To think student funding is in crisis and yet another area this government just can’t be bothered to fix.

[Fr00tL00ps]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-67206767

To get access to full loans your family needs to earn under £25k. In this climate many families above can’t afford to top up and fund now sky high rental fees and utilities as they’re paying for rises in their own. There is now a two tier uni experience with the children of those under £25k and richer families able to top up able to attend uni full time and eat.

Why is it ok for for young people to live in poverty just because they’re students ? Also why is parental income taken into account for an 18 year old at uni living away from home but not for an 18 year old living at home receiving Universal Credit?

Or we could vote in a government that gives a shit , is creative and sorts things out thus ensuring we keep producing doctors, nurses , teachers, engineers, STEM etc alongside ensuring uni is accessible for all.

We don’t actually have to turn a blind eye to the increasingly publicised problems with students
or the shit this government keeps serving up.

FYI my dd is far from coddled. A discussion re the ludicrous situation with student loans and worrying way things are heading does not a coddled student make.🤔

@Fr00tL00ps Or we could vote in a government that gives a shit

that sort of emotive language doesn't make for an intelligent discussion.

Newsflash - governments aren't there to 'care' they are there to govern.

What makes you think it would be better under Labour?

Starmer - (AKA the 'human bollard') has already done a U-turn on tuition fees

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/keir-starmer-tuition-fees-pledge-university-labour-prime-minister-b1078102.html#:~:text=Student%20leaders%20on%20Tuesday%20slammed,of%20axing%20university%20tuition%20fees.

Or we could vote in a government that gives a shit

Frootloops how do you think Labour will improve universities?

The country is on its knees, it can’t afford to support everything anymore - we can’t afford for everyone to go to uni

As a society, do we want nurses, doctors, scientists, architects? Yes the individual receiving the education benefits, but so does society. Both should fund higher education and yes, the model is broken.

People are using this emotive language because they are angry. So angry at what this incompetent, self-serving, current government have done to utterly destroy the country over the past 13 years. They have totally shafted ordinary people, tanked the economy, destroyed our public services and lined their own pockets and those of their rich mates. It's no coincidence that the number of billionaires has trebled during their tenure or that the gap between the richest and poorest is now wider than in Victorian times. More than 1/3 of those billionaires have donated money to the Conservative Party. I wonder why. So people have every right to use emotive language. They've been robbing us blind for 13 years and getting richer and richer off the back of it.

So how do you and these 'angry ' people think Labour could organise it better?

Given that Starmer has already u-turned on tuition fees ?

@myspottyhanky you assert that emotive language doesn't make for an intelligent discussion yet you trot out Johnson's cheap reference to Starmer as a 'human bollard'. Hmmm

That wasn't me! You've got the wrong poster.

Sorry @LyndaLaHughes. I spotted that right after posting and edited it.

No problem- especially as we appear to be in agreement on this!

That wasn't an emotive post.

It was written quite 'sang froid'.

Anyway how do folks think Labour can do better?

DD has just started a medical degree. She cannot get a part time job. No bursaries available. She said everyone else on this course appears to be rich. we will manage but it is challenging. I was supposed to retire due to ill health but will keep working until she finishes her degree, or for as long as I can. She's going to have hideous amounts of debt by the time she finishes this degree.

@myspottyhanky well put it this way, Labour couldn't possibly do any worse than the current lot of charlatans.

Well that doesn't answer the question does it?

How do people think the system can be improved?

The system would be improved by raising the amount students can borrow and also making it clearer to parents that most are expected to contribute.

‘The worst thing about student funding at the moment is those poor kids who had to take on thousands of pounds worth of debt to have a shit experience during lockdown. They were charged for accommodation it would have been illegal for them to use at one point and then got no support with the crap online tuition they were given. It’s fucking outrageous and my sympathy lies with those students more than those who will have to work alongside study.’

