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.

NancyWake yeah private schools that rich parents send their offspring to! As far as a know being a private school teacher is much less stressful than those in the state system as there are smaller class sizes and good facilities. Those things are not true for unis.

I'm repeating almost word for word what lots of academics have said to me, it's already a high stress profession and adding to that does not mean the students get the best education they can. I would not think coming out with a debt of at least £36k while being taught by overstretched and stressed out academics a particularly good deal.

When I was at uni I had 3 lectures a week!! Certainly don't think it's worth the 9k
Not all subjects cost the same per student.

STEM is heavily subsidised by humanities.

I agree this is optional and needs to be paid for by those wishing to undertake it, surely Labour wouldn't have introduced tuition fees if it wasn't necessary?
According to this: "Tuition fees were first introduced across the entire United Kingdom in September 1998 under the Labour government as a means of funding tuition to undergraduate and postgraduate certificate students at universities, with students being required to pay up to £1,000 a year for tuition."
As far as I see it the country is financially on it's knees due to the bank disaster and certainly some mismanagement over the years from various parties....finances can add up in theory but until you get through the door at parliament I don't really think they either know/thought about the whole picture!!!

Cost of university used to be means tested, which meant that everyone could apply for free places, but only those on low incomes and benefits could be given them all free. There was a sliding scale of fees depending on income. This is what is needed again, then the middle classes who can afford fees can pay their own way. Means tested benefits/tuition fees do provide the lower income bright students with the ability to get to university and get out of the cycle of life on benefits. Means testing became a dirty word but it did its job I think.

If we can afford to give billionaire tax breaks am sure we can afford to help students pursue a degree

Or we could use the 20 billion that has been slashed from the NHS since 2010 under the disguise of austerity

Scrapping tuition fees can and should be done it works here in Scotland every person in the U.K. deserves the right to educate themselves

Works fine here in Scotland.. People doing degrees for the sake of or because it's free isn't a thing as far as I'm aware!

I ask again - what exactly are the barriers to children from non-wealthy backgrounds?
I wanted to go to uni when the fees weren't as ludicrous as they are now, the course i wanted to do was only available at one uni, miles away from home. Put simply I couldn't afford it. My parents were already supporting one sibling at uni and i would have got a small grant but it wouldn't have touched the sides of the fees, accommodation and living costs. The course would also involve me working placements during holidays so i would have been very limited with paid work to fund it.

We also had very little information about student loans, how they would work, whose eligible. Finances for uni just weren't talked about and how they work as its just assumed your parents can and will fund you. Your parents may not want to, they may not be able to , or their funds may be committed elsewhere. You may have grown up in a house struggling its arse off to put food on the table and the last thing you are going to do is put stress on that by going to uni. When you could earn a minimum wage job straight away and contribute
I can remember the stress when my child benefit ended, a small amount of money but it made a huge difference.

If you can't earn enough in a part time wage to pay for uni, than the fees are too high

I think it's a great idea for NHS degrees, teachers and scientists but not media studies and nonsense like that. It'll be back to the 70's where everyone goes to uni to waste another 3 years of their youth not studying.

Fcukthetww - TUITION FEES ARE NOT FREE FOR WALES AND HAVE NOT BEEN FOR AT LEAST 10 YEARS

sorry to shout but that pops up on every tuition fee/devolution thread and it's completely wrong.

For the last 10 years or so Welsh students (not Wales but which it sounds as though you mean Welsh universities) have had part of their tuition fee covered by the Welsh government in the form of a grant, but still had to pay the rest.

For part of this period there were conditions attached to this, e.g when I went you only got it if you went to a Welsh uni - if you went to one in England/Scotland/elsewhere you paid the same as an English student.

Also until JC made this new announcement the plan was for the grant to end completely in 2018 to match up with English students.

AFAIK the WG still haven't officially confirmed they will be following labour's lead and scrapping tuition fees if they get in, although presumably they will have to otherwise nobody will come to Welsh unis if they are the only ones still charging £9k!

We were desperately poor after my dad died and we sofa dived for my first year of grammar school.

I got good O & A levels and 5 uni offers, but family, friends & neighbours kept telling me that I should get a job instead and support my disabled mum

that going to uni was "getting ideas above my station"

With all that pressure anyway I would NEVER have even considered taking on debt
My disabled mum could barely keep herself, nothing left for me at age 18.
I would never have gone to uni

Fortunately, that was the 1970s, so my fees and the living allowance were paid
I got a BSc, then MSc, PhD and left with no debt, in fact a grand saved from additional commercial sponsorship of my PhD research

I was enabled to rise "above my station" from poorest wc to mc

As far as a know being a private school teacher is much less stressful than those in the state system as there are smaller class sizes and good facilities. Those things are not true for unis

It's very naive to think the only people who send their children to private school are rich. I gave an example of boarding fees, but there are many less expensive non-boarding private schools where parents have scrimped and saved to give their children a good education. That puts a lot of pressure on the children, the whole family in fact, as well as the teachers who are expected to deliver.

The stresses of the state/private sector are completely different. Teachers in top independents expecting to send 50% of each year to Oxbridge have different pressures to teachers in the state system fielding mixed abilities classes with x% of pupils whose first language isn't English, for example.

