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.

FWIW I dont think we should subsidise doctors' training. They have a guaranteed high paid job for life. They cost a fortune to train (compared to other graduates) and not all work within the NHS. Many move abroad or work in private practice. Whay should these doctors not have to pay back the taxpayer their full fees? (much more than £10k pa btw)

Historical note - back in the 1950s, there was a chronic shortage of university places as the major universities refused to increase student numbers (e.g. Manchester refused to exceed 5000 students). A few former university colleges (Exeter, Hull, Leicester) were made into proper universities at that time, but the first real large scale expansion came in the 1960s to service the baby boomers and the move to a more technologically based economy.
Even in the 1970s (when I was at university) the majority of grammar school pupils didn't go on to university (or polytechnic) - the other options then were Art College, College of Education or a job after either O or A Levels. For many of the professions that now require degrees - including solicitors and even barristers - you could enter the profession through working and taking professional exams.
Back in the 1970s and certainly back to the 1950s going to university was not necessarily the typical aspiration of bright school leavers - and there were far fewer girls then who wanted to go to university and have a real career.

"That is a sociological fact."

There's a cheap gag there, of course, but let's leave it on the table.

"far more students from far lower down the socioeconomic scale have gone to university"

Have they? Or is what's really what happened is that institutions that they would have gone to anyway were relabelled universities, while courses that they would have done anyway were relabelled degrees? In the 1980s, the choice wasn't university or t'mill, there was a huge range of full time, block release, day release and evening education for everything from ONC up through to HND and degrees in non-university settings. Polys, FE colleges, slightly longer ago Colleges of Advanced Technology (Aston was definitely one, I think Loughborough and/or Keele were others). These were rigorous, nationally validated qualifications delivered in a huge range of settings, and gave both academic rigour and employment opportunities.

But now, all of those institutions are universities, and they're delivering degrees to roughly the same people, covering not dissimilar ground, but now they aren't nationally validated, and the students have to pay a lot more for them, and because they're full time concepts like day and block release don't arise.

Further up the scale, what were once slightly declasse redbricks are now desirable Russell Group universities, and if memory services the socio-economic mix has got less diverse there, not more. University take-up has increased, but to a large extent by relabelling qualification that weren't (and, let's be brutally honest, in many cases still aren't) first degrees and places that weren't (and, again, still aren't) universities.

Yes, there are going to be some people who would have had no post-16 education back in some anti-golden age, but get degrees now. But they're not the main part of the shift, I would venture.

Surely the fact that the Tories want to see the middle classes drown is not new?

Everything they have proposed so far has been a direct attack on the middle classes. Maybe not the upper middle classes but certainly the low to middle income ones.

I can't say I am surprised to see these sort of proposals come to the fore.

It's not true that all of thsoe instituttions are now universities.

Some are absolutely, but certainly far from all.... my old County Somerset is blessed with zero universities but we did have 3 or 4 FE colleges thata re still tehre, some of which now link up with the universities closest to them (IIRC Strode, where I used to work, was Bath Spa but may be wronga s separate dept).

The institutions I know that have gone all university on us- Bath Spa, UWn- did offer degrees before, just as teacher colleges or whatever.

One issue is why we think we need so many people at university. the girl who studied typing from 14 - 16 at school and then became a secretary now will do some kind of pointless degree at a lesser institution and get a job as a PA/glorified secretary having spent 2 years on A levels and 3 on a degree and with debts. She probably could as easily had worked her way up from 18 - 20 to being a great secreary just by working on the job.

Or do we want extended adolescence for so many rather than 16 year olds in jobs? If fewer go to university then jobs which don't need degrees will simply revert to how they used to be.

At risk of coming over all Zen and the Art, these is perhaps more to a university than jobs. I started an OU BA recently solely for the challenge and pleasure of study, and although I've suspended what while I do my mid-life crisis PhD, I'd be lying if I claimed the PhD was entirely job related: I'll never make the lost income up before I retire.

I whole-heartedly agree that many more degrees are offered (and taken up) than are actually necessary and that for some jobs we would be better to take people on at 16 or 18 and train them up from there. Otherwise, technical qualifications (such as available in other countries) would be more appropriate than degrees.

However, I'm not convinced that selection on the basis of finance is the way to go about this.

I also think there is a rather bizarre situation where we have free education until age 18, then a degree must be paid for, but having done a degree and performed sufficiently well on it, it is then possible to obtain funding for a PhD. Then, beyond that the government is not investing sufficiently in funding academic research, which will certainly affect our competitiveness in the future see guardian link here. I think that it's all not looking good for the future of UK HE tbh.

' If fewer go to university then jobs which don't need degrees will simply revert to how they used to be.'

Not for a while though; there are more people out there than jobs and ATM people advertising grduate jobs (or any) are inudated.

So a sensible person looks at the people they would be competing with now, this week rather than after five years of training on the job and sets themselves the tqask of getting their CV as competitive as possible.

Plus of course, FE courses are not funded in the same way as HE. A mature applicant looking at FE may well find themselves saddled with costs now which are even less palatable than future debt: and if £80 a week maintenance loan won;t pay your nliving costs then £30 per week EMA certainly won't.

Personally, I think FE should be funded properly, because absolutely it shouldn't be that it's easier to get funding for a degree in pholosophy and religion (my degree before anyone bristles!) than one to be a TA or a bricklayer.

The job I am after requires a degree by law but I would still be paying taxes etc if I had taken FE job-specific training: the difference is I couldn't afforded the route.

