To Think That Students Studying Science Degrees Shouldn't Be Charged Higher Fees?

[LadyLance]

www.theguardian.com/education/2018/feb/18/cutting-tuition-fees-would-backfire-justine-greening-warns-theresa-may

Teresa May wants to make arts/humanities courses cheaper for undergraduates, and not every university course should cost £9250. Her rather interesting position is that the market has not done what she has expected (sorry, the free market has not emerged), so she is going to try and force it into a shape that's more pleasing, and perhaps more appealing to young people.

I don't work for a university, so I don't know how much your average humanities course costs to run. I do know that many (most?) STEM courses with regular labs, expensive equipment and heavy contact hours cost more than £9250 to run. Although these departments can bring in the big money grants, I do think there is a perception that (some?) universities overfill humanities courses in order to subsidise their science departments.

However, I'm worried about the proposals putting people from low income backgrounds or who are the first in their family to go to uni off STEM courses. I'm also wary that the proposals really amount to a real terms cut for universities in terms of funding.

Obviously the current loans system is unsustainable for the government when many graduates in all fields will never pay their loans back in full. Even high earning doctors might go to work abroad, or take career breaks, and so not repay their huge debts. However, I don't think this is the answer.

*@ChampagneSocialist1 Well it's not a STEM subject, and it's not expensive to deliver, so I can't see how she could justify letting universities charge more under her current proposals.

Is that about Law? Sorry I lost track a bit so am not sure. But if it is, I think the argument with Law is that it is actually quite expensive to deliver as laws keep being updated, there are new case laws to learn, so resources quickly become out of date and need to be renewed. Lecturers also need to keep their knowledge up to date.Whereas if you are studying Classics, not much has changed in a pretty long time!

Sorry, bold fail. That first bit should have been in bold!

Lecturers also need to keep their knowledge up to date.Whereas if you are studying Classics, not much has changed in a pretty long time!

Oh sure, Classics lecturers don’t need to keep abreast of new scholarship at all... just learn the canon off by heart and away you go.

@52FestiveRoad Yes, I was talking about law.

I accept that law lecturers might have more to do than some other lecturers. However, law is still a low contact time subject, and largely lecture based at most universities, and doesn't require expensive labs.

Based on this link epigram.org.uk/news/2014/11/its-official-arts-students-pay-for-science-degrees which is the only one of its kind I could find, most subjects are actually subsidising a very small number of expensive courses. It doesn't include law, but it does include psychology- where new research is always being carried out, and would be included in lectures. Psychology students may also have access to some expensive equiptment in labs, especially in 3rd year. If psychology is run for

Julie I disagree. Students on humanity/art degree courses have around 8 hours lecturer contact time a week so are heavily subsidising full time STEM courses. Do you really want to deter people from studying literature and history. We should be valuing all higher education subjects rather than moving towards a philistine society

Looking at universities international fees, law seems to be charged at the same level as other humanities subjects such as history, with the sciences being charged on a sliding scale (based presumably in part on how much they cost to deliver). £15,000-17000 seems standard for a humanities with science starting from £19,000 and going up to £22,000!

I guess that's where the truly free market prices a high level UK university education!

I suppose the thing is no one is paying fees upfront and payment only starts when salaries hit a certain level, so in reality STEM graduates who tend to earn more will end up paying back far more fees than arts graduate. So it can be argued the STEM graduates are subsidising arts graduates. At least half of graduates will not pay back any fees due to low salaries and this debt will be borne by general taxpayers. Personally I think the whole system is unsustainable and bonkers. In USA all university fees are paid upfront hence why parents start saving for the college fund from birth. No taxpayers unwitting the graduate debt there. The only winners in the system are the university senior management team.

Underwriting ffs

@ChapagneSocialist1 I hope we don't end up with a US style system. I would rather go back to a graduate tax than that.

