More places if you pay upfront

[Xenia]

Today's Times...."Extra univesrity plcawes would be made available for students who pay their fees upfront and don't require help with living costs, under govermnent plans"

At present so few will pay back the loans the new system is going to be very difficult to work economically. Univerities need more students but are blocked by quotas. They want to increase numbers without increasing Government spending. They would of course have to meet the standard entry requirements for that university.

I saw this and wondered if it was April 1st. Or if it was a quiet day and someone wanted some fun. Is this privatising the universities by the back door? And is it really going to happen, I wonder?

I am gobsmacked. Truely gobsmacked!

What on earth are the Coalition thinking of? Its almost as if they are going out to deliberately step on every political landmine they can find.

Even as as Tory voter I can see this basically will be run in the media as 'more University places for the rich'.

I absolutely despair.

I doesn't say it will happen but the economics of the loans have not been thought out. They are removing most Government funding from the universities so they need £9k per pupil to keep current funding levels going rather than improving everything.

If most people will never pay it back it isn't a very good investment/deal and sounds like sub prime debt reincarnated.

So to plug that gap they co0uld have more foreign students, more central Government funding, increase the amounts students repay I suppose or say they have to pay some upfront rather than not a bean or do this kind of thing.

For some of us who will and do at present pay up front so our chidlren graduate debt free if that means my younger two will get places if they get AAA whereas the 90% odd who no way could afford £9k a year up front are then fighting for the non reserved places it would help those children. If children of richer parents then to be brighter anyway and more likely to have been at better schools then in fact it could be win win all round including for the nation although I doubt anyone left wing would agree with me.

"If children of richer parents then to be brighter anyway and more likely to have been at better schools then in fact it could be win win all round including for the nation although I doubt anyone left wing would agree with me."

OK..... good luck with that one.

The content of the article appears inconsistent. David Willetts is quoted as saying the extra places will be allocate3d on "needs-blind, socially progressive basis". How is that possible if the qualification is the ability to pay up front?

I think it might mean more places for foreign students who pay upfront, or who's governments still invest in higher education.

But the ability to pay up front is the opposite to what is meant by "needs-blind and socially progessive", no matter where your origin.

Sounds like nonsense to me. Last time I looked they were trying to work out ways of preventing wealthy parrnts from paying up front at all, only to discover they had no legal means of doing so.

Frankly though, their HE plans are a disaster area because they simply didn't do their homework before shoving the bill through at record speed. The Tory-leds haven't got a clue what they're doing and are now panicking.

beanlet, I agree with you. This government are a shambles and are realising this themselves. They should not be in power full stop.

It is totally contradictory which probably shows the article isn't quite accurate and they haven't made up their minds but it certainly would help the economics if up front payers who met the basic qualification requirement got a place over those who likely as not will never pay it back.

It will be interesting to see what happens when my boys apply which will probably be appylin in 5 years to enter in 6 although I think by then they will be applying having already had their A level results as well, yet another change.

Xenia, that's exactly what universities DON'T want - the rich but thick getting places because they can pay, and the poor but brilliant deciding they can't tolerate the debt. Your suggestion is not preferable at all. Universities are meant to be for the best and brightest, regardless of whether their parents can afford to send them to Eton or can't even afford to buy them new shoes.

They are not saying that. They are saying if you meet the criteria and they are choosing between two equally qualified candidates there may be a reserve of places for those who can pay up front eg someone sponsored by an employer, the army, using a grandparent's inheritance or a parent who will pay or peraps even a private sector loan. anyway it will be interesting to see how they cope with the fact that most loans will not be repaid and the basis of the new fee proposals may be weaker than thought.

well it won't be all the foreigners cos they're on the restricted list these days to keep daily mail readers happy
duh
out out out oil rich arabs and a pox on your houses, upper class chinese people - stop cluttering up harrods with your expensive buying habits and go back to where you came from
etc

My concern here is for the children of those in the middle financially.

Children from low income families will, if you believe what you read, be eligible for extra help with costs, etc and the rich will be able to pay. These changes, as always, will hit those who earn enough to be above the assessment levels but don't have enough disposable income to pay.

You are, of course, absolutely right about most people never paying their loans off, which is why the govt are shitting themselves about too many universities setting fees at 9K.

The irony is that the current system is cheaper for the tax payer than the new system. They just want HE finances shoved off the balance sheet. Too bad that this means, at 6K, students paying double for a 20% CUT in their services and teaching, and no benefit whatsoever to the tax payer.

