University Fees

[JaneEyreLaughing]

Just reading that the universities have floated the idea of students paying £12,500. FFS.

My working class mum and dad went to university in 1978 and 1980 and they didn't pay any fees. They say only 10% of people went to university then and so it was more affordable for local authorities to fund-now so many young people go, that it simply isn't practical for the state to fund it.

This must have a detrimental effect on working class kids who just can't afford to go without burdening themselves with massive debt.

AIBU to say that we need to get back to this-just the top 10% and your fees paid, whether your dad is a duke or a dustbin man. Everyone is equal-you just need to get into the top 10%-your background doesn't matter-just your ability as reflected in your grades.

Even saying the top 20% will be funded would be better.

@Ted27

I don't really think that saying contextual offers have been in existence since 2009 is a reason to value them. On those grounds, we would have to defend anything that has been in existence since 2009 and before, simply because of its longevity!

I don't think I'll be any research to understand them. I think I understand them well enough. from the few clear words you wrote about them. I'm appalled they exist but not surprised.

No wonder fees have gone through the roof.

Still, this is the way of the world now-All Must Have Prizes- and I imagine it's only going to get worse. It won't be long , I imagine, before an illiterate person trots off to university because, you know, why shouldn't they have the chance.

I'm putting that forward as an extreme example but my socks won't fly off in shock if someone comes along to say that it has already happened or, if it hasn't it should!

I seem to be out of step with the majority of those posting but I take a bit of heart from the fact that it is split almost evenly on the poll and I guess I'll have to be content with that.

Everyone is equal-you just need to get into the top 10%-your background doesn't matter-just your ability as reflected in your grades.

And this assertion is so so so wrong @JaneEyreLaughing . The Sutton Trust (a charity devoted to opening up educational opportunities for the most socio-economically disadvantaged young people) estimates that a bought education (fee-paying) adds about a grade on A Level results.

So that A for CLC or Harrow or wherever, might be a B at your local comp.

We know that everyone is not equal. Educational advantage maps onto socio-economic advantage really obviously. And we saw in the recent

THe UK education system is vastly better because it is less skewed to the rich and "nice-but-dim Tim/Henrietta" and has opened up to more "dustbin men's children" than ever before. This is a good thing.

But it doesn't come cheap. We have to decide as a country how we want to pay for it.

@JaneEyreLaughing You started a thread about unis but don’t know what contextual offers are? How odd.

Just as a matter of fact: 38% of 18 year olds choose to go to uni. It’s not 50%. We do have around 50% of the workforce with a degree. Adults and immigrants have them too.

There was by no means 80% getting full grants in many areas. I worked in grants and awards and it was far lower then this.

We either accept higher fees or we have fewer at uni. I think some unis should close as coal mines closed. Uneconomic and not needed. As for polys educating the vocstiinsl students! My DH went to a red brick uni to do engineering in the early 70s. Many unis were great for architecture, engineering and the sciences. No, they didn’t just produce lawyers and medics!

We should probably say no one at 18 should go to uni with less than CCC at A level. No 2 A levels and no Ds. We need to strengthen the middle route to employment and make that attractive. As for a “home” uni? Absolutely not. My DDs wanted the best. Not 99th best.

We need to do as Finland do = ban private education. Then, as in Finland, the people with money have a vested interest in making the education system better - that has happened in Finland since they banned private education.

However, we now have the situation where employers expect a degree for many jobs that don’t need it and that will not change so we simply can’t stop people going to uni.

Is there any evidence that universities provide any value what so ever for the fees they currently charge. As academic institutions maybe they should provide the evidence before they complain about under funding.

@JaneEyreLaughing

So that's 15 years that contextual offers have existed.
So that's plenty of time for any of those professions you listed to have people with contextual offers qualified in their field.
Who knows you may even have encountered one , employed one, been treated by one - but you wouldn't know would you. Because they qualified just like everyone else

You critise the OP for showing a lack of understanding but then state that CCC should be the minimum criteria for university entrance, completely dismissing the thousands of very successful graduates who enter university as mature students or through other criteria where the limited and compromised A level system didn't recognise their abilities. You're views are actually a significant part of the problem. If you think A levels are the be all and end all of higher education entry then that is exactly why higher education is in crisis.
Thankfully, you are in an increasing minority.

And you worked in grants and awards so maybe you should know better than to post that.

What a snide opening sentence. Do you think everyone who read the BBC article and was shocked at the rising cost of tuition needs to know the ins and outs of something that wasn't around 15 years ago? Really? letting your privilege shine out there.

Anyone can see that the more people who go, the more it will cost as the state cannot afford to pay the fees of so many people. It's not complicated although, as is always the case with weak arguments, the purveyor of the argument tries to muddy the waters as much as possible.

However, you are correct when you write that we either accept higher fees or have fewer at uni.

I would prefer to have fewer at university and lower fees and I don't think I'm alone in that, although those with an agenda will make sure it never happens.

Goodnight to all.

I didn’t start a post about HE. What’s privilege got to do with anything! You listed a load of careers and thought the degree holders were incompetent! I’d just check it out first! I just happen to be better informed. It’s called general knowledge and that’s not privilege!

@ClareBlue I was talking about school leavers. Not adults. Although part time degree study is now a shadow of what it was. Maybe apprenticeships will turn that around? It’s ludicrous to think those 18 year olds with DDC are doing degrees when we need many more being trained for practical careers. No doubt they don’t want them but the cost of the new loans over 40 years will be considerable if they don’t get good jobs and pay the loans off. We currently have 50% of loans not repaid and the state is owed £280 billion in unpaid loans since they were introduced. Thats a lot of tax and a lot which could have been spent on something else.

