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.

Totally agree shamoo.

Would have far more confidence in labour if they'd suggested that.

Noone in politics seems to be looking for clever, workable solutions.

It's either more money thrown at everything or nothing

I agree that we cannot have a massive increase in the numbers of people going to uni. But I think there is a much better way to control this than having it controlled by ability to pay

Quite. I think there are too many people going to uni now, some who aren't suited to an academic degree course and may benefit more from a different kind of training. But that is a separate issue from fees.

The high fees do put some poorer students off.

Who decides what is a pseudo degree that won't lead anywhere?

Good point.

Also who knows what you will need to have a degree for in the future?

You didn't need a degree to teach or to go into nursing in the not so distant past.

You've answered this yourself - because it's an investment in your future

It's also an investment in the future of the country.

It's in everybody's interest to have the highest educated, best informed workforce possible.

at the point of applying for degrees, you should research and do a cost vs benefit analysis of what it'll cost and what you hope it'll lead to.

If you want to do something purely for interest, you have to have some idea of what you'll do after for a job in any case.

Those saying that scholarships should be awarded based on merit are forgetting that this may not benefit students that go to a lower performing school. E.g. Leeds University offer a £4000 scholarship for engineering if the student achieves 2A stars and an A at A level. I would think most students gaining this would have been to a good school if not a fee paying one. They are unlikely to have gone to a failing school.

What would be in everyone's interest? If people did appropriate levels of good quality education. It's not in the UK's interests to push non-academic children down the degree route necessarily.

I do think if you work in the public sector you shouldn't need to pay your tuition fees back. If you work in the private sector then you should pay them.

Why?

A relative has been charged 9k a year for an IT degree. He has had limited support and the tutors can't be bothered, and he found a few of them hard to understand due to language barriers etc. When he needed a reference for a job, it took 3 months of begging and chasing and he almost lost his position because of this. Charging students and then having tutors not showing even the slightest bit of interest in their students is atrocious.

I would love to see fees abolished for students studying anything to do with the NHS (nursing, midwifery, doctors, paramedics) and all teaching roles. These are essential roles which need to be filled and it's hard enough getting people to want to do these jobs without having a lovely debt of £54k hanging over them for life.

There is no shortage of applicants for doctor training. Medical schools are over-subscribed many times over for doctors.

What is the point in some degrees anyway? especially the ones based on theory. You're just paying the lecturers to mark your work and offer feedback for an extortionate amount of money.

A higher level of education is good but why do lecturers need 9k+ for a bit of marking /year?

Give it for free so everyone has the same qualification level hence making job search much more difficult.

There's no shortage of applicants to be doctors, but only a certain percentage will make the grade. We actually don't train enough doctors, hence the NHS reliance on foreign doctors.

We should, as a society, educate our populace as well as we can. Everyone benefits from a well-educated population. Are GCSEs devalued because everyone does them?

Yes, GCSE's are devalued. Go back into the 80s' and a handful of GCE's at C grade or above was the "standard" for decent jobs. Over the years, those same jobs new require a degree. If more and more people get degrees, then the new "norm" will soon be a masters degree or doctorate, and so it goes on.

So how do other countries which offer free tuition (or at least much lower cost) in HE manage?

@bumbleymummy Correction*

Education is an investment in EVERYONE'S future.

From doctors and nurses to teachers and law professionals to dentists and detectives and engineers and scientists to curators of fine arts and historians and students of politics to communications experts to business developers and all of those in between, educating society is only ever going to improve everyone's life.

I find it baffling that people are questioning whether this is a good idea. Don't devalue the importance of an educated society.

I think its a fantastic idea - knowledge and learning shouldn't have a cost. I think scrapping tuition fees but continuing to have students and their famillies pay their living costs while studying in the perfect way to ensure a wide range of people can go to university, if they are clever and academically minded, without devaluing the whole thing by having everyone going and some studying the so called pseudo degrees. Again, I would hope this would be done in conjunction with a robust appreticeship/industry scheme for those not academically minded.

So basically back to how it used to be without maintenance grants sounds ideal to me.

@ hellsbells exactly - invest in lower performing schools so that its students can attain higher grades for scholarships. Having vastly more scholarships would likely bring down the attainment level required to get them which will also help.

and this: Don't devalue the importance of an educated society in spades

Absolutely terrible idea, it encourages university uptake across the board which is absolutely not what the labour force needs.

In theory I think it would be fine for it to be free for certain subjects, but that would distort the entire process.

I do think if you work in the public sector you shouldn't need to pay your tuition fees back. If you work in the private sector then you should pay them.

Errrrr why?

I genuinely think income tax is a more straight forward way of taking more money from those that end up earning more.

I don't at all see the need for a graduate tax.

erm, you're going to have a very poorly educated under funded tertiary sector where everyone has a watered down degree. You think tutors aren't responsive now? What'll happen when numbers increase overnight?

Our universities were in a terrible state due to underfunding before tuition fees were introduced.

You'll also increasingly under-value other routes as university becomes the beast that consumes spending on primary, secondary and non-university routes to jobs.

We should, as a society, educate our populace as well as we can. Everyone benefits from a well-educated population
Sums up my feelings exactly.

As if it is only Doctor X getting Salary X that gets any tangible benefit from her degree. As if it only Scientist Y getting Salary Y that gets any tangible benefit from his degree.

To reiterate, a well-educated population benefits everyone in that population.

Although I do think that pushing every young adult towards a degree isn't always the right thing to do. The lad doing an apprenticeship at his Dad's garage will provide societal benefits, possibly far more than my often theoretical knowledge production So someone said earlier - trim the pseudo-degrees (and as a scientist, I wholeheartedly support the arts and humanities - not all degrees can be judged on practical usefulness in the job market) and get our talented young adults fully-supported.