AIBU to think that it would have been fairer to introduce a graduate tax than increase tuition fees

[Tryingtryingandtrying]

As it stands most graduates effectively pay a graduate tax for most of their working lives. Exceptions to this are those who do not earn enough, those who pay themselves minimum wage out of their own businesses and those whose parents are wealthy enough to pay fees up front as well as all living costs. A graduate tax would mean everyone who benefits from university education contributes, instead of those on middle incomes paying the most of all.

Yabu - it was better to increase tuition fees
Yanbu - a graduate tax would be a fairer way to fund university study

It doesn't work like this though does it? I learned this the hard way after getting straight As at A-Level. I work in law but I eventually gave up trying to get a solicitor's training contract because unless you have a Russell Group degree and can afford to do vacation schemes and other work experience for free firms just aren't interested. Now I'm stuck in a situation where I could never afford to self fund the SQE on my wages and my firm have no interest in paying it because I'd cost them more. Sure, there's the odd incredibly low paid apprenticeship out there but not enough to make a difference.

Unless you go to a Russell Group university or at least one that can mingle in the league table like Bath or St. Andrew's a degree is just a waste of money these days. It'll get you nowhere and I speak from experience as someone who tried to "save money."

So many people on here in complete ignorance of how the loan system works currently. The current system means that the people who pay least for their degree in total are those whose parents pay it upfront; those who pay next least are the highest earners - so a lawyer or management consultant will pay less in total for their degree than a nurse, civil servant, doctor, midwife etc.

My suggestion is simpler: apply the system for Medicine degrees to everything. There's a cap on total numbers based on job demand, an application system; if you apply and don't make it, you don't do the degree.
Or a slight variation, if you apply but don't make the cut, you can pay the full amount it costs to run the degree, plus 30% or so on top. Combine this with plenty of degree apprenticeships sponsored by employers who get the benefit of workers right away.

Ok, so Psychology and Fashion are pointless degrees.
So I guess the first thing to do would be to shut down the London College of Fashion and no longer offer Psychology as a subject. What other subjects are considered pointless Mickey Mouse degrees?

Whilst neither degree is pointless, the numbers taking these degrees is too high and most will end up not being a Psychologist or a fashion designer but will instead end up in an unrelated career (if they are lucky) or a dead end job with thousands of pounds of debt.

I think the bar for entry to university should be set higher, the sector should be smaller and the gap left to service people who want education for enrichment (e.g. to study History, Literature, Philosophy etc.) rather than careers should be served by a well regulated college sector. And they should pay a lot less for these degrees because they are not worth £28.5k.

Ok, fair enough. So which degree subjects are considered mickey mouse subjects? These subjects are mentioned often. I'm just interested to know what they are.

Assuming you can encourage people to study engineering or medicine or computer science or anything else at any kind of logical scale,* they'll still emigrate to the US, Canada and Australia after graduating because the pay is so much higher, the opportunities and research so much better, and the working environments so much less stressful.

*someone interested in fashion isn't suddenly going to decide to do engineering if there are no fashion courses available, and fashion lecturers aren't suddenly going to become engineering lecturers.

Do you mean that History, Literature and Philosophy aren't useful for careers and they are just for the students' own enjoyment?

And 'mickey mouse degrees' comprise?
And what evidence do have have to support your assertion that someone with a 'mickey mouse' degree won't get a job? Is this evidence comparable to that showing the per centage of graduates in astro-physics, classics or 'higher maths with Japanese' with jobs?
Two arrogant , snobbish and dismissive statements one one sentence.

As someone who did literature and have many friends who did the other two, none of us have had any use out of our degrees in our careers.

Part of my role involves writing, but my A levels taught me more than enough for that aspect.

There was quite a lot of direct cross-over between A level and degree, and it was far better taught by my state sixth form college than it was by the Russell Group university I attended.

So very few people from UK pay the tuition fees up front. It makes no economic sense.
Overseas students,motoh, generally do pay fees up front

Are these MM degrees, @Tryingtryingandtrying ?

Ok. So maybe we could stop offering History, Literature and Philosophy at degree level and offer them at A level only.

Good Lord what does this say about solicitors?

A closed shop for the upper middle classes, who then go on to demand outrageous fees from the public for doing next to nothing, because they think they deserve a certain lifestyle.

(As you can detect, I do not have a high opinion of solicitors)

@Etincelle I don't think there are Mickey Mouse subjects, that's a bit of a myth. But there are too many people admitted to some courses with no prospect of work in the field afterwards because it is so niche. For example, you can do various courses to work in the film industry at some universities but the reality is that it's a miracle if just one of the cohort finds work in the sector.

I also think some degrees with respectable titles are done badly at some universities and employers know it.

Mickdy Mouse degrees are generally courses that have a high drop out rate, coupled with low employment rates. (Poor student experience and poor outcomes) this is monitored and courses can have funding withdrawn.

