University fees about to increase

[Onemorestepintheworld]

An announcement is expected today. www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c0qdgndz5wzt Any bets? I reckon £12k pa

To reduce the cost for the degrees to the students. There never, before Labour introduced it, used to be fees associated with going to uni. Most other countries don't charge these amounts either (surely we don't want to mirror the US!!).

We need to get over ourselves with the NHS 'being free', to introducing a patient charge - it's one of the largest employers in the world, it can't survive as is and people do misuse it - going to the doctors for minor ailments and missing appointments.

We need to increase tax across the board, not just by charging VAT on things like private schools. 20% up to £50k is no longer viable - need to increase this on a siding scale.

The US have lower taxes but citizens there don't have the social security or receive the public services we expect here.

And introduce tax on gambling!!

I'm all for more transparency and councils etc having access to benefits claimants' bank account. Too much fiddling with these. Also need to look at how on earth a major chunk of the council cost now goes towards mental health and learning support due to an exponential rise in 'special needs' requirements.

Oh and surely we need to look at the triple lock pensions issues. Unique to the UK!

To reduce the cost for the degrees to the students. There never, before Labour introduced it, used to be fees associated with going to uni.

This is because it was covered entirely by the government and far fewer people went to university. The expansion of the HE Sector made this model unsustainable.

Yes, and that has to change. But the other issues need to be sorted too - we are a low tax country for the public services we receive. It's not sustainable.
NHS needs to start charging.

@Tooffless Exporting education? Again, who pays for this? Do you mean overseas students who can, and do, use unis globally?

As for Law. We have around 18,000 students studying law. We don’t reduce to a few students at a few unis. We limit the courses to meet actual demand. That’s not 18,000 with a law degree of whom the majority don’t become lawyers. Reducing the offer more closely to meet employment demand makes way more sense. A low tariff law course does not get many getting law training positions but many mid tariff ones have dc working in business who might use law occasionally. Thats still way below the numbers doing law degrees. There’s a whole raft of law degrees that are poor value for money.

We do need a greater range of courses below degree level and we need uni mergers so there is greater choice of levels for study. The old polys did this brilliantly .

Can anyone think why Lincoln needs two unis? If business doesn’t work efficiently on an existing model, then it seeks to change. Do you get 2 M&S stores in a city? Not normally. Or 2 Amazon depots? Some unis could be charge more for degrees and others less for HND type courses but many unis could be rationing what is offered and doing it better. Employers might have more faith in grads if they could see the courses met their requirements.

We have two m&s stores in our city 😂

So much of this goes back to Blair

Can anyone think why Lincoln needs two unis? If business doesn’t work efficiently on an existing model, then it seeks to change. Do you get 2 M&S stores in a city? Not normally. Or 2 Amazon depots? Some unis could be charge more for degrees and others less for HND type courses but many unis could be rationing what is offered and doing it better. Employers might have more faith in grads if they could see the courses met their requirements.

Birmingham has at least 3 Universities- Aston traditionally STEM; Birmingham solidly traditionally academic; Birmingham City offers courses that support Birmingham’s long-standing industries such as Jewellery as well as housing one of the country’s high quality Conservatoires. I don’t see what is to be gained by merging them?

As in, each seems to have a specific place in the Higher Education ecosystem. Local employers benefit from the focused training for their industries (I know that the degree in Horology at Birmingham City was cited as an example of a ridiculous degree at one point - but then you look at Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter and the value of high level knowledge of clocks and watches) while those employers looking for candidates with solid traditionally academic degree credentials will look to Birmingham. And those within the music world will look to Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, and know what they get from a Jazz or Early Music or Composition graduate.

I think there need to be schemes that allow employers' investment in employee training to be assigned a monetary value that depreciates over time, so that if they move to a different employer within a certain period either they or the new employer has to repay the balance. This would give employers a much stronger incentive to invest in education & training.

My Dh did a law Masters in his forties paid for by his employer because they needed people with that knowledge in the company. Part of the deal was that if he left the company within a certain number of years he had to pay back the cost (which was pretty high as I recall).

True though Birmingham also has 10 times the population of Lincoln.

Bishop Grot used to be best known for teacher training. It’s certainly small in terms of student numbers. I don’t know if this is the case but presumably some core back office functions could be shared with Lincoln Uni? Which itself is nowhere near a Nottingham (either Uni), Leeds or Manchester in terms of total student numbers.

The IFS says yesterday's tuition fee hike raises £390m
The Higher Education Policy Institute says the NI hike will cost universities £400m
So every single extra penny graduates are paying goes on Labour's NI hike

@boys3 Merger of the two in Lincoln would make sense to me but I’m not gaining from being a highly paid VC! It’s certainly one that could be looked at. They are not like Oxford and OB which are clearly very different.

