Graduated 2015 - shock of loan cost!

[goingmadinthecountry]

Dd1 graduated last year and her fees loan (didn't have maintenance loan) has increased already from the £27,000 for fees to £30, 160! Obviously lots of people are in the same boat but I'm truly shocked at the amount of interest already. Next year's MSc will be another £10500 before living expenses. Can't see her buying a flat anytime soon!

I think it's the amount of interest that's shocked me the most.

I'm not in denial, honestly. I'm trying to get to grips with it all.
In fairness I did give the dates of my examples and said they weren't recent.
I was responding to suggestions that students have always found it hard/ fees have always been high in retrospect.

I know it will cost a fortune, and obviously she won't earn all the money to fund herself but if she can manage a year or so herself it's a start.

And one UK ISIS fighter took his full loan and used it to fund his flights and costs of getting to Raqqa. Some young people see the loan as free cash.

You expect a teenager to be able to save up 20k to fund a year of higher education, from part-time and summer jobs?

You do know that many/most UK families don't have savings of 20k?

Jeanne presumably if a uk national returns to work in the uk s/he will be liable for the arrears (i think this is why the govt went for loans rather than a graduate tax, so that tpeople remain liable to pay even when abroad and the interst accrues)? Or at least i hope so.
Not that many people would want to leave the uk permanently ie never to return - but yes, this incentive to leave the uk was pointed out at the time the system was introduced!
Pursuing the other eu nationals - would be possible if there was the will to do it, but i suppose it costs more than is recouped. Some eu nationals won't be earning over the threshold in their home countries - others will!

user, you really don't surprise me at all. I hadn't heard this reported.

esornep

Yes, she will be able to manage this from part time work. she's lucky to not be restricted to holidays and summer work. I know she'll end up richer than us very soon. She plans to start small when she's 14 and obviously gain more as she gets older.

NewLife4Me

Check out universities in Germany, Holland and Sweden, they teach in English and fees are much lower, in Sweden it is £0.

If we are still in the EU she can access EU university education at EU prices.

New4 i seem to remember there was a lot of talk about the time the fees came in about studying in netherlands instead. Would be interesting to know if anyone has - i haven't come across any real life example of anyone doing it. I think one argument against it was that there were no government loans for living costs - unlike the uk system - so you had to find more money upfront. Maybe because many students go to local universities - i don't know how it works otherwise.

Which i suppose proves that there are pros and cons to the uk system!

I finished uni in 2004 and was earning over the (significantly lower) threshold so started paying back quite quickly. Not sure who thinks it's only £60 a month. Mine is £200 a month plus my PG course which is another £180. Having just applied for a mortgage those payments have massively impacted on how much we can borrow.

I called the student loans company to see how much I have left to pay and it's still £7k! I was really surprised as I'm paying over £2k a year.

With the new legislation suggesting university's can basically charge what they like I don't know if I could ever encourage someone to go.

With the new legislation suggesting university's can basically charge what they like I don't know if I could ever encourage someone to go.

The white paper indicates that universities will be allowed to raise fees at the level of RPI, which is currently around 1%. So in the first year 9k will become around 9090, an extra 90 pounds.

As for the Netherlands: there are around 800 UK students studying undergraduate courses in Holland, with around the same number studying post-graduate courses. Most reputable courses in Holland are still taught in Dutch, and those which are taught in England are not really known/understood by UK employers. Fees in Holland are around 2k Euros per year for many courses, but more like 4k Euros for University Colleges, and living expenses/accommodation can be expensive/difficult as many students live at home. Fees do need to be paid upfront.

There is far less support for study in Holland, and a large non-completion and failure rate. Research is strongly prioritised over education, with most top researchers leaving teaching to junior post-docs and graduate students. Teaching standards hence vary widely and there is relatively little regulation of the quality of degrees. I would encourage families consider studying in the EU to look into it very carefully.

Whether it's another £90 or £900 I don't think it's acceptable. It's a huge debt to be straddled with and although I didn't really see it as such when I was doing my degree, I felt even the smallest of payments when I was trying to cover rent, childcare and bills. It took me qualifying into a fairly well paid profession to truly feel like I didn't have to worry too much about bills but I am still really looking forward to keeping the £400 a month I currently don't have.

Whether it's another £90 or £900 I don't think it's acceptable.

So do you think it's fair that academics have their salaries frozen? Because freezing fees = freezing salaries for those who work in universities. If a pay freeze carries on, then decent academics will leave the country/academia and our universities will gradually decay away.

The harsh reality is that while nobody wants to pay tuition fees, nobody is willing to pay more tax to pay for universities, universities cannot run on no money.

I'd pay more tax over lumbering young people with £30k debt. There are lots of people who advocate the fee increases yet aren't the ones who have to deal with the life long debt that comes with it.

As I said i my first post, I would struggle to recommend university at its current cost let alone any increased costs. There are alternative routes into various professions including law (someone mentioned it previously).

Not sure who thinks it's only £60 a month. Mine is £200 a month plus my PG course which is another £180.

We're talking about standard undergraduate degree courses here, not post-grad.

It is £60 (approx, think it's actually £67) a month under the current system for graduates earning £30k per year - which is a good graduate salary.

I agree kirinm. The big accountancy firms are expending their direct entry courses and the degree route will only offer financial advantage to the very few.

I also saw a report recently suggesting UK students graduate with more debt than any other country - twice as much as the US, so I don't think the current model is sustainable or competitive.

