, work ethic or sense of personal responsibility is mostly down to mental health?

I think funded education is a nice long term aim.

I think scrapping tuition fees is a populist attempt to grab ex lib dem and green voters, and that there are far better things to spend the money on in the current climate - considering it benefits those who go on to earn more after university more than anyone else.

I'm shocked labour are prioritising it over reversing more benefit cuts and freezes. I'd have thought that would have mattered more to them.

Good for them, this isn't France or Germany.

No it isn't.

The issue isnt really the tution fees it the fact they have trebled and that the interest rates which are well above inflation and also it is possible the loans will be sold off to private firms who could charge what they want.
Getting rid of maintenance grants has been the final straw for some students on low income.
Either students should pay fees but recieve a maintenance grant or no fees but a maintenance loan. Having both means debts of £50k plus.

considering it benefits those who go on to earn more after university more than anyone else
Is that true though? There are different types of benefit, no?

One is financial, obviously by the person doing the earning, but also in synergy with others to create new wealth via innovation and novelty.

And the other is societal. People directly benefit from living in a society where engineers are making cleaner cars, scientists are curing diseases, sociologists are fighting for minority rights and artists are creating beauty. Not to mention that educated societies have higher voter engagement, longer life expectancies, better education standards overall. That's ignoring the very direct, personal benefits one gets from medics and teachers (for example).

If I had had to pay loans, or had the threat of them over my head, i'd never have gone. I was the first person in my family to finish school, let alone go to university ( this was in 1989). I had a grant and worked two jobs throughout university to pay living costs. I was blown away by the opportunity and it allowed me to have ambition.

Years down the line, i've been teaching for (too) long. I won't be able to afford to send my own kids to university, and due to the devaluation of my wage i can't support them when they are there or indeed, save much towards it. But I am forever grateful for my opportunity and heartily regret that my children won't get one. I simply cannot recommend that they saddle themselves with huge debts and neither would they wish to. It's a real shame. My dd wants to be a midwife but the funding has been removed. My ds would love to study land management, but without sponsorship it's out of our league.

At least the tuition fees should be paid, and if we want teachers, nurses, paramedics, doctors, indeed, any public sector in the future then we shouldn't make getting into those sectors, which are not at the end of the day highly paid in the main, prohibitive for vast sectors of society.

And neither would I say that only "useful" degrees should be supported. For me, watching one of my students have the ability to leave his background ( which was awful and unsupportive) then decline that chance because of the complete lack of financial support was heartbreaking. He was truly an able student, who wanted to study PPE. Had a place at Oxford but declined because even with bursaries we found him, even with loans, he couldn't rely on the financial background of wealth to amass debt of that sort.

We can be shortsighted as a country. The teachers my age, who were trained "for free" are leaving. Nurses and doctors are leaving. It's a real crisis.

The introduction of higher tuition fees has no impact on the number of applications our universities have recieved with record numbers applying for places. Scrapping them would cost a fortune and deliver no obvious benefit to higher education.

But obvious benefit to those in higher education.

Plebasconsidered, YOU don't have to be able to afford to send your children to university.
They can use student loans.
The fact you don't want them to have debt is a seperate issue.
They are not prevented from going to university.