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.

May I refer you to the statement at the end of the article you linked to:

"Wendy Piatt, director general of the Russell Group, said no Russell Group university barred any A-level subject."

Straight from the horses mouth, as it were.

You do seem to struggle to see the wood for the trees, Unseen. There is very clearly a difference between 'banning' A Levels which universities would not be allowed to do and saying they are 'non-preferred'. Universities such as LSE and Cambridge until last year openly publish list of 'non-preferred' subjects and there are lots of hints not least in this article but also in the experience of lots of schools and colleges that there is a more covert list.

But again you are missing my point by focusing on one minute detail. My point was that there is a huge amount of evidence that there is a perception both in popular culture and in academia itself that non-traditional or 'soft' subjects such as media studies and business studies and law are lacking in intellectual rigour. This is JUST ONE example but you only need to listen to people in the street or teachers talking about media studies as a 'Mickey mouse subject'. Now I'm not saying this is right but to deny it happens is really quite stupid unless you are just completely oblivous to what is happening in the world.

This is LSE's list of non-preferred subjects:

'Accounting
Art and Design
Business Studies
Communication Studies
Design and Technology
Drama/Theatre Studies
Home Economics
Information and Communication Technology
Law
Media Studies
Music Technology
Sports Studies
Travel and Tourism'

www2.lse.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/howToApply/lseEntryRequirements.aspx

Please note that this is about A Level where the likelihood is that students may only have one or two of these subjects combined with other, more traditional subjects yet they are still frowned on.

So, perhaps you will consider what an institution such as LSE would think about degree courses which are ONLY in these subjects.

Do you see my point????

And why doesn't LSE like business studies? Well that would be because it is 'not necessarily perceived as the best preparation, due to its vocational content'

www2.lse.ac.uk/study/undergraduate/howToApply/lseEntryRequirements.aspx

so you see there is, as I was saying earlier, a common perception that the more 'vocational' a qualification is the less academically rigorous and the less desirable.

Here's another interesting article:

www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6006042

A quotation:

'The report's author, Anna Fazackerley, went so far as to say many universities were purposefully keeping their preferred subjects to themselves, and that pupils were being misled by opting for the more professional-sounding A-levels, such as law.

Ms Fazackerley said: "It is particularly scandalous that top universities are keeping quiet about their disapproval of 'professional' A-levels, such as law, accounting and psychology. These subjects are very likely to trip up pupils because they sound serious and impressive, but search admissions websites and the warnings just aren't there.

"How can pupils be expected to know that having law A-level may rule you out of a law degree?"'

Pretty ironic that law A-level can rule you out of a law degree eh? And by extension a law degree could well rule you out of a career as a lawyer whereas a degree in Latin or philosophy...

As I clearly said, I can only speak for my own subject area. As I clearly said, this is not Arts, Humanities or Social Sciences.

For our course, the technical interview performance lets candidates down, more than their A'level choice. Many apparently straight A-students are unable to discuss concepts which should be basic at A'level.

However, you do seem to be getting your knickers in a twist. Why don't you calm down and wind your neck in?

I have not stated an opinion one way or another on media studies, but I have stated that I don't think the general public particularly perceives philosophy as intellectually rigorous (but my opinion may be biased on this by the fact that most people I know are scientists or medics).

You wouldn't be a philosophy graduate by any chance would you?

"FGS. Most degrees last for 3 years. Surely you understand that?"

Actually, I don't. An increasing number of science and engineering degrees are four years. My own department, for example, now offers its first degrees as BEng and MEng, taking three or four classroom years, and all the science departments at my RG university offer both BSc and MSci versions of their first degrees. That of course sparks an arms race in which people with an B now compete directly with those who have an M for jobs. I wouldn't like to comment on what the B/M split is, but there are an awful lot of students doing the modules that are only available to M participants.

Over in one of the science departments, the research council that provides most of their funding is experimenting with 4 year PhD funding, including some travel money for conferences, to improve the quality (and, let's be blunt, completion rate) of the postgrad work. Some people submit after three and have a year's guaranteed post-doc, some take the four to submit.

There are an increasing number of follow-on MSc and MEng courses that presume a BSc/BEng in the appropriate subject, too, for those that want to either broaden or specialise whilst remaining taught, rather than researching.

'You wouldn't be a philosophy graduate by any chance would you?'

No, but as I've said this is not about my personal opinion so much as what is commonly perceived both by the general public and in academia.

You won't find philosophy in a list of non-preferred subjects by a RG or any other university, for example, nor will you hear teachers talking about it being a 'mickey mouse subject'.

I think you're just arguing for the sake of it most degrees are three years long. That is a fact.

tokyonambu, thank you. You have expressed something which is also my experience within the science domain much better than I.

We also offer 4-year PhD studentships in our department too (depending on the funding source, but for some sources this is now standard).

University Fees are the main reason I am returning to work. My DD are 5 and 7yo but if I need £30K to give them a decent education then I'd better start saving now.

I hope most schools and children and their parents can work out which A levels are not preferred.

If you go on the web sites of teh top 20 schools by A level results inthe private sector you can see what A level subjects they offer and will get an idea of what the universities and employers want. Just a pity the other schools don't give children the right information. Obviously it depends on the pupil and where they hope to end up though. Plenty of chidlren will never go to university or will only get into rather bad ones and it may not then matter if they have A levels of the non preferred kind.

It's hardly rocket science to pick A Levels, is it?