I don't accept the argument that Universities need fees to survive as most students don't repay them and won't repay any more no matter how much their debt increases if the repayment rate stays at 9%. Higher fees just result in a tax transfer from high paid non-graduates to high paid graduates.

I don't accept the argument that Universities need fees to survive as most students don't repay them and won't repay any more no matter how much their debt increases if the repayment rate stays at 9%.

But the universities receive 9k per year right now. The issue of lack of repayment is a problem for the owners of the student loans, who are not currently the universities.

Fees represent most of the universities' incomes. Without funding at this level, universities cannot pay their bills. EU universities who do not charge fees are funded at the level of 9k+ from taxation. UK academics are low paid compared to international standards. In particular salaries at Oxbridge are a fraction of the salaries paid to academics at comparable universities abroad. Oxbridge already suffers from recruitment problems and cannot see salaries go lower in real terms without dropping down international league tables.

And lack of top universities and research, leads to a weaker economy, less innovation and development.

But the level of funding for Universities is a separate issue from fees - it is only recent governments which have drawn a link. I would argue that funding is much broader than student education. When I was at Uni many decades ago the lecturers could barely be bothered to educate students at all (I exaggerate to make a point) because most of their funding was coming from research grants, many of them government sponsored.

Yes, of course funding is separate from fees - but unless the taxpayer is willing to pay more tax there would be a deficit of 10-20 billion pounds per year if fees were abolished. Even if you want to cut funding to universities substantially, you are still talking about a huge black hole in financing unless you are willing to increase tax substantially.

BTW it was NEVER true that lecturers were concentrating on research because most funding was coming from research. Decades ago, most money came directly from the government (as it does elsewhere in Europe). Lecturers were focussing on research because back then that was the only way to get promotion, and hence pay rises.

But the level of funding for Universities is a separate issue from fees - it is only recent governments which have drawn a link. I would argue that funding is much broader than student education. When I was at Uni many decades ago the lecturers could barely be bothered to educate students at all (I exaggerate to make a point) because most of their funding was coming from research grants, many of them government sponsored

Let's unpick this a bit.

In my field (Humanities) teaching has always subsidised research. And we are bloody good teachers.

Governments have always connected funding with fees. What this government has done is to remove public funding from support for undergraduate education. Apart from a golden age post WWII, universities have always charged fees to students.

Research budgets of the major Research council - the Arts & Humanities Research Council, has dropped by over 50% in some areas (eg funding studentships for PhD students). There is no funding for Masters any more.

the lecturers could barely be bothered to educate students at all (I exaggerate to make a point)
And what point is that? that you are prepared to be disingenuous to win an argument? Your expensive education seems to have been wasted, and taught you to insult highly-trained, skilled, dedicated professionals. Nice.

University education is expensive. Current domestic fees £9k don't actually cover the costs of most courses. In my Humanities field our costs are barely covered.

As a society we have to pay for it one way or another.

Or would you like to go back to a time when only 15% of the population went to university? And the large majority of that 15% were white, male, upper middle class. My family is Oxbridge educated back at least 4 generations - that's fine - let people like me run the country.

I doubt anyone wants that ...

I would be happy for us to go back to many many fewer universities with only 15% of people at them (and my year in law 30 years ago was 50/50 male/female by the way even back then).

Some subjects were always more gender balanced. However, many of the subjects which are associated with highly paid careers were not gender balanced (and remain unbalanced).

Well, we went to collect her from school today and the 6th formers have been telling her of their destinations when they leave and she told us it's either London or Manchester depending on which instrument she chooses as first study.
I would imagine it will be London, but a couple have put America into her head now, so lord only knows.
It's made me realise that even though the subject probably won't change her choice of destination might.

Esornep very interesting facts about uk students in the netherlands - are they published for all countries (not sure how the dfe would know how many there were studying abroad)
There is no direct link between the loan system and funding is there? The govt is currently no better off then under the old system - it is currently providing the universities with 9k per student through the student loans company instead of paying it direct (apart from the students who pay it themselves - i imagine rare, but would love to know how many). The govt will recover some of this 9k slowly, but not all of it. So Currently it is still saving no money at all, although will just be starting to recoup some.

It is true - taxpayers in general (some exceptions!) don't want to pay more tax and it was hard to justify the minimum wage worker paying for students to go to university and derive huge financial benefit (though of course the students paid more tax as well in the long run - unless they emigrated, or left the workforce). UnderGraduate education is very expensive - there are pros and cons with all ways of paying for it. This is better than a graduate tax which can be avoided by emigrating -as theoretically it can still be enforced against people working abroad (any figures for whether it ever is?). But is so much worse for today's students than those 30 yrs ago.

Irreally read my earlier post. The upfront money the Treasury gives to the SLC is not on the balance sheet as an expenditure. It's actually an asset mostly.

Universities come under BIS not DfE by the way. They do not collect data on how many students do degrees abroad, or anything else, although they are data users. The British Council website publishes some numbers by country however.

The funding methodology does sort of link fees to funding. The unit of resource assumes a fee income of just under £9k per student.

But titchy isn't that just an accounting point, ( i say airily)? The actual cash flow position is no different from the previous position - which is what i always thought is what really matters.

(Is your post on the other thread by the way - i couldn't find it on this one - though may be getting confused between the two! Esp as they're getting quite long!)