A Labour minister has just tried to explain on LBC why U.K. society requires young people who attend uni to pay a graduate tax

[EvangelicalAboutButteredToast]

And I’m confused. He was trying to say it was a student loan and then accepted it was a graduate tax and that society deemed that the right thing because they were more likely to out earn those who didn’t attend uni.

I thought that was what income tax was for alongside all the other taxes. Are uni courses subsidised by the government. Is it that?

it was a stealth graduate tax
Hth

So they’re just bastards which is what I suspected?

Uni courses are subsidised by the government, yes. Not sure what difference that makes to your argument though.

Given the number of graduates struggling to get any job, the future prospects of decent pay is likely to look very different in the future.

Those who are in low paid work - their interest accumulation will be greater than the amount they pay off - impacting their finances for their whole working life.

The data on 'better pay' is from some time ago and is skewed by high paid workers in sectors like finance, usually from wealthy families.

Work has gone back to 'who you know' not 'what you know' and it's likely to get worse. The FT in their video 'jobocalypse' suggested that parents should take a leaf out of wealthy medieval parent's books and pay for their children to be trained in a trade.

Young people have been pushed into university by the secondary school system without exploration of all possible options for each student.

Student money is used to keep towns afloat - the money pouring in to rental properties, bars as well as the university itself and the jobs that this allows means that new students are always needed (preferably from overseas as they pay even more)

Student loans system has been an absolute disaster.

HE is in crisis, many young people have been ripped off… and someone somewhere is making money from this system. I’m so cross we’ve done this to young people.

Because I was trying to think why the government thinks graduates ‘owe’ society something. The way he phrased it was as though they morally should be paying extra tax and it was acceptable and ‘the right thing’.

They borrow the money. It’s a loan not a tax.

if it were a tax then all graduates would pay it. Just because martin leets says to think if it as a tax doesn’t mean it’s a tax.

Uk universities make a loss on every UK student they accept

Who are?

They do owe society something - the money they borrowed plus interest.

We simply cannot pay for everything. The country can’t afford it.

Borrowing money for the loan to pay for their university education that they can pay off when they starting earning is one thing. tPaying a small amount of interest on top is reasonable. Paying extortionate amounts of interest is not!

These young people are kids entering into a loan agreement at 17 years old. They are pushed by their schools to go to university if at all capable, even kids with barely any decent A levels are pushed by the schools to go to university. Parents also push or are clueless and listen to the schools. The whole system is a mess and needs change.

Students are getting crap value for their university experience.

If the universities are making a loss maybe they need to review what they pay their seniors.

Students are exploited in so many ways - their housing is overpriced, student loans are paid back at too high interest rates, their degrees are no longer valued by employers.

They were not given adequate advice when they were sold these 'loans' - in fact they were likely given no advice at all other than 'go to university, otherwise you'll never get a good job'

They were mis-sold the loans, coerced into the whole university experience by a secondary school system that seems to have forgotten what education is actually for.

Other countries afford it. Scotland affords it. Portugal is a much poorer country than the U.K. yet DP only paid several hundred euros a year for his degree.

British grads on average have higher student debts than Americans now and federal loans have a similar income repayment schedule to ours.

Besides, what about jobs like Nursing and teaching that require a degree?

It is a loan not a tax as if you don't take it and graduate you obviously don't pay it back.

I think it was the housing minister and he agreed it was a tax.

Blair introduced tuition fees following The Dearing Report.

Someone had to pay you cannot go from 10% of young people to 50% of young people going to University without funding. In theory when I was young you really had an advantage having a degree, these days they are two a Penny and where were all these new graduate level jobs going to come from? I remember myself and my colleagues seeing this be a disaster when it was announced.

There had been a disconnect with people from poor backgrounds going in to higher education and widening participation began in earnest the year after tuition fees were introduced. This in itself is not a bad thing but the over expansion was. My FIL grew up in a council house and got in to Oxford in the 1950’’s he was not a nice man but was intelligent at a level that was off the scale though he was obnoxious. So some working class kids did make it but they had to be beyond bright.

What was a very bad thing was higher education taking people that quite frankly should never have gone to University the calibre of some students by the time DH retired last year frustrated him.

I’ve found the video
https://share.google/bxGAVDPeiHjWz0Q5I

Scottish universities have a finite number of places for Scottish-born applicants. This means universities accept more fee-paying students from abroad than local kids with better exam results.

Yep, champagne socialists who while bleating about being the party of the workers, really mean they like being the “workers” overlords and will do whatever they can to squash ambition

Depends on how you think of it really. Is going to uni a privilege or a right? If you think it’s a privilege, the student who goes should pay. If you think it’s a right, society should pay.

Personally I think the real scandal is the level of interest on the loan. I think students are being screwed over big time. Oh and completely useless courses that are in essence a scam. I think the whole system needs a massive overhaul.

Blair was a social engineer without the right set of tools to get the job done.

NHS wonderful, it cost even then after its first year double what had been budgeted.

The Labour Party have always been the party of unintended consequences they have some wonderful equalising policies but are economic illiterates.

Just because he says in an interview that irs a tax does not make it a tax. I’m a graduate and I don’t pay it. It simply isn’t a tax.

Martin Lewis started the whole “think of it like a tax” line to persuade people that it was a better way to fund higher education than spending other funds you might have access to (which it is).

The tax payer simply can’t fund free higher education. Not at the levels it’s accessed at nowadays. Too many people access higher education for the country to be able to afford that.

The reality is we need massive consolidation in the market which would cut costs. There are too many places offering degree courses. We then need to be persuading those with less than impressive grades to learn a trade or skill rather than doing a degree with CCD in a subject which isn’t going to improve their earning potential.

But people would view that as “unfair” and a step backwards so it won’t happen.

Yeah I agree. See also “unconditional offers”. Not so long ago these were like hen’s teeth… now it’s really ways of less popular universities trying keep their numbers up imo.