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.

" I also agree that 50% should not go to University "

People who claim to understand these things say the original policy wasn't that anyway. The initial intent (if that's not a tautology) was that 50% should have a post-18 educational experience in some form, which includes all sorts of things other than an 18-21 bachelor's degree. It includes things like whatever HNCs and HNDs are called this week, the historic nursing qualifications, and so on.

But it somehow got mangled in the re-telling in government, and became "50% to university". So we now get things like nursing as a university subject, when in fact the qualification has almost no currency outside nursing itself, the rise of foundation degrees (HNDs, essentially) and so on to claim all sorts of qualifications which although entirely laudable in their own right simply aren't bachelor's degrees are bachelor's degrees, just to make up the numbers.

The Bologna process is already looking very hard at English and Welsh degrees (three years, ~24 weeks teaching if you're lucky) and comparing them with European equivalents. And even harder at one year master's qualifications, especially "conversion" courses for people with a first degree in something different.

The snobby comment used to be "American degrees? They're just a bunch of A Levels" and in the 70s and 80s there was some slight truth to it. But now in the UK we have a rise in qualifications you can do ab initio (ie, without a good A Level in the subject in question) in 72 weeks' instruction. You can do three A Levels in 80 weeks.

Here's my essay topic for a Critical Thinking paper. "An English Bachelor's Degree is just two A Levels. Demolish. Write on only one side of the paper at once."

Note: 'twas ever thus. But (a) we weren't trying to harmonise degrees back then and a British PhD is still the match and more (b) contact time has reduced compared to the past and (c) slice it how you like, students arrive at university less prepared for what used to be standard first year material than they once were - I'm looking at doing some demonstrating to first years on the course I took 27 years ago, and I'm surprised at the drop in level.

I wouldnt so much object to the increase in feesvif it was going to pay for better teaching/ resources and not getting swallowed up by the massive, disproportionate hike in vice chancellors salaries over the last 10 years.

"I wouldnt so much object to the increase in feesvif it was going to pay for better teaching/ resources and not getting swallowed up by the massive, disproportionate hike in vice chancellors salaries over the last 10 years."

This university, one of the largest in the country, has one person paid £250k, presumably either the VC or one of the senior figures in the law department. The same figure is quoted for the VC's salary, but it's not 100% clear if that's the same person. That represents £11 per year per student, ignoring the fact that home undergraduates pay much less than overseas students and postgraduates. It probably represents £5 per home undergrad per year, neglecting that research funding, block grants and the like that also go to fund the overheads. So they could sack the VC and knock a fiver off fees for undergraduates: don't drink the whole pint at once.

There are fewer than 100 people paid over £100K; if you assume that each of them is paid the maximum within the 10K bands the accounts show (ie, everyone shown as being paid 100-110K is paid 110K) they total £13.7m, or £560 per student. Again, that's diluted by research funding, and I know that in my department there are people whose salaries are almost entirely met by external funding. So if they sacked everyone paid over £100K and replaced them by people on half the money, even assuming all of that money comes from student fees (which is doesn't) and even assuming that having done this, the courses would remain as attractive (how do you employ good people in law and the business school for buttons, again?) you could knock £280 quid a year off the fees. Hardly "swallowed up by massive, disproportionate hikes", is it?

most vets don't earn anywhere near £200k and yet they have one of the longest courses and one of the hardest to get into.

So, goodbye the real brains, universities will just be full of those who can pay for them to be spoon fed (yes, controversial, but so's this thread!) but don't really have the brains behind it.

We are middle class professionals, but if this were to happen we couldn't afford to send our two to university - they are both bright. What a tragedy!

Great policy! Still, probably won't keep the tories in next time round, so hey, ho!

Given the drop from O levels to GCSE I fail to see why you are surprised at the drop in undergrad understanding Tokyo.

I did a Biology cover lesson, and found a copy of my old O level text book (McKean it was I think) - 'Oh Miss, that's an A level book!!' Since when?

I don't understand why anyone is thinking about paying fees upfront. My DD has just started on a law degree and has got maximum grants and loan. That means 1/3 of the money is non-repayable grant, 1/3 is fees and 1/3 is repayable loan. It will not start to attract interest until she graduates, so that is the point at which we will consider if it is worth paying off the loan. DS may well be partway through a degree at that point, so my immediate liability to him will be lessened and I will be looking at ways I can help DD to manage the loan. And if the interest rate is still much lower than the mortgage rate, then there will be no point paying it off.

