Most universities charging top fees

[emy72]

Article on BBC education front page, with a list of unis charging nearly all the top 9k or near enough.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12880840

I thought David Cameron said over and over again that this would be the exception............

tis appalling
unis severely under funded though so don't see how they can carry on without increasing fees
dd starting this sept ..phew!

.... and the alternative is?......

If they all want to charge the maximum, this will wreck the cash-flow projections for student loans; probably putting a pretty big hole into Government spending plans.

Was bound to happen though - when they brought in the £3K fees the Unis who didnt charge that were seen as offering lower standard degrees.

I dont think the Government has thought this through very well. What did they think would happen? UK Universities are not businesses (although they like to kid themselves they are), they are not selling degrees and students are not buying one - its already getting hard to fail a poor student for fear of legal reprisals.

Studying in Holland and Germany is much cheaper (free in Germany) and they teach a courses in English.

I guess the government won't get any return for the first three years (apart from a few rich bods paying fees up-front). Then there will be years of people paying back a minimal amount (as we have been led to believe). How can a government in crisis fund this?

There must be a hidden agenda here - passing management to private companies like Capita/Ark, etc, that can fund the fees??? It just doesn't make sense to me.

Nor me - but if student recruitment plummets next year the Unis who rely heavily on UG funding are not going to balance the books.

Most of the "academic" subjects which dont necessarily guarantee a good well paid career are going to wither on the vine - unless there are enough well-off students who dont have to worry about the huge debt to keep them going - but they will only go to the top Unis. I wouldnt be surprised if Departments and even whole Unis close.

I suppose its one way to shrink the sector back to where it was before the polys all became unis and blame it on supply and demand in the marketplace!

Anyone know what the criteria is to qualify for the bursaries as 'a student from a disadvantaged background'. Hopefully the extra help will apply to normal low income families rather than workless households. If this is the case and we qualify then DD might only have the fees to pay back and she can live on grants and bursaries.

Can see it varies but could be as low as 16K for full help.

adamschic my eldest sent me an e-mail from OUSU a couple of days ago outlining the help Oxford has pledged to give. It is certainly not restricted to £16K or less. It goes way beyond that. I went to a Higher Education talk at school last Thurs and the Cambridge scheme seems to mirror it too. I imagine both official websites should have the details on news releases but I haven't yet looked.

I have three currently needing Student finance and they are all making ends meet between loans, grants and bursaries. I thin the top universities seem set on making sure that they underwrite talented students whose natural ability means that they shouldn't miss out.

I think. Spelling/ typing dysfunction gets worse each post.

The Oxford scheme is for a fee waiver to keep fees at the current level for 20012/13 and for a bursary of £4,300 on top, reducing to £3,300 in the second and third years of the course. The waiver for subsequent years brings the fees down to £6000. That's for FSM students. But there is a sliding scale of help. I'm sure you could just ring the university itself or any other university your DD is keen on and they'll tell what the plan is so far. Other universities must surely be making provision?

Yes it would be interesting to see whether universities with less prestigious credentials will attract the same numbers of students...I suspect not.

Yes, thanks for answering. I can see that there will be generous bursaries for students like my DD from a lowish single earner household. So pleased about this as it will means that all her living expenses will be covered and maybe even some reduction on the £9k fees each year. Phew, shame they had to worry us sick late last year by announcing all this without any reassurance/thought.

Same with EMA am heartened to see that they won't be stopping it this year afterall and she will get £20 a week next year (if I've read that correctly). I know they have had their hands forced on these issues and would have gone ahead with their terrible proposals if they could have got away with it.

We might be in a more fortunate position wrt fees and loans than we thought and it sound like I have a 'I'm alright Jack attituded' which isn't true as I always said if I was a higher earner I would have been able to help her out with halls/rent etc. Now all she needs to do is get some decent grades. AS modules were a disaster.

Just got this from Cambridge. Assuming it's true about the 80% cut to the existing teaching grant, I can't see how universities will be able not to charge top fees.