It's a paper exercise that is shafting our bright kids futures. I would say they want the expenditure off their revenue expenses and shoved onto the balance sheet as 'loans' when, a high proportion which will need to be written off as bad debt in years to come. It will look good in the short term.

Xenia, I hope this doesn't mean your children will have an unfair advantage because you earn a fortune. I know with your attitude, you think that a child such as mine should be penalised because I made the wrong choices years ago and am a low earner but fortunately the admissions tutors don't think like you and never will. I'm not a leftie but a mother to a child in year 12.

It's about time they have a long hard look at this again and admit they have messed up, again.

They certainly seem to be making a mess of it all. How they can remove the university funding and say the universities aren't supposed to charge students the funding they have lost is a bit strange.

Saying I want anyone's child penalised isn't accurate although I suppose how we all treat and deal with our children does have an impact on them.

Yes I do understand that money will already have impacted re choice of schools etc, but it shouldn't give anyone an advantage on getting into uni. I don't mean the hidden advantages which are inevitable, although mine has had a very rounded life and travelled etc. I mean by cold hard cash IFSWIM. Expecially as it's anyones guess as to how much that level of debt will impact on them for the rest of their lives.

It's interesting that other people have detected what I thought I had as well - that David Willetts is realising that this is all a really messy and damaging ballsup. It really is.

The point about the tuition loans never being paid off, as well... I read that 40 per cent of them are likely to be written off by the time former students of the shiny new upcoming system reach retirement age! So all the new system will have done is, make people feel like some kind of lowlife all their working lives, knowing there is a debt hanging over them which they can't pay.

I have in front of me a letter from an 80-year old lady who written to her local paper in support of our students. In her letter to me she says 'my generation always had a hard time, but we were never allowed to get into debt.... To think they (ie her student grandchildren) will owe all that money to the bankers - can we trust them? They put profit before people.'

Really, really ironic, Beanlet, that this govt is causing decent young people such stress and upset to NO economic purpose at all.

It would be just brilliant if the Coalition would be man enough to admit they didn't think it through - that they don't REALLY want to hurt a whole generation - the maths don't add up, sorry, they are on a 'learning curve' and are going, pronto, to unscrew where they've screwed up. And offer a big apology to children and parents.

Children's education is as important - more important - than forest privatisation, and they had the decency to do a u-turn on that.

It makes it an interesting financial issue - if you might never have to pay it off because you give up work at 25 to become a housewife for life or you want to act and earn a pittance (and it is all written off at 50 I think un der current plans) then would people be a mug to pay £27k up front for a 3 year degree?

The concept of getting into debt (even though in practice it is a graduate tax in all but name) is not something a lot of people do want for their children.

So someone will provide the funding to the universities - kind of an advance on the loan repayments - banks or the state presumably

It was the Browne report that they just took straight to vote. Ridiculous.

I'm still reeling that mine has lost EMA for next yr. Has applied for a job with the only large local employer and despite her probably having the most impressive CV, they favoured her peers above her. She was the only one who applied that is currently receiving EMA. Oh well, their loss.

If they continue to select for university in the same way as now ie. needs blind and then a certain proportion of those sign something to say they are paying up front, surely the universities could then remove them from the quota and let more in.....It seems to me like it could work or else I could be looking at it in a very naive way. But it could only work if the payment options are not wihtin the selection system.

No, they modified Browne to take the financial risk management he had built into the scheme OUT! Mind you, his ideas, while better VFM and safer for the taxpayer, were daft from the students and the universities point of view, because up to half of what the student woild have paid would have gone back to the government, not the institution s/he thought they were paying fees to!

It is a huge dilemma.

For those of us in the middle, should you remortgage your house etc to pay your dc's fees because you yourself paid nothing aeons ago, or do you let them take on the debt?

What happens if there's a big all change and some mugs have paid all the fees up front and everyone who took out loans has them written off?

Do I encourage ds to go to university for the experience and then strongly advise him to be a potter - or anything else as long as he doesn't earn more than £21K?

I saw a tv programme a few weeks' ago in which a panel of experts were advising current sixth formers on what course of action to take.

They were most encouraging to the girl who wanted to take a degree in some kind of equine studies, because they said she would be unlikely to ever earn enough to start paying back the loan.

The world's gone mad when the kid who wants to study Physics is dithering about whether he/she should be undertaking further study, yet the student wanting to do Festival Studies is gleefully packing their bags.