WRT to nursing, I did my training back in 1992 (didn;t finish, was part of a trial scheme that hardly anybody completed due to ebing generally crap) and we were told then that we were a pause between old stylee apprenticeship nursing training and degree only training so it-s been a long time coming. In fact as I had A Levels I was advised at my interview to go to uni even then to do the training, but my parents were horrified.

So that pre-dates 50% thing TBH.

I think 50% had some logic for a while, because a large amount of students in the past decade have been amture students who are perfectly capable but missed out for social reasons. Add in teh HND type quals that people like my sister have (she's a vet nurse and just qualified as an animal dentist) then it's pretty good. DH didn't go to uni at 18 (did ahve an offer of poly but was too ill) but is top of his class now.

But whilst I am all for admitting whatever % of people hit the academic targets, there does need to be that level established. Absolutely count in Access, work ecperience etc as part of the admissions process but if you can't pass whatever entrance route you chose then you can't go. There were people at my uni who could barely cope with basic instructions, several of dh's classmates are constantly 1 or 2 % from failure in every single module; would be better I think to have universal access for everyone who completes a subject specific admissions test (including exam and coursework).

Oh, and wrt to the system in operation a few years back when I was there, everybody took the loan, but if they were well off then they just banked it becuase back then the interest rate on savings was higher than accrued interest on repayment; they then repaid as soon as they finished.

"I think 50% had some logic for a while, because a large amount of students in the past decade have been amture students who are perfectly capable but missed out for social reasons."

Is that actually true?

People who were mature students from the 1990s onwards were presumably people who didn't go to university in the 1980s and before. Why didn't they? There was ample funding (yes, there were people whose parents refused to pay the parental contribution, but not on a massive scale) and you could both claim the dole in the summer and the income tax back on the money your parents gave you. Entry requirements were low (a B and two Cs was a pretty standard offer) and you didn't even need As to do medicine. You could do a good CNAA honours degree at a poly with a couple of Ds at A Level, and the courses you could get onto with 2 Es were perfectly reputable. There was plenty of student accommodation, with most universities guaranteeing it for the first and some for subsequent years. Students had it pretty good, and "big student debts" meant that, like me, you'd spent a bit too much on a holiday between 2nd and 3rd year and were a couple of hundred quid short at the end of the third year. I don't know anyone who worked as a student for any reason other than funding holidays, and my daughter's Godmother and Godfather are the childhood sweethearts from a pit village who both went to university during the strike, where we met them.

So, all that said, who are these people who could/should have gone to university in the 1980s, but didn't? The environment was benign, admission was easy, finance was good, there were plenty of places. What was the blocker?

SDeuchars
"It will not start to attract interest until she graduates, so that is the point at which we will consider if it is worth paying off the loan"

Sorry, I know a lot of people think this, but it's not true. You start accruing interest from the moment you get the loan - for the last year the rate of interest has been 0%, but that was because inflation was low the day it was set,based on the RPI - it's now 1.5% and it has been as high as 4.8% in the last few years. So if inflation goes up, you may get a nasty surprise...

You are correct, RustyBear. I'd got confused. However, at 1.5% interest, it is still the cheapest way to borrow money and so makes sense unless you have money sitting around accruing interest at less than that rate (e.g. in a current account). As I do not have £7000 sitting in a current account, it is still better for DD to borrow the money. Martin Lewis's take on it is at www.moneysavingexpert.com/loans/student-loans-repay.

Oh, yes, I agree it's still cheaper - I just didn't want you to get a nasty shock at the end of the year...

if students are graduating with 20k of debt currently this means that it would be 40k plus under the scheme proposed. Don't think i will be able to encourage my three children to take degrees (though they are bright enough) - espcially if they will then have to pay higher taxes as well. they would be better off taking accountancy qualifications on the job and using the money we have saved for a deposit on a house. yes we earn a decent salary - but we are talking 90k after tax for 3 children!!!! so how does that help the drive to make the UK beter educated?

The thing is, taking a degree in whatever you want wherever you want is not a right.

Higher education is dreadfully expensive and it is being subsidised by millions of hard working people who never got to go themselves.

We simply, as a country, cannot subsidise so many young people going to university.
So we have to ask them to make a fair contribution.

If they are put off doing daft courses that will never lead to anything, then that is no bad thing. Those sort of courses are a luxury that you cannot expect people working in mines and factories to pay for.

Tokyo I am from that batch; I was offered Bristol and will probably do my second MA at Cardiff so presumably not too dumb. As a child, I never knew I could go to university: nobody from my school went, in fact very few indeed from my primary did any study after 16.