Chatting it over with some retired lecturers, we've been wondering whether people from low income families will do better to push themselves as far as possible to apply to the more prestigious universities, where there might be (sadly) fewer applicants for the bursaries they're making available.

Lets hope they make sure bright students can go regardless of circumstances. My two eldest are already at Uni but I think I will be advising my youngest two if they want to go to wait until they can be regarded as independent adults in their own right before applying so their parents salary is not taken into account. We are not poor by any means but not wealthy enough to help much beyond paying for their accommodation.

I have never understood why parental income is a factor for 18-21 year olds when applying for university grants and loans but in every other respect they are regarded as independent adults.

I think there's going to be a great deal of plotting and scheming where people try to navigate through this situation.

Is it worth moving to Scotland? Three years' fees - £27K - might make it a consideration (when you think that would be near-on £100K paid back over a working lifetime, so £300K for 3 kids). And when do kids become independent? Like Mytholmroyd, I might suggest to ds that he waits before applying so can be judged on his own wealth (ie nothing!).

Also there surely will be much greater pressure to apply to "top" universities; if you are going to be stung for those massive fees you only want to be going somewhere good. I would strongly advise the dcs not to get into hock for a degree from the University of JustFoundedYesterday.

Sadly, some families cannot help even with accommodation so those are the ones they are targetting with the bursaries, which I think is fair. Will still mean those students getting into a similar level of debt as everyone else except the very wealthy.

If government has cut most of the funding to the universities, does this in effect mean they are now private? Or very close to being so?

Yes, I hear that it's the medical fees that make the difference. Apart from that, I hear that some Universities would be seriously considering going private. Some people have also said to me that they think the fees are a back door way of pushing Unis to privatise.

There was a rumour a couple of years ago that Oxford was considering dropping undergraduate teaching as it isn't cost effective. Never seemed to come to anything.

It's as if we're not aware that the longer term aim is to move tertiary education funding out of the public domain, e.g. as in the US. There is no other way to reconcile high %s of graduate training (an essential resource which the rest of the world is getting on with faster than we are) and paying for it.

Think of independent school fees. Another fact is that the full university fees paid by my fellow foreign students in the 1970s were higher than current fees, so you can work out whether £9000 is anywhere near "full fees" and edge up to the real figures. For subsidised tertiary education, you need to look to other EU states (for now) and there will always be some who benefit from scholarships elsewhere.

It's scary, but no more than for everyone else on the planet. As well as the few well-heeled ones, most of these foreign students enjoyed annual family income less than fees, they got by through extended family support and then in turn supporting younger relatives. Needless to say these ones never lost sight of why they were there, and seemed much more resilient to physical and emotional challenges than some of us. Sterling was a lot bigger then than now too, so the sacrifices they made are even more humbling now I'm longer in the tooth and have a living to make myself.

And yes, there'll probably be a "market re-structure" in tertiary education unfolding as we head towards full fees. But that's another tale.

Also - I worked through uni - not for much and I know there aren't jobs for all but still - I was 18. My choice to go and thanks for parents and grant for funding it. But didn't ever expect not to contribute myself too.

No, I know adamschic it is not easy for many children to go to uni or get family support - I left school at 16 and didnt get to go to Uni until I was married with children as my family were poor and I was the eldest and had to get a job.

It is though perfectly possible though to work whilst doing most undergrad degrees (perhaps not medicine!). DD1 is in her final year now has earned around £6K a year without her studying suffering unduly.

The odd thing is in all this talk of undergrad fees, they dont seem to have given a thought to masters fees where the government still subsidises them heavily - its going to be cheaper to do an intensive 12 month masters degree (c. £5-6K) than a year i.e. (Oct-May) of an undergrad degree (c. £9K).

Yes, Scotland is a possibility for now but my colleagues working in Scottish Unis say they are already struggling. I know someone who rented a relatively inexpensive flat for two years in Scotland so her son could do highers so he got a free University education - money well spent she said.

Will be interesting to see if the Universities in the Netherlands manage to get their degrees on the UCAS system as they have been trying to do - they are much cheaper and many are taught in English.

My in laws live in Mytholmroyd.