I think it’s reasonable for Brum to have 3 unis but they are not distinct as said above. History, English and Criminology are offered at Aston but they have dropped Planning degrees which were excellent there. Aston is an older uni than City but we have a lot of courses repeated in many areas of the country and many at low tarrif ones. I think Aston as a stem uni is great and it should be sought after in that field. City does a lot of Stem courses? Why? Have excellence in one place because it’s better use of resources.

A few issues which merit review: 109 unis offer law degrees. 118 offer psychology. 117/118 is Bishop G for Psychology. Lincoln offers it too. Is that best use of finite resources? Ditto Leicester and de Montfort. London has 3 unis at 110, 111 and 113 out of 118 for Psycholigy. What is the point? Surely mergers and amalgamations should be considered and value for money.

London has more of everything including M&S and I wasn’t counting food halls!

Better than having to suffer the NI hike without an increase in fees. I wonder if this was always planned or thrown in when everyone pointed out the budget didn’t mention higher education. I also think there is an unsaid assumption that since this is a near inflation rise it will be repeated annually, a bit like the triple lock pension.

The rise in fees simply hikes the debt of the government. It’s still the state paying unis to
operate and hoping DC will pay it off in the years to come. They now have 40 years. However many mums work part time and therefore pay next to nothing.

• Unis need to merge in some instances
• Number of courses reduced/merged - driven by demand
• Aim for more employer-led apprenticeships (supported by gov/local gov)
• Increase income tax for all (not just the middle-high/high earners) - we have the lowest tax burden in Western Europe but still expect a lot of public services
• Get used to the idea of the NHS not being free at the point of care - introduce a small patient fee (to encourage attendance of scheduled appointment; and discourage attendance for non-urgent or trivial problems).
• Increase support for parents in terms of child care to encourage more people going back to work (and raise taxes from this)
• Significantly reduce uni costs for a more level-playing field
• Increase maintenance loans and these to be paid back as a % of income with the cap lower (but more favourable interest rates)
• Introduce ID cards so that central government and local council administration is made more efficient and to prevent benefit fraud

It’s not a given that unis boost the economy around them or we would not have areas that still need leveling up. Many have had unis and polys for two generations or more. The employees of the uni are fine but they haven’t boosted employment opportunities for all. They have really introduced their own eco systems. The price is considerable for many students and what unis are poor at is providing entrepreneurs so employment is not just via state funded institutions.

It’s not a given that unis boost the economy around them or we would not have areas that still need leveling up. Many have had unis and polys for two generations or more. The employees of the uni are fine but they haven’t boosted employment opportunities for all.

Where do you think the employees of the university live, shop and socialise?

That’s my point! They should not be the sole focus of the economy in the location. Lincolnshire is one of the lowest employment areas for grads but has two unis. What have they done to boost other employment in Lincolnshire? It is difficult to see how these unis have boosted the local economy other than how you say. Where are the influx of employers wanting grads? Same applies to some other regions too. There are unis educating local people who don’t want to move away but the local economy is still poor. Partly because any non uni jobs generated didn’t need degree holders. It’s just a hard fact of life that students pay for unis for the uni staff to boost the local economy! Is that really the best use of the students’ loan?

So your answer is to close one of the areas biggest employers. Yeah that makes sense 🙄

Not necessarily. Merge. It’s obvious. We just think employment is about state funding. It eats up our economy. Maybe we should understand we need more than state jobs to make an area bouyant.

You realise that mergers results in redundancies?
Mergers aren't necessarily the answer, particularly if the universities are not aligned in terms of mission or portfolio.

Well it would seem that Lincoln Uni is among the top ten unis in the country for enabling student start up businesses. https://staffnews.lincoln.ac.uk/2024/10/03/ukri-research-highlights-university-of-lincolns-significant-contribution-to-the-region/

Quite what type of start ups - all knowledge economy ???? - and where these might lead remains to be scene.

The references to KEF4 is interesting, though I’ve not looked in any detail.

but to rather side with Fizz’s point the end of that linked article talks about the economic impact of the higher education sector, and level of economic benefit for every £ of public investment, but doesn’t provide a specific figure or scale of impact for Lincoln Uni itself. An unfortunate omission. But I will google further.

The fees go direct to the universities which are independent bodies, though. You wouldn't expect to see that in government accounts as it is not paid to government. The universities are not strictly speaking part of the public sector as, though they do receive public funds so are accountable for that, they are all independent organisations responsible for their own finances. That is why the prospect of many becoming insolvent is very real.

"the English" do not subsidise Scottish education

Whatever the UK government spends, Scotland gets their share of funding for devolved matters. Scotland is then free to decide what to spend it on. Currently that includes free university for a capped number of Scottish students. The downside being many Scottish students don't get places. Would you prefer your child not to get into Uni at all because there is not enough places.

Many children in Scotland get places at uni with widening access/contextual offers (meaning others miss out), where in England the decision seems to have been to increase the size of unis and courses so more student can go.

Neither system is "perfect", both are constrained by budgets, just solved in different ways.

I get that you are upset, I would be too, but your anger is very misdirected.