Want to do a course with specific entry requirements? There's your A Levels.

Want to do science, engineering or medicine? Maths, physics and chemistry, plus AS biology.

Want to do economics? Maths, a foreign language, History or English

Want to do pretty well anything else? English, History and a foreign language.

Easy.

A basic rule is that if the subject wasn't on offer to your parents, you shouldn't be doing it.

You say that, but if parents know nothing of these things and a student's school are offering certain subjects without any guidance...

I think though with the advent of the internet, information is much more accessible than it used to be. For example, there are websites where you can download sample personal statements for different subjects and find out typical interview questions for different courses at different universities. So, in some ways even though the choice is wider, the information on how best to use those choices is also there. I also think most people are pretty realistic about what their degree will do for them and the majority of students will have taken the time and effort to find out about their preferred career, which universities offer the best courses and what they are looking for in their candidates.

Also, if someone doesn't get onto their preferred course or into their preferred university, it's not going to be the end of the world and is unlikely to ruin their entire career as there is often more than one route into different careers. How they deal with that says a lot about the student and FWIW even students which on paper look perfect for a course can still fail to be offered a place after interview for any number of reasons.

Put like that it doesn't sound like rocket science, but there do seem to be an awful lot of quite bright kids choosing options like English language, Law, Media Studies and Photography that I do wonder sometimes

"You say that, but if parents know nothing of these things and a student's school are offering certain subjects without any guidance..."

Oh, absolutely. For people where there isn't a family connection to higher education and they're therefore reliant on the advice of teachers, they need to be told this stuff. However, I'm not sympathetic towards teachers who claim not to know it.

Did anybody else hear \link{http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9065000/9065212.stm\this} on Today this morning?

The Vice Chancellor of Exeter University (I think) was saying that the decision on Lord Browne's report will be made before the university funding review, & that whatever level tuition fees are set at, the universities might end up with less funding than before

(So if fees are set at a higher level, who will get the money...?)

I thinik that the student doesn't pay the £7k or £10k a year immediately or may be a bank pays it so perhaps it is available right away. Probably £7k a year is not the cost of all degrees averaged out which might be why it is less. We want less paid out in the public sector so if universities get less that's a good thing.

I think one of the problems is that with the graduate tax, there will be a lag time in the universities actually being able to receive the money, so we will go from a system where the money is available in advance to one where we will get it later, but in the interim period between the two systems there are no measures in place to bridge the gap.

I do fail to see why universities should receive less money whilst bankers are once again receiving huge bonuses . I believe it was the bankers, not the universities which caused the credit crunch. I generated £2m in grant income last year, so how come we get pay freezes etc whilst the bankers don't?

Becasue when Brown gave the bail out he spectacularly failed to impose any proper conditions upon it, leaving the bailed -out banks effectively free to behave as private companies.

"I do fail to see why universities should receive less money whilst bankers are once again receiving huge bonuses . I believe it was the bankers, not the universities which caused the credit crunch. "

Given you're an academic with fine skills of precise meaning and writing, one would have thought that "the bankers" would be a bit of a blunderbuss for you.

There are two sorts of bankers here (there are others, but for this taxonomy, two will do). There are investment bankers, who buy and sell securities on their own behalf, and there are retail banks, who take deposits and give loans.

The bankers who are getting the bonuses are, as they always have been, the investment bankers. Your local high-street bank manager doesn't get this sort of bonus.

The bankers who had to be bailed out were the retail banks.

The largest of the bailouts, HBOS / LTSB doesn't have an investment arm of any scale.

HBOS got into trouble because instead of lending money based on deposits, it lent money that it got on the credit markets. Those credit markets lend for a few months or years, but mortgages are 25 years and more. When the investment banks screwed up, that market dried up, so HBOS were illiquid. By one definition of insolvency (ability to pay debts as they fall due) they were insolvent, by others (assets vs liabilities) they were probably OK. But they had run out of cash, so they were functionally bankrupt.

In the US, post Glass-Steagal, there are combined retail/investment banks that did go down. But in the UK the bailouts were for retail banks that suddenly couldn't get any cash. Northern Rock didn't fail because it was playing at being an investment bank; it failed because it was borrowing money from a market that pretty much ceased to exist.

(Collaterised Debt Obligations don't help, and so to an extent NR was playing at investments, but I don't think that was the real reason for its failure).

If you want to stop retail banks from borrowing on credit markets, fine. But mortgages can then only be given from the cash that depositors place with the institution, and you'll see a massive reduction in mortgage lending if that happens. Separating investment and retail banks would be a good idea, and repealing Glass-Steagal and its UK equivalents would be good, but that wasn't what went wrong here.

Investment banks weren't bailed out in the UK, so that they are paying bonuses is nothing to do with the UK government. Retail banks were bailed out, and they aren't paying bonuses of any scale, nor did they ever do so.

I still don't see why students without wealthy parents should be obliged to leave university owing £20-30K in "tuition fees", most of which was not received by the university where they studied

But, the whole industry is interlinked (I freely admit though that I don't pretend to understand the ins and outs of it all though). However, it was the greed of this whole bloated industry which caused the crisis and yet it is institutions such as universities, the NHS, schools etc etc etc which will suffer.

The difference between the increase in tuition fees and the reduction in government grant will of course go towards reducing the budget deficit.

Don't be thinking that students will be getting a better value experience out of their higher investment because if recent events are anything to go by the government will take as much as they possibly can and universities will be worse off......