new gov policy of restricting student numbers in some degree courses

[justanotherdaduser]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66216005

Wondering how people feel about it?

I am unsure - in one hand, it feels needlessly prescriptive. People should be free to study what interests them without government's guiding hand

But also, not everyone signing up to such courses fully understand the degree outcomes.

Or, why should tax payers fund courses that are not good value for money? But by that logic, over time, we can lose many other valuable courses (IMO!)

Confused!

An easy way to cut the number of students attending courses which will not benefit them in any way, is to stop sixforms and colleges being rated on number of students progressing onto higher education.

Once students stop being pushed onto any course which will have them, the teachers and careers advice will be more focused individual outcomes. Again OFSTED and it’s targets are the problem

My take on this…..students are taking out loans of around £50k from ‘student loan companies’ which in turn are underwritten by the government (tax payer).
If the student never earns enough to pay back the loan then the tax payer bails out the student loan company.
Previously students didn’t pay fees but many went onto well paid careers which put them into a higher tax bracket which sort of paid their tuition fees.
Maybe Rishi doesn’t want to admit this is his reasoning?

I feel this is a very good reasoning. Should tax payers, over their lifetime, fund higher education for millions who will never be able to pay back the cost of that education?

Maybe the government fears that this phrasing will be politically unpopular, but given most existing tax payers have never been to university, and even now, less than half go to universities, it's probably worth pushing this argument.

I also feel part of the problem is that the tuition fees don't reflect true cost of providing the service.

Everything costs the same. An English lit degree from Winchester cost the same as a medicine degree from Kings College, even though the first with much less contact hours and lab work should cost a fraction of the second.

If the prices come down to reflect true cost of providing the service, their will not be so much debt and not so much backlash demanding for 'value for money' degrees.

Ultimately, this cannot go on forever. The demand on tax revenue from a aging demographic will keep growing for next few decades, and all governments, no matter what party, will question the point of swallowing billions of pounds of losses on education loan.

@trysophona thanks for responding. Which institutions do you think are reputable for dance and how do you think the funding should work for these courses for students that have middle income parents and are therefore ineligible for DaDAs and cannot afford the fees+living expenses?

I agree with you that these types of degrees are likely to be chopped by Rishi.

@justanotherdaduser I might well be wrong or outdated here, but I gather that for lab-based courses the 'true' cost is much much higher than the tuition fees, and so the arts/humanities courses subsidise those students. Moving to a truer reflection of actual cost would price nearly everyone out of STEM subjects without a complete overhaul of funding and loans.

If you charge the true cost of some of the courses which are most useful to society, eg science and medicine and engineering, you will be preventing the middle to lower income students from attending. Less people doing degrees and more funding for those who do them would help poor students attend .
I thought the initial purpose of sending more to university was to cut the unemployment figures and cleverly making people pay for that themselves

Yes, agree, valid point - many STEM degree costs much more than the tuition costs

Some of that is subsidised by international students who pay about three times more than the locals, and some by the government. But some part certainly subsidised by fellow students whose courses cost less to run than they pay.

In a way it's unfair to everyone but the students who are underpaying

We will probably at some point come to a wholesale redesign of higher education funding, but only after trying out every other bad options!

It would be great if everyone paid for themselves. They probably did 50 plus years ago by getting the best jobs. Now, as you can see from the Martin Lewis figures, too few do. I do think that’s why Sunak wants to look at it.

Stem students are heavily subsidised by others on, say, English degrees. We also need the international students for cash. It’s inevitable we need stem but a few less of stem at the extremes and some law courses would not go amiss. Plus a few others where jobs do not correspond with the rhetoric. Coupled with this, more opportunities are needed for diploma courses or part time courses whilst at work.

I’d imagine art and creative subjects are subsidised by purely lecture style courses too. All that physical space and need for technicians in addition to lecturers costs money. Although what subsidises the students at purely art institutions? Maybe that’s foreign students as a whole rather than students on particular courses?

The foreign student issue is a whole other can of worms. For short term funding gains, we are educating and skilling up competition in the global economy.
Imperial university which is in the global top ten for STEM is educating huge numbers of Chinese students

An incorrect take @Gall10

the Student Loans Company is a non-profit making government -owned organisation that administers loans and grants to students in colleges and universities in the UK.

10 years ago the government did indeed sell off a portion of student loans issued before 2012. In the big scheme of things an insignificant amount, given the post 2012 changes.

House of Commons Library has a good summary briefing paper - SN1079 - published just a couple of weeks ago.