When your parents went to uni not as many careers needed a degree. Nurses, police, teachers didn't need a degree.

Now they do so only sending 10% of people to uni wouldn't work.

@@TizerorFizz

A boy in the year above me went to Oxford to study maths. All he needed to get was EE and that was only for the grant.

My brother went to uni in 1983, his grant was £400pa as our parents earned well at the time. Had our parents not been willing to subsidise him he would not have been able to go.

I didn't go to uni until the late 1990s, I was the last year to get a grant.

I will never pay my loan back.

We need to do as Finland do = ban private education. Then, as in Finland, the people with money have a vested interest in making the education system better - that has happened in Finland since they banned private education.

Fantastic idea @AvocadoDevil - I agree. Most sociologists who work on mobility and class will tell you that part of the problem is not the difficulty of driving upward mobility - it's that those in entrenched positions of advantage will do ewhatever they can to hang onto that privilege.

To put it bluntly, we might need a bit of downward mobility in the upper & upper middle classes!

But Finland has only a population of around 8 million I think, and very much higher taxes than the UK public (voters) would tolerate ...

Snag with that is that Finland does have private schools

Mainly Steiner or faith-based, there are c.65 (of 2100), but they're more like academies here (still government funded)

So there is plurality in the system there. But no-one's really interested in fee-paying schools, because the existing ones are so good.

In UK there are over 30,000 schools (London alone has 50% more schools than Finland) and I'm not sure how easily their system would scale up.

The idea that government funded schools should be so good that everyone would be happy to send their DC to one (thus leaving many of the day schools in the private sector to wither, unless part of specialist provision) is the way that benefits the most people as individuals, also at a population level.

There is a conversation about the purpose of HE. I don’t think it is, or should be, simply about ‘getting a job’. I think that about education full-stop though. But there is an anti-education/intellectual sentiment in England at least that seems deeply embedded.

In terms of universities ‘failing’, this is likely to impact the areas and regions that already have significant socio-economic challenges. Society is still paying for the decline of industry and manufacturing with no ‘plan b’ to fill the chasm of those failures. The economic cost of allowing university failures will be as significant and have multi-generational impacts.

The sector cannot continue as it is financially though. Higher fees is an option. Differentiation by subject may be an option. Perhaps we need to look at graduate tax again, though I appreciate that also brings complexity and unintended consequences.

I am not even sure the debate is about HE alone. Post-compulsory education may need looking at in entirety to include FE.

It would be good to be able to have these conversations where the starting point is that education is a ‘really good thing’ though, for individuals and for families and for society.

I agree with you @IggysPop. At the same time, having worked with universities, I think there is something about value on some of the courses I have seen. I wouldn't encourage my own children to them. I think one of the things I struggle with our system is that there are huge variances in value, but it is sold as all being worth the same £10k per year. I don't know what the answer is. What we really need is excellent universities with excellent outcomes in all parts of the country. But really I think university outcomes reflect the people who attend them, as much as the uni itself adds value, and our society is so imbalanced it is not an easy thing to resolve.

@sashh Oxbridge had their own entrance exams which you took in the 7th term at school. You might get an unconditional offer of EE if you were gifted. That was then. It’s not now!

I do think we need degrees in a variety of subjects but we have too many getting degrees that won’t help the degree holder or society. Not paying much back, and not contributing a lot in tax or not in jobs we need to grow the economy isn’t great value. It’s too expensive to go just for a fun few years. Parents have to pay towards maintenance now and plenty did in the past. DH’s parents did. Yes, they could choose not to and didnt pay up. Same as some parents do now. It has always cost money to go to uni if your parents had money, However we don’t want the brightest and best dc at the local uni if it’s 99 in the league tables. They deserve better.

our society is so imbalanced it is not an easy thing to resolve.

indeed. By the time they get to university it’s almost too late.

Uni fees and loans have made it easier for poorer dc to go to uni. They need to go to the best uni they can get to and aim high for a job. This starts to tilt society, it’s not as imbalanced az when the poor barely went to school and never went to uni. There’s a fantastic chance to get a better job and climb socially. Many middle class were poor several generations ago. Universal education has given vast numbers a lev up. Those who are good enough for uni should aim high. Not just the uni up the road.

OP's gonna be apoplectic when they hear about graduate-entry medicine. Even with contextual offers, many people on GEM didn't get the A-levels needed for undergraduate medicine.

Does it make them a worse doctor? Nope. Because A-levels are just one measure of ability to excel in a career - and often not a very good measure in the long run.

The “educational elite” that score top grades are those who go to private school or top state schools, with house prices in the catchment area showing a premium. Do you think that children whose parents are better off are brighter than those of poorer parents?

I don’t know about the 80s but university experience in the 70s was a largely middle class affair.

Intelligence, or lacK of it, is partly genetic. Or we would all be brilliant wouldn’t we? Often working class haven’t excelled at school. Actually often haven’t done passably well. So why would they have very bright dc? This isn’t likely. If they are WC through choice, that’s not the same.

Agree that A-levels aren't enough to succeed. Soft skills and graft are very important as well.

However, statistically, poor A-levels are good predictor of failure in academic field. Of course, there are individual circumstances, Einstein, etc, but still

How many young people who are high earners have CCC at A level? Yes, some, but overall it’s not very many. Selection tests tend to weed out those with lower A level grades too.