University Fees

[Xenia]

I see that Lord Browne in his report may apparently suggest (Sunday Times today):

• rights for universities to charge fees of up to £10k a year rather than the £3200 or whatever it now is perhaps from 2012

• removal of cheap loans for children of the middle classes (presumably even if their parents are not prepared to help them)

• interest rate susidies on loans going up 2%

• students who go into high paid careers will have to pay back more than they borrowed perhaps capped at 20%

• and one which pleases me - parents will be able to avoid the graduate tax for their children if they pay the fees in advance. None of my older 3 children took out student loans as I paid as I wanted them to be in the same position when I graduated in the days when there were no fees paid by students.

However the report is not yet finished and he may recommend abolishing the cap on tuition fees and let the free market rule which may be wise.

emy - large corporate i work for is the same. much harder to get on without one. thats the only thing thats holding me back from discouraging my children to do degrees - though think tabby is talking about very junior manager if they earn 16k

I wanted to retrain as a chiropodist but I couldn't find training options that I could a) afford or b) that were even semi flexible when bringing up young children. The situation might have changed now but if it hasn't then I hope that some of the changes to higher education will be beneficial.

Tabbymoomoo:"I still feel Labour were right to bring back grants and abolish tuition fees"

You do realise that abolishing grants and introducing tuition fees was one of the first things Labour did when they got into power in 1997?

Libra,so media graduates find work,as what exactly? burger flippers?, Love your third paragraph,sums up exactly why the degree courses should be chopped,.that study does not say whether the jobs they obtained have any link at all to their degree,however media studies is no longer the number one daft degree,that lofty position is held by that trendy degree "forensic science",never mind that there are more people studying the degree than there are in the profession,CSI has a lot to answer for.

Heres an interesting game,please name one well known journo be it tv or print that has a media studies degree?

My recent graduates have found work as journalists, PR managers, web designers, with television companies, in publishing, in marketing and on magazines.
They get graduate-level jobs.

Labour didn;t abolish grants; they did severely alter the way tehyw ere awarded. DH received a grant (plus loan of course) uinto his account this very morning; far from abolished.

'Well in the large corporate I work for, and others I have worked for before, you can't apply for managerial jobs without a degree.'

Yup; worked for a charity and my boss was sumamriily booted out after a few weeks of me joing; I ran our County for six months but wasn't eligible to apply for the actual role as I didn't have a degree.

Obviously I left and found a similar managerial role elsewhere but the job was for a lesser known charity and the glass ceiling for non-grads was just raised a little higher, it was bumped soon enough.

I don't get people who are saying well my DC's can't go to uni then...

Should any of our DCs wish to study at uni we will be right in the midst of this: at this snapshot we are poor- carer me and DH student / low p[aid self employed part time so we have no assets (house was sold years ago) but by the time our 3ldest hits 18 we shouldbe fairly comfortable- I should hopefully be a Social Worker and DH something complicated in his field. AKA, enough income to be exempt from support. And with no back up- no mortgage half paid off, savings, pension. Sheer bad luck (2 autistic kids and a couple of redundancies) took that.

Yet I still would not disocurage my boys from university study, even if it did mean debt. There are ways around everything for a start- part time with working (I'm doing it now with my MA), OU, all sorts.

I don't promote a degree as essential either though- we look at the older boy's talents, what they like doing and then see what's required to get to where they'd like to be: an investment over a habitual stepping stone, perhaps?

But if they go we will find some way of assisting that. Perhaps because we had to put ourselves through with no parental assistance or interest.

sorry, wrong wording hard to type whilst feeding baby.

I meant I think it's wrong that most companies demand degrees for jobs which really don't require one.

I think its devaluing degrees

if it's not possible to return to uni being free, (I?m not an economist so I don't know). then I think it should be linked to income, £100k earner pays more than £20k earner.

however I?ll just encourage my children to go to welsh or Scottish uni's were its still free.

Unless you have lots of kids, it can be done, even if your income is low. I have paid two lots of fees (1st and 2nd year) for my (only) child, and, touch wood, shall be able to pay the third year in full as well.