Yes my Aunt went, but she is 15 years younger then my Mum and my Mum didn't speak to her family other than Christmas for first 20 years of my life due to a big falling out.

There was, and currently is still, no university in the county where we lived. I was the only one from my estate not to go straight into the lingerie factory at 16 and cut ribbon for a living (factory long closed). I felt like a freak, certainly lost many mates who thought I was being odd. At 15 all my friends were from the estates, at 18 none of them were and I ended up getting into a bit of a state at college with a lot of family problems and frankly if I had gone then would have lasted ten minutes. I didn't know my DH then but he had a nervous breakdown at the same time which is why he turned down his course place and got a job.

A few years later, I started to date someone m who was a graduate, had been to a private school as had all his mates, and I started to realise that actually they weren't any different to me; my dreams of being a teacher at school weren't actually impossible. When I broke up with ex-F (who said that people like me weren't at uni as our genes made us unsuitable for responsibility- any guesses why we broke up? ) I started an OU course, took the exam when 7 months PG with a really tough preganancy, and got the result of 88% through when I was in hospital after delivering.

I figured then I was quite up to it, ansd started saving and preparing to go.

I spoke to a staff member at one uni who told me that from their stats people whoc ame in with a access got higher degrees than their counterparts (this was a teaching course, not medicine but not X Factor Studies either).

It wasn't the case that the kids I went to school with were all thick. Some have gone on to good careers, and were quite capable but university was simply never, ever mentioned to us as a possibility. We left school in 1989 and if was like that on a crap estate in Somerset then I am certain it was the same in other places.
We simply were seen as 'the kids from the estates'; my teachers refused to enter me for extended exams at GCSE and I still managed A-C passes which I am told is quite an achievement; certainly there were teachers outside school waiting to congratulate me on results day. Dad didnt; want me to go to college, Mum fought for that but afterwards it was anything that paid immediately and 'how fast can you move out?'
My uni had a big mature student intake (why I went; I have a complicated family life) and traditionally they did well. The back stories varied- one lady who did exceptionally well was married with kids by 18; another had dyslexia that led to her being excluded before she was 14. One lady was rebuilding her life after a terrible time that included two deaths, one of her child. Yet another had the clearest case of undiagnosed AS that I have seen in an adult (and as I am doing an MA in ASD I have seen a few!) and had only just reached the stage of being able to cope.

Then you go back twenty years before that or more, and you get people like my Dad who passed their 11+ but couldn't go to Grammar because their famillies couldn't pay for the uniform (Dad was 15 / 16 kids in a family where Grandad was an alcoholic and Nan bedridden for years before he was born and thirty years after, and the only one to pass the 11+).

Now, on DH's degree he is only the second ever student to study with them over 22, and the first to go into the second year so it does seem to vary. But the difference in culture now (I mentored kids who had uni potential but no plans to study for a bit) in the poorer areas and then is immense. I don't know what it's like home now- I've been in Wales for 6 years and have no plans to move back as my children are IMO very much better off here and there is a culture of improving yourself through education here that dates back decades- but we do go back for certain activities and we still feel a bit like we broke some unmentioned rule and stepped over the line.

I don't know what my boys will do; they're certainly bright (DS3 is 7 and taking year 6 maths) but they also have extra challenges (2 with ASD, one with dyspraxia, other still a toddler). I'd like to think that there will be sufficient give in the system to enable ds3 to study at degree level (presumably in maths or IT) if he is academically able, but it should be based on that alone. It's certainly his biggest (only?) chance of independence. DS1 has a talent in art and wants to be a jewellery designer so we shall send him to art college and see where he goes from there, likewise ds2 who is conservation minded (that will be agricultural college I suspect). My guess is that HND will be the right route for them and that is fine, but would ahte to see uni 0aeducation shrunk down so much that people who were academically quite capable (and clearly ds3 is) lost out on places because of their additional needs and a squeeze for places. Plenty of people outside a narrow band can have their prospects betterd via HE, and a very few palces will make them second rate choices by default I would guess.

And now I waffle and have to go fill in a 24 hour EEG moinitor sheet for ds3 who looks like a robot today LOL.

Sorry.

Oh and to sum that up as it was ridiculusly long:

as someone from a working class culture the block was simply cultural expectation. School, shit job. Marry at twenty two. That was it.