I do wonder if we need a reduction in the number of students going to uni. Bring back quotas and government funding? Really, the Blair system (which is the system I went to uni under) worked ok. Students had a manageable amount of debt and are/were more likely to pay it back in full (partly as the repayment threshold was sensible £25.000 is stupid) but weren't charged real interest. The government provided some university funding (in acknowledgement that lots of those with degrees do usually benefit society), but there were also quotas on the number of students unis could take for each course.

The new system is just an unsustainable mess.

The new system is just an unsustainable mess

Why? From a students perspective its no different from a graduate tax that you pay on income over £25,000 but for only 30 years.

How is that a mess?

The engineers are the high earning ones, as are doctors, dentists and vets.

Ha, ha, wish this was true. I am mid-fifties, did an engineering degree, very rare for a woman in my day. Been in engineering ever since. Have a good salary, work PT but my FTE is well above average earnings, but nothing stellar. AND - nothing like the 100k's that 2 of my house mates (both with humanities degree) have earned. Admittedly one didn't have DC, which helped her career, but she has far out-earned both myself and the other housemate who did a STEM subject. And no, she didn't go into a 'profession', like law or accountancy, or a city job.

Yes, I could have moved into management if I had been that way inclined, and some of my colleagues do so (large consultancy, most senior UK/emea mgmt are from engineering background) but that could be said of any work area, progressing up the ladder/salary scale means going into mgmt. For those wishing to stay as engineers, salaries are nothing like Doctors or Dentists. Maybe they are in some specialist areas of engineering but not in my multi-disciplinary company.

DS was interested in being a vet. Changed his mind at GCSE stage, not for money reasons, but he had been to a couple of vet seminars at uni during YR 11, where they were told how much most vets earn. Less than my FTE salary, though I appreciate it would be higher for a partner own practice. Certainly not as much as Doctors, for similar training years.

@Julie8008 It's an unsustainable mess for the country, as most students are borrowing far more than they will ever pay back. The scheme is projected to be massively in deficit- and it's still not funding universities properly.

@Kath6144 I accept it varies between different types of engineering, but on average, engineers do tend to be high earners. Equally, vet grads are still among the highest graduate earners (although they put in a lot of hours, so the hourly wage may not be very high). I accept there are outliers, but the plural of anecdote is not data. Law students tend not to earn that well- lots of humanities subject out earn them, I would guess your friends had degrees in economics, a language or a traditional subject like english lit or history?

most students are borrowing far more than they will ever pay back
Which isn't in itself a problem, it just means higher earners pay more back.

it's still not funding universities properly
where is the evidence of that? all i hear is universities saying there are properly funded for the first time ever.

It's an unsustainable mess for the country, as most students are borrowing far more than they will ever pay back.

So just to be clear, the solution for a situation where people take loans and pay some of it back is to introduce a free system where people pay nothing back? There are plenty of good arguments for free university education, but this is a spectacularly bad one.

I do wonder if we need a reduction in the number of students going to uni.

It's left as an exercise for the reader to determine if people who say this mean "I shouldn't have gone to university", "my children shouldn't go to university" or "other people and their children are scrounging wastrels".

It's also left as an exercise for the reader to determine if a hard cap on student numbers will mean (a) that fewer middle class children of graduates go to university or (b) fewer first-in-family children go to university. Hard cap on numbers enforced by limiting funding? My kids would have been fine; it's safe to assume "hard cap" is code for "close down some post-92s", and they're both at pre-1500s.

But otherwise, like most of the relatively well-paid middle classes, we'd have (depending on the precise details of the cap) either paid the UK fees up front, sent them to another Anglophone country or paid international fees in the UK. Which would be good business: fewer graduates means higher graduate salaries and less competition.

"Fewer going to university" means "make the value for those that do higher", and therefore makes moving heaven and earth to get a Wonka golden ticket for your child more valuable. Go and look up the proportion of students at the French Grande Ecoles who have parents who themselves went to a Grande Ecole to see where this ends up.

tl;dr: if you reduce the number of people going to university, the reduction will not be amongst the middle classes. They will be better placed to get their children into the free/subsidised places you create, and then perfectly able to fund their children through university for real folding money if needsbe.