This. This was my poor son - the university more or less bullied him and the other students to move into their expensive student halls - then 3 days after he arrived and was starting to get to know people, full lock down was imposed. They even had a security guard to the gates of the student campus to stop kids leaving site apart from a single trip to the grocery store. His mental health suffered massively, his lectures were all online in his bedroom, he started missing them and sleeping much of the day. Failed at the end of the year. He never met his tutors, the only time he went into a university building was to pick up the key to the expensive accommodation (prison). A friend of mine with a Uni age child was told at that time (by someone in government) ‘whatever you do, don’t send your kid to the accommodation, keep them at home’ problem for the Uni was if the students didn’t pay the rents, the Uni took the hit. Editing to add - the Uni were f-ing useless, offered no support to the kids or my son once he’d failed. Manchester Metropolitan I salute you, you and the government ruined my son’s life. Rant over…

No he had student loans, which we paid off early (which sadly I don't think is an option now as the new loan system is not very flexible)

The universities were utterly at fault during this period and there should have been some kind of fines or system imposed to stop them charging as much as they did, when they clearly were not giving the service they should have been. They should be utterly ashamed for taking over 9K a year of every student and yet producing a poor level of service for that money

It was Labour that started tuition fees and pushed everyone to go to Uni - they caused a large part of this

It was Labour that started tuition fees and pushed everyone to go to Uni - they caused a large part of this.

Yes - why did Tony Blair think it a good idea to vastly increase the number of university students?

What sort of percentage should be going? not covered, beyond the generic "fewer”?
boys3 I think my 2 dc are an example of who shouldn’t be going. I said on another thread that I begged them not to go as neither are interested in academic work but they insisted and the argument I couldn’t refute was so many jobs are only open to those with a degree.
So off they went and it was a waste of their money and the university’s time. My dc complained that he’d been told off by his tutor which was ‘unfair’. I said I bet it wasn’t unfair and it must be frustrating for the tutors to have students doing the minimum such as been described at length upthread.

They were only contributing to tuition fees though.. The government paid the rest.

Yes - why did Tony Blair think it a good idea to vastly increase the number of university students?

Because education - life everything else capitalism gets it's talons into - becomes a commodity. Like water, food, air, transport, medicine. Anything you can name has to become a commodity to be traded and profited from. News and information. Even your right to feel secure on the streets. It's all a commodity to someone somewhere. And if it isn't, it probably isn't real.

@Heidi75 I don't think Labour is blameless in this situation but they can't be held responsible for the mess student funding has evolved into under thirteen years of Conservative government.

I believe Blair genuinely thought opening up university to more DC would encourage social mobility. However, what wasn't thought through was that unless you have some degree of balance between degree courses and jobs available in the real world everything is going to be out of kilter. Hence currently lots of disillusioned graduates doing unrelated non-degree requisite jobs laden with debt that they will possibly never pay back and gold dust plumbers earning £££. I think it is irrefutable that as a society we need doctors, teachers etc, preferably from all walks of life but society can surely function quite happily without degrees in social influencing with DC paying the same fees for the privilege of it. I know that is an extreme comparison but it makes me furious that institutions can take these fees from kids who are then saddled with silly debt for useless degrees that take them absolutely nowhere.

It's blindingly obvious that for social mobility to happen you need a financial support system that actually works. The ridiculous £25k household income threshold for higher level funding is a prime example of a ludicrous funding system. This totally flies in the face of social mobility, particularly for degrees like medicine etc. where students can't work while studying. They can't even borrow for their fifth year of study and the fifth year bursary doesn't cover any living costs at all. I can't see how any kids can do it without the bank of mum and dad behind them. I wonder how the Tory voting base would have reacted had they alleviated pressure on funds available by abolishing any student funding beyond a certain threshold of household income rather than hitting at the lower end.

I agree that students had a bad experience but universities didn't know that there was going to be lockdown again once they started. Also, I don't think Manchester Met have their own accommodation so private landlords were making money out of it. Universities don't support students who fail and need to leave. Why would they?