It occurred to me when she was about 13, - Hell, she's bright, I'm sure she will go to university, I'd better start planning.' So I started paying all her child benefit into an account I opened specifically for taking care of future fees. My sticky little paws were kept away from her money, as the ChB went directly into that dedicated account. To that I added about another £30 a month as well; I was getting Child Tax Credit. In all, £110 a month, I think was being paid in.

I'm not saying it's easy, but if you don't have a big income and don't want your child to leave university with a massive debt - then PLAN IN ADVANCE. Child tax credit didn't exist until the last, Labour Govt., and it comes on top of Child Benefit, so you can't say it's impossible to find any money at all to save.
It might not be possible to pay every last penny, but if you can save up to cover three quarters or even half of what his/her fees will cost, you'll be so glad you did. And he or she will be really grateful too (and they b...y well should be.) :o

As I'm sure you appreciate, not everyone is in the position you were, dotnet. I don't think everyone can save.

OTOH I'd rather money was directed towards families such as yours than to subsidising the HE of the wealthy.

There are many stories of students from less wealthy families "pulling themselves up by their bootstraps". However it is the children of middle to higher earners who have always benefitted from the HE system, and continue to do so.

Hi JenaiMarrHePlaysGuitar - well, yes I know some people just can't save, and a lot of people haven't a clue about money; those Alvin Hall programmes on TV where A.H. put 'hopeless cases' straight, prove that!
BUT I would be miserable right now if I hadn't decided to plan for the future. Must be my Scottish descent, (wanting to make muckles from mickles)
I'm going to go away now, and stop being irritating, but not before pointing out also, that a lot of people can help their kids by seeking out local charities which may give bursaries on application if your family income is low. Too late for this year, I think - most of them decide on who's getting what for the coming academic year, by August. The bursaries available from charities are also usually quite small (less than £1k a year)- but still enormously helpful.
Most eighteen year olds don't have the experience or the nous to do this digging for themselves, so parents should at least try to find out what might be available.

It is the student's responsibility to fund themselves. No one is saying children have to pay up front although they can if they wish.Instead they pay absolutely no fees now - but pay the £7k - £10k a year back later just as now they pay their £3200 pa back later.

SOme parents want to help out and others don't but the children are adults. In Scotland parents have a responsibility to keep children and if parents in England are divorced one parent may be obliged to contribute,. Indeed my own divorce settlement agreement says I must pay the school and university fees whoever the children live with but that is unusual - most children in families where there is no divorce however rich the parent have no right to any help from parents as they are adults. Therefore any suggestion children of richer parents pay more is unfair.

Any system is going to be hard to operate. Doubling the current fees to about £7k will mean an extra £10k of debt for graduates over their 40 year working lives whic his not a massive sum. If the fees were instead £10k that is about £21k extra (30k total) so not huge. Any system which says you pay more if you earn more later is very unfair,

Perhaps Xenia is a nickname and her real name is Xenu? She can just ask a few Scientologist types for a few squillions to p[rogress to some level of understanding about all daffodils being bsecretly descended from arch-argonauts or somesuch and it's coverd.

Oh wait: maybe that's what we should be doing to pay for Riv? You're good at selling campaigns a la nappy, I am good on religious stuff.... wanna start a faith group?

"Xenia, on what planet do you live where 10k is not a massive sum?"

250 quid a year over a working life, plus interest, eroded by inflation; over the long term they roughly cancel each other out.

Even multiplied by 3 (assuming 10k a year for a three year course) it is not an impossibly large sum, and certainly not over a working life.

Parents of daughters will now be able to present them with a choice: a decent degree, or pissing the money up the wall in a Bridezilla wedding.

OMG parents are not still expected to pay for daughters weddings are they ? What age are we living in !

I don't think it should put off the poor though, Riven. Not if it has to be paid back over many years.

It's true that not all graduates go on to earn big money (although a lot do). There would have to be provision for those that don't - not starting repayments until one is earning over a certain sum.

What if fees went up, as described, but maintenance grants were increased for students from poorer backgrounds? That would be ideal, surely?

No one paid for mine either. I certainly won't be paying for my dd.