to ask another question about tuition fees?

[impossibledreams]

Following on from the many tuition fees threads, just wondering about the below. I had a debate with friends and suggested we'd have made different choices for university if skills shortage courses were cheaper or oversubscribed degrees were more expensive.

1. What's your degree subject?
2. Does it directly relate to your profession now?
3. Did you pay tuition fees - nil, 1k, 3k, 9k?
4. Would you have chosen a different subject if the fees were higher or lower?

I'll go first:

1. Sports Science
2. No use in current profession but needed a degree to enter
3. Paid 1k/year (if I remember rightly!)
4. Would still have chosen if fees were higher but equally could have been tempted by free tuition by doing a skills shortage degree

1. Graphic design
2. Currently sahm but am starting to build my portfolio for when DD2 starts school
3. 1.5k a year
4. Wouldn't have been able to afford anything more as couldn't get student loans.

I sometimes think I'd like to retrain but couldn't afford the childcare, let alone the fees.

1. Fine Art
2. Freelance illustrator, so probably came in handy!
3. Tuition fees were just over 3k when I started, but had to resit my first year due to one of my kidneys failing and had to pay 9k a year for the last two years as the tuition fees had just changed!!
4. Yes, without a doubt would always pick a degree in a subject I was passionate about as opposed to a degree I wasn't too interested (heart over head always, me!)

That's interesting littleflowershop, I changed degrees so basically repeated my 2nd year, but got to stay on old fees. So all my classmates were paying £3K except for me.

Letmesleepalready what would you like to retrain as? Graphic designer sounds interesting and family friendly?

I always wanted to work from home, so I could be around the DCs after school. But it's only since we've moved here that I've been allowed to (renting) so it's looking like it could work, but if I couldn't, I don't really know what I'd do instead, sometimes I fancy an engineering job, where I could earn enough to make it worthwhile.

I know letmesleepalready - I did query it both with my university and student finance and they were adament I had to pay the higher fees, which was lovely of them .

I think it's because I only had to resit 50% of my first year units, so I paid part time fees for the resit year, so when it came to starting the second year I was technically a 'new full time student'.

£37,000 in student loans and still haven't paid a penny back as I don't earn enough

My degree was American Studies. It was free - I graduated with about 6k of top up loans (grants being phased out). Not directly connected with job but did help (needed degree, has to prove enough Lit content to get onto English PGCE). Think I would
Still have followed the same route even if it had cost.

My degree was English, fees 9k. Went straight after A-Levels and probably would have picked something different if I'd waited, rather than picking my best subject as default. Now work in Uni admin (admissions) and about to start MA in Linguistics, which should be fun and I'm hoping will open some more doors

1. medicine
2. yes
3. nil. I am so old I had a full grant
4. I come from a working class family, first to go to uni, etc. There was a strong anti-debt culture. If there had been tuition fees, I suspect I wouldn't have gone at all. My grant changed to a loan by my third year and that was bad enough.

1. English and American Studies (joint honours)
2. yes
3. nil
4. I doubt I would have gone to university at all if I had had to pay tuition fees. My family were not well-off at all and would not have been able to support me during my course, and I would have been very worried about getting into that amount of debt.

my job is not directly related to my job but i needed a degree in anything to be able to get the job in the first place.

i paid no tuition fees but if i had had to, i might have have done something different but at 18 i had no idea what job i wanted so....

I went to Oxford and didn't pay fees. Awful family background and probably wouldn't have gone to uni at all if there were fees.

Don't use subject now and wish I could afford to retrain!!

Hospitality
Yes and degree allowed me to jump a few notches on the career ladder.
3K
I went in the last year of 3k places as a mature student. I wouldnt have gone if it was 9K

1. Law and history (joint honours).
2. Yes - work in legal and regulatory compliance.
3. £1k a year.
4. Don't think I would have studied a different subject but am not sure if I would have actually gone to university if I had to pay more for the fees.