Everything costs the same. An English lit degree from Winchester cost the same as a medicine degree from Kings College, even though the first with much less contact hours and lab work should cost a fraction of the second.

Think about that for more than a second. If students paid the actual cost of their degrees no one would be doing medicine (or engineering or chemistry or....) - these courses would cost the individual student £hundreds of thousands, not £27k.

The Gov tops up these courses btw.

Yes, fair enough.

Maybe narrowly targeted subsidies for certain courses is a more equitable choice?

The current arrangement is that the English lit student from Winchester is burdened with debt much higher than the monetary value she received from her degree and later demonised by politicians for doing degrees that are not worth doing. Fact is, she had to pay much more than the cost of what she received (because everything costs the same in U.K. higher Ed market).

Why should she subsidise medics who will go on to earn much more than her?

The monetary winners in the current arrangement are those whose degrees cost much more to produce than they pay.

Maybe their tuition fees should be higher (equal to the cost), they take on more debt, and they will earn more later anyway and pay off the cost in full?

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn01079/

Link added

Why should she subsidise medics who will go on to earn much more than her?

Because when she's in a serious car accident those medics will save her life. For free.

And that same English grad from Win went on to do a PGCE and is now the only English teacher in your kid's school who hasn't left.... thus meaning your kid may achieve the hallowed grade 4 English GCSE.

@justanotherdaduser surely though given how the student loan system actually works, not being a debt in the traditional sense but a graduate tax our Winchester English Lit grad is quids in.

The taxpayer wouldn’t be of course.

This based on the inference is that English Lit from Winchester resulted in a relatively low paying career. But one that may well still have much societal value.

Many years ago I graduated with a STEM degree having studied part-time over 6 years as part of a trainee scheme. This scheme was funded by my employer as were all the other students at college doing the course, the employers were pretty much all in manufacturing of one sort or another and parts of the course were tailored to the employers business for example I studied a particular module on polymers. Sadly many of these employers don't exist anymore. It's no good the government taking away degrees without providing alternative options. It's similar to the issue with wanting us to stop using cars but not providing decent affordable public transport.

That's not how it works.

She will pay for the medic and everything else through a lifetime of taxes. Just like everyone else in U.K. Why should she be made to pay more because she opted to go to university?

In the current arrangement, she is being sold an overpriced degree with a stealth subsidy for her peers in other courses.

If that's the chosen/desired policy, universities and government should be transparent about how much of her money goes towards actually buying the service she is receiving. She can then make an informed choice on whether she wants to buy it.

a relatively low paying career. But one that may well still have much societal value.

This is a key point from @boys3 surely? @nonman mentions the courses which are most useful to society (med, engineering) - yes of course I want there to be doctors and engineers.

But I also want there to be teachers of history and RE and MFL and English; I want there to be librarians; I want there to be publishers; I want there to be journalists; I want there to be dancers and actors; I want there to be filmmakers. All those roles, which I think are also very useful to society, require a degree or at least some kind of post-18 education; very few journalists (for example) now get very far without a degree.

I just think we are in very dangerous territory when we start rating the value of a profession by how much you earn doing it. An engineer will already earn a lot more than someone who proof reads books. Are we now saying that because of this (or for some other reason) their work is that much more valuable? It's like the balloon game!

@clary how many young people do you know who goes to Uni due to their passion for their subject and a desire to study it further? Most go for the life experience

She will pay for the medic and everything else through a lifetime of taxes. Just like everyone else in U.K. Why should she be made to pay more because she opted to go to university?

Because that's how taxation works. Our taxes subsidise the medical students - rightly so. The taxes of the childless fund the education of those with children. The taxes of the healthy fund the healthcare of the unhealthy.

In any case while English students' fees may once have slightly subsidised more expensive courses, they no longer do. Don't forget the current funding mechanism (admittedly very faulty) burdens the Gov (ie taxpayer) with the additional cost of the expensive courses not classroom based students.

(In fact if you want to delve into the detail around a sixth of home student fee income has to be spent on subsidising poor students - is that fair do you think?)

Are you suggesting we give 17 year olds a questionnaire then, and only allow them loans once their answers have been analysed?

Not talking about Axing all courses but cutting back on the ones which do the students a disservice. Not everyone who goes to uni benefits from it,

So stop black kids, poor kids, disabled kids and women from going to uni then as they are less likely to be able to command graduate roles when they leave.

(Don't limit your judgement of whether people benefit from uni by simply what they do or don't do in the immediate period after they graduate. The benefits are gained over a much longer period than that - into the next generation in fact.)