Oh and the other issue of on the job training- am absolutely in favour of a big return to apprenticeships but ones that accept adults please, and not YTS style age limited ones please.

Too many people losing their jobs needing a new direction to limit the avenues available.

Some people on this thread know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Or do we want extended adolescence for so many rather than 16 year olds in jobs?

Can you leave school at 16 still, i thought it had or would be 18 yrs old before you could leave full time education or did i dream that ?

a cynic would say that higher education was expanded to lower unemployment and esp youth unemployment figures

"The Raising of the Participation Age means that all young people will continue in education or training to 17 from 2013 and to 18 from 2015. This will be the first time in nearly forty years that the education leaving age has been raised."

Been away all day. Take the cheap gag about sociological 'facts' , but I stand by my point. There is a great deal of snobbery about former polys and 1992 universities (as there is about media studies, etc, and other new subjects about which the people spouting off about them know very little). I say this as someone who did a traditional subject at a Russell Group uni and then at Oxford, and who has taught at Cambridge and a 1994 Group uni. There are many excellent courses at the newer universities. And many students in the scenario I was describing (my generation, whose parents had no hope of going to university) have gone to Russell Group/1994 Group universities as well as former poly/1992 unis.

I agree that a lot of people seem to know the price of everything and the value of nothing (though I resent having to quote Ed Miliband to do it ). Education for education's sake is important in indirect and intangible ways - I wrote about this earlier in the thread. Arts and humanities degrees produce students who run businesses, charities, and who go into law and other traditional jobs requiring degrees. Lecturers and professors in these fields have had a direct impact on the development of feminism among other cultural movements, and they contribute to our culture through the media, through exhibitions, through books and online resources, through museum work, and through the teaching of students to think critically, creatively and analytically. These students then go out into the world and live their lives, regardless of what their jobs are. We all have to vote, conduct relationships, read newspapers, sift through reams of marketing and advertising, and do a whole range of other things in our lives that are not necessarily job or employment related, and promoting a healthy, sceptical and intelligent culture through education is no bad thing.

Now I've gone Zen and Artsy :)

My God! I fell asleep, and woke up in a campus SWP meeting!

oF COURSE i understand the value of education. Though I would argue that this need not take place at a university...

However, I also understand the value of kidney machines, wheelchairs, subsidised child care and clean streets.

With the deficit as it is, we can no longer afford to fund everything. So for me , kidney machines come before degrees in Media Studies every time.

And given that the time and space to study is a wonderful thing. That uni is great fun. That it will probably set you up with good prospects...I think the least an adult can do, is contribute to that.

Funnelling students into degree courses with no academic rigour will not result in an educated populace who can think critically, though, nottired.

I am another who believes degree places should be cut back to 1980s levels and replaced with good quality apprenticeships and vocational courses which actually give people a chance of getting a job.

Yes, yes, yes to the cost of everything, value of nothing.

There was another thread here a while ago in which several posters were saying that they would discourage their children from going to university because they couldn't see the point.

I have a degree (believe it or not). I don't work in a graduate job but the degree itself gave me intangible skills that I apply every day. Also having a degree means nobody really cares that I have a whole three GCSEs and one A-level.

More to the point, I spent three years studying something I loved. Which after several years in full time employemnt, I appreciated greatly.

I ran up a small debt (about £4k iirc) but assuming I was able to repay it over a long period, believe that a sum five times that would have been worth every penny.

There you are...you really appreciated it and were happy to pay. Job done.

When I was taking professional exams I had to find the money. I tracked down some sponsorship and sold my soul to the devil for a few years.
Or I could have borrowed the cash.
Or I could have worked at the same time...many do.
Or a mixture of the above.

We can't just expect everyhting for free.

i pay vast amounts in tax each year and as part of that i expect my children to be educated. if you argue students should pay for degrees, why shouldn't they also pay for 'a' levels or all their education come to that?

dreaming - to cover the cost of a free university education for the numbers of students there are at the moment we would all have to pay A LOT more tax than we do now. And people in this country have consistently voted against paying tax at the levels that would be necessary.

For free university education to be possible it could not be offered to the number of students we have at the moment.

Personally, I don't think that would be a bad thing as long as good quality training of one kind or another is available to all.

Litchick I do agree with you and of course there are going to be cuts etc, and education will be a part of that. But I don't want cutting for cutting's sake. Most of all I think there is a lot of misguided and reductive thinking about degrees with no 'academic rigour' - usually people mean 'media studies' as you suggest, and other newer subjects. I did not study for any of these subjects but I think it is a bit silly to assume they've got no academic rigour. After all, a lot of the Russell Group universities teach such subjects, and have high-powered intellectuals teaching them (and some not-so-high-powered duffers, like you get in all departments ).

I don't mind discussion of cuts and fees, as long as there are not wild generalisations about which subjects are 'rigorous' and which are not, or which are 'useful' and which are not. Obviously medicine and engineering are extremely useful. But litchick you say that media studies is not useful - but unless you become a scientist, is physics? Or astrophysics? And a lot of scientists research things with no obvious or direct usefulness at all. It doesn't mean it isn't worth doing. Perhaps a good media studies course at a good university, run by media analysts, literary critics, historians, and a range of other specialists, might be more useful socially and economically than a 3rd in astrophysics for a student who ends up trying to work in a bank.

tokyo ha ha ha. You're right, but sometimes these things do need to be said.