When you are very poor with absolutely no savings, the very thought of debt is horrific

As a teacher, I had a genius student who was not planning to go to university because of the debt. He came from a hugely poor background and couldn't bear to spend that much money. I kept on him and then he went to oxford. He will become an amazing academic.

Everyone without a degree benefits from the skills of those with degrees- Drs and nurses being the most obvious examples and those who get degrees mostly contribute more tax by being higher earners therefore paying back for more than just their education but also the education of others. Fees tend to put off those from poorer backgrounds and they also rely on debt more as no parental income subsidising living costs so by charging fees we get a skewed balance of backgrounds at university (more middle class kids) and those students only pay for their own education rather than theirs and others. A graduate tax would be fairest really.

I totally agree with OP, what a silly idea. It means more people will go to university, at a cost to the country, when half of the degrees students wish to partake in are meaningless. My DH has an excellent job which he required no degree for and the degree he has, he has not and will not use. It's great for those that want to do a vocational degree such as Nurses or Doctors or even Lawyers but media studies or the like.... If I was prime minister I would subsidise the 'more important' degrees, to encourage students to study in that field

With all that pressure anyway I would NEVER have even considered taking on debt. My disabled mum could barely keep herself, nothing left for me at age 18.I would never have gone to uni.

I don't know how anyone can reasonably deny that the prospect of a large debt puts poorer students off. Surely everyone knows someone who was or would have been put off by the debt.

Even in the days before fees, I have one friend who couldn't go as his dad had run off and he had to support his ill mother and younger siblings; and an old uni friend had to leave as he had to partially fund his parents as well as his course and the money just didn't stretch.

It's very naive to think the only people who send their children to private school are rich

Is it? A private school that I thought about going to (20 years ago before settling on the local comprehensive) now charges £5.5k a term. My parents are comfortable but would struggle to pay those kinds of fees regardless of how much "scrimping and saving" they did.

Comparing universities to privates schools is a straw man argument I'm afraid. Higher education should be available to all regardless of income whereas the state already provides education for free for those up to the age of 18. Sending your kids to private school is a choice and, except perhaps for the very few schools committed to widening access, is something only well-off people would even consider.

Why should people who chose to do apprenticeships have to pay extra taxes to pay for people to go to university. Fair enough for things like nursing where we have an extreme need as a country and they end up earning very little. But for arts degrees where students statistically end up earning less than those who didn't do degrees... That's really not very fair.

I think it's a great idea - investing in future talent.

Were the rates of people entering university much higher before the introduction of tuition fees?

Do we need tuition fees to stop more people studying for "easy" degrees - well given that I don't think we have fewer "easy" subjects since the introduction of tuition fees, I strongly that argument.

Tuition fees create a barrier to entry for people on low to middling incomes, who will go on to low to middling income jobs. Is that fair?

I don't think it is.

I think tuition fees are far too high. And the idea of tuition fees for things like nursing is ludicrous. It puts people off studying for the degree. Surely, it is the best interests of the profession and the country to have the best people studying for such vital careers.

I was in the first year of students who had to pay tuition fees. Luckily I ended up in a job where I could pay my loans off but I came out with a lot of debt and it stopped me saving for a house deposit. I had no family support at all.

Tuition fees should be lower and I think we should have schemes for nursing, teachers etc whereby their loans are written off if they go into the job.

Why should people who chose to do apprenticeships have to pay extra taxes to pay for people to go to university

^this is a flawed argument.

We pay tax into one big pot which then gets dished out accordingly in order to benefit the country as a whole. You cannot say that one apprentice funds another person's university degree - simply untrue as how would you follow the money to show that?

Our taxes fund many things. Many things we individually do not benefit from but collectively we do.

You're still getting anyone doing degrees. Only issue is they are now left with £60k plus debt. That's ridiculous and now you have people able to do degrees doing 1 year realising how expensive it is and quitting with £20k debt. They're potential and ability lost due to benign saddled with debt!

Believeitornot

To pay for things we raise taxes. People often complain about child benefit: "if you can't afford children why should I pay for them". All taxes go to pay for all things. If the government wants to spend more money the taxes are raised...

Additionally, my student loan won't be written off. So I will continue to pay my student loan (which is essentially a graduate tax) meanwhile, university becomes free for younger students.

Everybody can already go, you can get a loan. Most won't pay anywhere near the headline 45+k figure. Only very high earning graduates. Money saving expert calculated that you would need a 45k starting salary with a 3% plus inflation pay rise every year to just about pay it off before it gets written off. People on normal graduate salaries pay back very little.

Oh and nurses qualifications sicken me. How is it right that they were qualified by having a diploma and then all of a sudden not. You know, people who weren't academic being forced to be academic in a job that isn't academic and then removing burseries etc. Ridiculous but not as ridiculous as not having enough nurses to run the NHS....funny that!! So instead of having proper training and a system that has worked for the many, the solution is to employ nurses on bank from other countries..,. Conservatives, the party who wants low immigration but doesn't provide the ability to have it.

I'm sorry but the student fees has been costed but none of the conservative manifesto has been costed. They have lied and backtracked on so much. Theresa May has approximately 4 sentences that's all straplines rather than substance.