1. medicine

2.yes

1. 1K /yr (last year of lower fees)
2. Couldnt have afforded to go if higher fees had been in place, 6 years at 9K (well actually 5 as NHS pay the last year) so 45K before living costs..... with no parental help (but too "rich" parents to get state help) you could easily end uk near 100K in debt. Now 6 years since graduation and im only just starting to pay off the capital on my loan, I can imagine having any more hanging over my head.

1. Medicine
2. Yes (anaesthetist)
3. No tuition fees. Not quite old enough for a grant, they brought in student loans in my first year.
4. If there had been fees I would have had to take out additional loans for them. I'd still have done medicine over any other subject (& realistically earned enough to pay the extra loans off), it might have made me think about whether I could afford uni at all though.

1. Law
2. Nope, I work in Marketing
3. No tuition fees - I'm Scottish
4. It may have affected what subject I chose if I had to pay, yes

Social Sciences + PG Diploma in SW
Yes - although now retired ( and had a second career of 10years in photography and music/arts outreach)
Nil
N/A

This was the late 60s/early 70s. Much much better system then. The country invested in education and reaped the rewards of a skilled workforce earning money and paying taxes. Mr Corbyn understands that - pity the current government don't.

Social Policy
Yes
No tuition fees but student loans and also a CDL for my post grad - about 12K debt in total
No - I loved the subject

1. Theatre and performance
2. No I'm now in the emergency services and intend to stay here :)
3. 9k but with welsh assembly grant so total debt for me is 3k a year
4. No I'm glad I did my degree, I loved it and had an amazing 3 years, made friends who are more like family and so much more confidence and communication skills as a result of my degree.

1. Maths
2. yes, I'm a maths teacher, but I didn't mean to be when I started uni, I just liked maths. I did other jobs before teacher training
3. I was the last year not to pay any fees
4. Probably not, maths is a useful degree for many jobs

I'm a teacher and I know that many young people studying A-levels have been put off university because of tuition fees and more and more of them are doing apprenticeships, especially in accountancy and engineering from doing maths A-level.

1. German and French (Joint Honours) + postgrad. technical translation & later PGCE
2. No, although I use the languages daily.
3. No fees, another oldie. Minimum grant for undergraduate degree & first postgrad as high-earning parents. Full grant for PGCE as I was then classed as independent since I didn't do it until I was 27 or thereabouts.
4. If I had to pay tuition fees I would probably go for Computer Science or Law, but still retain a language element somewhere.

I firmly believe that not everyone is suited to the rigours of an academic education, so would far rather see the most able, regardless of background, being encouraged to study subjects that are required by the country's economy (for free) than everybody having an automatic right to study/waste time in higher education and end up with large amounts of debt they may never pay off.

Thank you, really interesting reading. I totally agree with the posters that say about what you choose at 18/19 doesn't always have a bearing academically/professionally but the merit comes in the process of being there.

I do wonder if more younger people go now 'for the sake of it' despite the higher fees than previously.

I am against tuition fees. I would not have gone to university if there had been fees, and I believe the whole uni department I studied at would be empty. (I studied translation, and that's a very badly paid profession.)

Making it so that people only study what will earn them loads of money as they have to pay back the cost of studying leads to a society that doesn't do any thinking outside the box, has no appreciation for anything that doesn't give them immediate financial gain, and is, in short, soulless.

The US should be a warning example.

People aren't stupid. If you tell them what the economy wants, you don't have to blackmail them to study it. It's not like young people don't want jobs.

Sure, we can live in a world where most people have to content themselves with mediocre movies, mediocre paintings and mediocre literature because no one can afford to study art, or even dedicate much time to it, and being a good artist is only for the rich ... but I personally don't want to live in that world.

1)French and Italian
2) related but another humanities degree would have been ok - although I use the Italian for everyday life.
3) No fees
4) If I had had to pay fees, I'd have probably chosen something more likely to lead to higher pay - maybe Law.