Government stuffing young people again, student loans

[Binjob118]

Great day to bury the news that from next year student loans will be repayed over 40 years instead of 30. This makes a massive difference. Hate this government and Tony bloody Blair for stopping free tuition. Of course, won't affect all the rich kids who never take out the loan. This on top of impossibility of young people ever being able to buy a home makes me want to scream. Totally screwed. Certainly don't think IABU!!

@leopooh

Why are so many graduates not earning enough currently to pay the loans back?

Why are graduates so cheap? The same reason anything is cheap: oversupply. Start reducing the number of graduates and wages will slowly rise.

Can I just suggest that all people that think that all degrees bar STEM and Medicine are useless; arts shouldn't be taught, or god forbid anything else creative, media, english... Do not ever watch tv, films, read newspapers or books! Do not consume any culture, any form of symbolic expression. We don't need it right? and anyway, school leavers can just knock it up on their own in the library. yea, right, this is exactly how it works

by the way, do people know that creative industries is a bigger part of UK's GDP than pharma?

@Crimesean

But who should pay for uni then? It's pretty unfair that Joe Taxpayer has to pay for the education of graduates who will either go on to massively out-earn him, OR who will piss about for 3 years, get a pointless degree from somewhere shite, and then still end up doing some non-graduate-level role that doesn't enrich society.

We don't need more graduates - we need fewer, and for only the brightest to go to university (and for the less bright - they can jolly well pay for it themselves, not the taxpayer).

I totally agree with this. Unless you need a degree for your profession there's little point in having one.

You need to have a degree to become a nurse or a teacher or plenty of other jobs that we will all benefit from having highly trained people doing. I don’t understand why these degrees are paid for on a personal loan/debt basis.
We need to fill those jobs with the very best people we can and from diverse backgrounds. Some great candidates will be put off by the debt side of it.

@ButtockUp

Education should always be free . However, we have opened the floodgates to too many students, going to university, with no end result. Hence we have pubs , hotels, restaurants full of graduates with no job to go to and an endless supply of students competing for jobs with non graduates.

My mum told me an old anecdote from the Eastern European country that she came from.

A man stands in front of a large crescent of doors at the foot of some stairs leading to a university.
A graduate walks down the stairs towards him.
The man says "Congratulations! What's your degree?"
The student says "History."
The man says "Hmmm.. let's see... how about this door?"

A while later , a student walks towards him and the man says "Congratulations! What's your degree? The student says 'engineering' then the man says " which door would you like to walk through?"

We need to start gearing higher education towards our needs.
There's nothing wrong with academia but we really need to focus on what our nation needs.
Higher level thinking will always be needed but I think we've allowed too many students in to higher level education where there will be no end result.

I don't get this... It may be because I am a history graduate to be fair.

leopooh

@titchy but why only some of it? That's one of the reason we have this action because not enough people who took out loans in the last 20 yrs or so have paid enough back

The policy was actually designed with the intention and expectation that it would not all be paid back, but not to this degree. Many reasons for that not happening - interest rates looking very high compared to the prevailing low rate environment, uptake, wage projections. The loan book has grown more than projected, and less has been paid back. Technical changes to the way it is calculated in the governments fiscal measures have also happened meaning it has more impact.

This is very regressive way of dealing with it though - richer students will benefit and poorer students who had to take more out and/or middle earners will end up paying huge amounts more by this change.

I agree that squaring the circle of everyone getting completely free education and unlimited numbers isn’t really possible - but I’m not sure this is the correct approach

"We had the smallest difference between rich and poor in the 1960s and 1970s when education was free with maintenance grants for all."
A lot fewer people went to University in the 60s and 70s.

"You need to have a degree to become a nurse or a teacher."
You didn't previously. And few would argue that the quality of teaching or nursing has improved since degrees were required.

And few would argue that the quality of teaching or nursing has improved since degrees were required.
bollocks

[quote Frankola]@labyrinthlaziness If it was possible to get into a university on a C or lower then I can guarantee that those universities were not considered to be any good. And of course, "back in the good old days" (as you say) employers looked very closely at the quality of university you went to. So I doubt it would have gotten you very far in comparison to someone who got better grades and went to a better quality institution.

Sorry, but that's life.[/quote]
Again, I'm sorry to say you are talking through your hat.

Getting a degree from anywhere was very valuable.

You sound awful snobbish, and like that is clouding your thinking. The world did not think as you do.

As the pandemic showed it’s also fantastically important to have people to work in care homes, work in supermarkets and drive lorries non of which require you to write 12,000 word dissertations. Why on earth should they pay tax towards people that out earn them? They should be taking home more in their wage

Why should the child-free pay taxes for the self-indulgent sproggers?
Why should those with cars pay towards public transport?
Why should with every intention of jumping off a bridge at 60 pay towards pensions?

On average people with a degree earn 10k a year more so over a working life of 40 years thats a potential 400k.

If they haven't paid back there loan in30 year then they have not utilised there degree why the should the rest of us subsidise them

Start reducing the number of graduates and wages will slowly rise.

Wage stagnation hasn't happened because of too many graduates...