If you think I'm wrong, go and look at the demographics of your local super-selective grammar school: does it have 1% FSM or 2% FSM? Then go and ask at the HMC private school nearest the super-selective how many of the parents also tried for places at the super-selective. If it's less than 75% I'd be stunned. Now: why do you think universities would be any different?

Invoking some golden age of the 1960 or 1970s (which is usually invoked by people who have no idea how university funding and selection in the 1960s worked) is bullshit for one simple reason: people going to university in the 1960s had parents born in the 1920s and 1930s when university takeup, outside the upper classes, was for practical purposes zero. Children going to university over the ten years are from parents born in the 1970 and 1980s, who went to university in the 1990 and 2000s, when university takeup was about 30% spread over a wide demographic. They're the ones who will win from any cap on numbers.

I did history and got 10 contact hours a week. My flat mate did medicine and had full time hours. Arts and humanities students should not be subsiding STEM subjects - that’s the government’s job.

It will be a disaster for science and engineering if it ever happened. I'm still incredulous about the decision to charge nursing students these ridiculous fees and maintenance loans. We have trouble recruiting nurses so lets cut all maintenance grants, hike up their debt and effectively give them a 30 year pay cut. It beggars belief.

I really wonder who May is talking to here. It is clear that the Tories will never intentionally make tertiary education fairer or actually focussed on providing support for those studying in shortage areas so what is this really about? I suspect that this is the build up to some kind of sop to the Berkshire crowd who are starting to feel a bit of a pinch when both Tarquil and Hermione are off studying art history.

I suspect that this is the build up to some kind of sop to the Berkshire crowd who are starting to feel a bit of a pinch when both Tarquil and Hermione are off studying art history

Oh don't be ridiculous

The problem is not that certain subjects are more expensive than others it is that the burden of debt is too great on this generation who will not earn as much comparatively as their parents generation and will struggle to own their own homes until middle age. Framing this as arts vs science is a dangerous thing that could damage recruitment in important areas.

Ridiculous to suggest that the Tories will act in the interests of their voting base? Hardly.

Another way to look at this is that, in the end, what they actually pay for the course is what they pay back, not what they pay up front.

In my opinion the real issue is not the disparity in value for money between courses, but between institutions. Everyone knows that degrees from some institutions are worth more than degrees from others, and yet almost every institution charges the maximum.

Perhaps if there were less people going to university to 'study' nonsense subjects then there could be reform in the university system.
It is not that people choose NOT to study STEM subjects but that many of them are not intelligent enough to do so.
If you can have a place on a course that accepts 3 D's then that is not a subject that should be taken at a university.
If there was a sensible minimum value to any university degree then we could filter out the 'non university level' courses and stop this race to the bottom. Not everyone who wants to do a degree is capable of doing so and by reducing entry levels to some farcical levels we are creating problems.

Universities already receive more govt money per student for more expensive-to-teach subjects like sciences. It's this model they need to adjust if they want to put more money into STEM.

A cap on student numbers would sort that out quite well or an actually well funded programme of technical and vocational education which could allow some institutions to refocus away frome offering poor quality traditional academic subjects.

If the majority of student loan money never gets repaid, to me that's a sign the Universities aren't delivering that value that was expected/assumed when the system was set up.

I have a solution which will help ensure courses add value.

The government should introduce clawbacks on the loans for tuition fees, whereby any tuition fee loans written of (because the student didn't earn enough to repay them) must be repaid to the government by the university. Well, not directly, but by their insurer. When they allow someone onto a course where tuition is funded by a loan, the university must insure the loan so that the government will be repaid by the insurer if the loan is not ultimately repaid by the student.

The cost of this insurance will obviously increase tuition fees, but the size of the increase will depend on the course and the average student taking it. If this increase makes the course so unattractive it has to be cancelled, that's a good outcome. A hidden cost has been brought into the open, and when people can see the true value of a course, they no longer want it.