Others had very different reasons, but that was mine. It took time to build the confidence and realise that not only was I able enough, there was no reason whatsoever not to do it. In fact when I went I coudn't progress any further in my field without a degree so it was sensible to go.

dreaming of sun - I agree that the graduate tax is henous. Saddling our children with high taxes for the rest of their life is crap.
Those of us who can pay in advance will avoid this for our kids, but those that can't will have to watch theirt kids pay more tax. Not. Fair.

However, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Young poeple can look into getting financial assistance from many quarters. Lots of employers will provide bursaries and low interest loans on the proviso that you work for them for x years.
(Way back in the nineties, many of us were getting law firms to pay for us through law school)
All the forces offer similar assistance.

And the idea that young people can't work and study is idiotic.

Litchick. Youngpeople should have the right to go to unibersity and do a degree in whatever they want to do. By that I maen what is avaiable for them. DD2 is doing a degree in Acting for stage and media. You may think that won't help her get a jib, But they do a lot of essay writng andalso a lot of research. In fact uni has really helped her gain more confidence and to mature. Higher education is not subsedised by millions of people. DD2 has a Tuition and maintenance student loan, This has to be all paid back with interest. Also her maintenance loan does not cover all her uni and living expenses. We actually pay most of her rent otherwise she would not be able to survive. Yes we could have insisted she didn't go to uni or do a different degree but that would not have helped her at all.

I suspect also that once universities are allowed to charge a reflective amount vis a vuis the cost to provide, they will begin to offer bursaries.

No reason why they can't chase up old students who've made a bob or two and ask them to help fund some of this.

'And the idea that young people can't work and study is idiotic.'

True.

But when it's the university saying it, not he student? DH at 39 has the sense to say bugger off; he is not however a shy 18 year old trying to fit in.

I think there probably is merit in most courses: people on here have sneered at DH's degree despite a very high employment rate because it quite frankly has astupid anme. Actually however the work he is starting to undertake is rather complex (designing specific bolt - and - build computerised units utilising DMX and other PM compatible protocol for various applications). He has also acquired several professional qualifications that he simply cannot practice without: I think they get one of these a year IIRC, plus training in other amrketable skillseach of which enhances employability (and crucially, taxability!) markedly. All of which available at other colleges but none as one course, and none in the same place either or with the same high standard of facillity they access. As well as a very specific industry led design degree, when he completes he will have licences in rigging, pyrotechnics, current edition electrician cert, be fully skilled in CAD which is general and the industry-specific WYSIWYG system.

There's just no way that kids can walk away from that and not have their employability enhanced. And ultimately a degree is about that and the amount of taxes you can pay back as a result.

mumeeee - you don't seriously believe do you that the current fees a uni can charge ( is it just over three grand?) covers the cost of the course do you?
Tell me you don't?

Fees are artificially capped and the shortfall paid for by the tax payer ie millions of hardworking people who didn't have the opportunity to have three years building their confidence and their job prospects.

SD, yes, but to be free of the debt, not have it hanging over you is a huge psychological advantage. My daughters had rich friends who look the loan and invested it and may be that was worth it but given what low rates you get on investments I just didn't think even that were worth doing and better not to have the mill stone around your neck even if you won't be paying much for the millstone for some time - it still lurks there like a bear on your back and some students have found the loans system not working properly or repayments not taken account of when they should etc etc so if it is possible for some to avoid the loans entirely then that seemed to mne on balance worth it.

There is a completely different school of thought though that people only appreciate what they have to pay for (eg far fewer would cancel GP appointmenst if they had to pay £10 per cancellation etc etc) and a student whose rich parents pay not a penny but make the student take out loan etc may be more likely to work hard to get a good career and pay back the loans. I can see both points of view but I wanted my childern to be in the same position I was and when I went my parents paid my maintenance and the state my fees.

First paragraph makes sense Xenia: it tooks weeks of phone calls and apperwork to prove I don;t have to repay due to being a carer which is provable due to getting CA etc: can't imagine why anyone would subject themselves to the system (and let's face it, anyone can be exept from paying for one reason or another) if it were avoidable.

Sure when I go back on their books it'll be hard to roagnise that as well PMSL.

litchick - my children don't want to join the forces. they want jobs like accountancy and business. my husbands family have traditionally all worked down the mines - but you need graduates as well as miners for the good of the country. accessability should be based on likelihood to succeed (ie intelligence) and the country's need for graduates in that subject. Not on how well off or not your parents are - and these recommendations are going to penalise children of better off parents. my son already complains because many of this friends at school get £30 a week from the gov. we could never justify giving him that.