@microbius

Can I just suggest that all people that think that all degrees bar STEM and Medicine are useless; arts shouldn't be taught, or god forbid anything else creative, media, english... Do not ever watch tv, films, read newspapers or books! Do not consume any culture, any form of symbolic expression. We don't need it right? and anyway, school leavers can just knock it up on their own in the library. yea, right, this is exactly how it works

by the way, do people know that creative industries is a bigger part of UK's GDP than pharma?

Don’t conflate a degree with qualifications. Do all of these creative/media subjects require further learning? Yes. Do they require a DEGREE? Not necessarily.

Also the learning in the library comment was relevant to a more ‘educated’ populace in general. You don’t need university for that.

Of course this is an ideal world. Currently it’s a game of chicken as to whether employers or the government cave.

[quote worriedatthemoment]@Kumbaya12 but do to part time you have to live near a uni and many of us don't have that luxury and the online way still costs
My ds is doing a degree that some on here would consider pointless but we live in a small town with lid jobs and the decent ones often want a degree , almost any degree
So for him its for independence , to make him see its a big world out there and a degree as he needs it for the 2 jobs he is currently considering
He's taken a year out to work to get some funds behind him as well and some work experience , but when he was looking for work most places just wouldn't look twice at him let alone employ him and the job he has is temp and many in the company have been there for years still on temp contracts
They will continue to go to uni while the options remain limited
Most of them can't even get a parr time job now until there 16 , unlike when I was younger when many of us had sat jobs at 14 [/quote]
You can get loans for an online degree.
Which has both lower fees and no maintenance .

requirements have become ridiculous for jobs and it’s a question of who blinks first.

Having said that there’s other things you can do, like an accounting qualification. Which when complete is an NVQ Levek 7 and with a top up degree.

Your son sounds fine, with the work experience etc he’ll get a get decent job. But for people who think uni = job they might was well consider not wasting their time. If they wanted an ‘entry level’ job in your small
Town stay home and get a degree

Education is one of the most fundamental infrastructure of any country. GDP percentage spent on education reflects the country development trajectory years down the line. Education, both fundamental and higher education, should be free in theory.

Some policies should be aimed at channelling young people towards suitable vocations. Such as pushing and marketing advantages of apprenticeship. For example a gas engineering course takes people on at 16 and graduate at 22. A qualified gas engineer starting salary is 30k-35k. Theoretically if you could become an apprentice at a firm and they put you through the course the firm will have to pay for the course. At 22 you will be debt free and making at least 30k per year.
Apprenticeship is a viable and attractive option in European countries where higher education is free. Universities imo are meant for academic excellence and research, not for the masses to obtain a piece of paper for any job application.

Current situation is, by my observation, partially fuelled by the ejection of elitism and the belief that if everyone is exposed to the same opportunity we could squash elitism and the society will become a fairer, more civilly advanced with a globally competitive labour force. And the cost has been passed onto individuals because the country cannot spend greater percentage of GDP on education than it already has due to constraints and commitments elsewhere. Whether having a graduate degree for everyone give us the advantage as a more productive labour force and competitive edge in the global market is yet to be seen.

Many more graduates would pay off their loans if the interest weren't so exorbitant. The main issue is that interest is applied from day one, so by the time a student graduates (IE when they "get the benefit" of the education funded by the loan) they owe far more than they borrowed.
If interest was only applied from the end of the course, or was capped at RPI/base rate, then graduates would only pay back what they borrowed in real terms, rather than spending years paying back interest on interest.
The other issue is retrospective changes to student loans. We expect young adults to take out loans with no certainty of the terms on which they'll repay it. Any loan changes should only affect new loans, and terms should be fixed when the loan is taken out.

It's ridiculous to make people waste 3 years of their life running up debt to get a degree to get a job that doesn't require a degree. Then their debt will never be paid off whereas if they started the job at 18 instead of 21, they'd be earning money and paying taxes for those 3 years.

@roastedsaltedpeanut
Universities imo are meant for academic excellence and research, not for the masses to obtain a piece of paper for any job application

Say it louder for the people in the back!

Am pretty shocked by posts saying students shouldn't study history or English since it's not vocational.

If nobody is allowed to be educated since only crap jobs are available then don't we need to ask why our economy delivers so many low paid jobs that don't really use people's skills?

I mean a history degree would give you the skills and knowledge to ask those questions. But hey, we should just all fall into line - there's no point thinking about how to change things .

@BigGreen no critical thinking allowed 😆

@BigGreen

Am pretty shocked by posts saying students shouldn't study history or English since it's not vocational.

If nobody is allowed to be educated since only crap jobs are available then don't we need to ask why our economy delivers so many low paid jobs that don't really use people's skills?

I mean a history degree would give you the skills and knowledge to ask those questions. But hey, we should just all fall into line - there's no point thinking about how to change things .

It’s not the lack of highly paid jobs per we, but a lot of ‘graduates’ don’t have these skills. A degree is a piece of paper that means nothing. And I have spent a lot of time interviewing, recruiting, managing graduates

*per se

Equally..a lot of non degree holders do!

@Florenz

It's ridiculous to make people waste 3 years of their life running up debt to get a degree to get a job that doesn't require a degree. Then their debt will never be paid off whereas if they started the job at 18 instead of 21, they'd be earning money and paying taxes for those 3 years.

Yep, nail on head.

@Curiousmouse

I think a part of the debate should be the terrible value for money of many university degrees. It's robbery, actually. Pile em high and sell em cheap philosophy.

And again, nail on head.