Increasingly people also mean courses that lead to jobs that would have earned very similar or the same without degree. So not just employability, but earning potentional. Especially if the learning needed for the job would be better delivered by apprentiship.

People have their pet subjects that fall into this based on nothing but prejudice though.

But I do think students do need to be aware that thier course has a high drop out rate and people don't get jobs after. And if tax payers are loaning the money on the hope it gets paid back it's OK for them to say is this course good enough or is there a better way for this.

As you can already look up the outcomes and earning of graduates from courses and funding can be withdrawn it sounds like the issue is already being dealt with.

@mondaytosunday Graduate tax could be far less than 9% because you would pay it regardless of the total you've paid. Could prob be as low as 3% given some people pay it all off in three years.

The current model is that the government pays (through the tuition and maintenance loans) and then, provided they can afford it (by some definition), the students pay them back over the next 30/40 years.

So one way of thinking about the wealthy families is that they come along and say "it's okay, government, I'll pay for this one". Since the government doesn't get back all it pays out, it's in their (and hence our) interests to allow that as an option.

If it was a graduate tax, with no means of avoiding it, then why would any parent stump up the fees themselves? They'd just put the money into a deposit when the child gets to buying a house instead. Or they'd get the child to look at US universities - presumably a graduate tax would only apply to UK degrees.

The current student finance arrangements have gone back to using an interest rate which is just the inflation rate. That does mean that the interest shouldn't be punitive as it has been on some of the previous "plans".

DS is doing a degree apprenticeship and loves it. I definitely think that good quality apprenticeships are the way to go.

I don't really think it is being dealt with properly at all because people aren't looking in the right places. Take the Bar Professional Training Course for example. It sounds solid and worthy doesn't it?

Unfortunately, it's also very expensive and the course providers have more than 3 times as many places as there are going to be vacancies for pupil barristers every year. 1,800 students for around 550 places and the course is useless if you don't practice as a barrister. It's even worse if you look at it over a four year period (as people keep looking for those 550 places a year). In that time, 7,200 people will take the course for 2,200 jobs. These courses cost around £15k so it's around £75m spent on these courses by people who will never secure pupillage in this time period. It's a disgrace.

People pick on courses that sound flaky but actually give students a broad education and serve the market who just "want a degree." Whether it's wise to spend £28k on it is another question but the individual can go in with eyes wide open. However, courses that are very specific and there are too many places, that's where the real problems lie.

Surely that would be really hard and costly to put a system in place for this? It would have to be limited to those starting university in future rather than those in uni right now and those already graduated. How would that be possible to identify in the HMRC system?

I think it is worth crunching the numbers here. There are currently around 1.75m undergraduate students in the UK. Were the Government to fund their education instead, the cost would be around £17bn per annum. Arguably a few more people would also go to university if it was free so potentially you might be looking at a total cost of £20bn.

This might sound a lot but a lot of graduates easily pay back the cost of their education in higher taxes over their working lives. The cost could also be contained if the government limited the numbers of places in each course to reflect what the economy actually needed plus some headroom in the availability of less vocational degrees such as the arts or modern languages. Fewer people would go but those who miss out could get a decent professional qualification instead of a dubious and expensive degree from an ex-Poly that employers don't respect (in fact, the ex-Polies could become Polytechnics again and do something useful like they did in the old days).

Also, for context, £20bn is less than a fifth of the cost of the state pension. In fact, because of the triple lock the cost of the state pension has risen so fast that we could in fact have kept it at 2010 levels in real terms and funded higher education for those who wanted it. The last government made a conscious choice to indiscriminately spend more on pensioners whilst charging students more.

At least they bother enough to study.

How would a graduate tax work in practice? Are you thinking % tax for the rest of their working lives, the same % for all graduates? If so that's incredibly unfair. Why should someone doing a humanities degree for 3 years with 6hrs contact time a week who lived at home, be paying back the same as a doctor/vet who studied for 7 years in student accommodation in London? Under the current system one would have debt of £52,875, the other £155,729, if they both ended up earning the same amount why should they both be taxed the same, for one to hugely subsidise the other?

I already think it's unfair they're charged the same tuition fees but at least they're only charged what they received.

What about people who do two and a half years and then drop out? They aren't graduates so do they not have to pay back anything at all under a graduate tax, not even their maintenance loans?

People moan about 'mickey mouse' degrees but there's never any agreement about exactly what they are, and what people don't like to admit is that those degrees, with fewer contact hours and often usually less expensive facilities, hugely subsidise the more 'scientific' degrees.

An eng lit or history degree = a few hours of lecturers a week, maybe the odd tutorial if they are lucky. Nowhere near enough books in the library so they usually have to buy their own texts. No practicals, no small group work, no expensive labs, no placements, no insurance....costs the uni, what, a tenth of a science type degree to provide but charged the same fees per year.

People stop doing "mickey mouse" degrees = universities will go bankrupt even faster.

I agree with what you've said.
Higher education was originally expanded because we needed more graduates. I'm not sure what wrong.