DD doesn't have a uni Term 3

[Globules]

Just that really.

She chose modules this year, her first year, that all completed in terms 1 & 2.

She has no lectures and no assignments, nothing, until October 2025.

£9250 academic fees, plus 39 week let fees.

Surely this can't be considered ok?!

The fees haven't really increased for 12 years (RPI inflation in that time is 67% according to an RPI calculator). Fees should have increased to £15,000 to keep track.

Term lengths etc haven't really changed since 2012 I don't believe. Do people still feel that their students are getting worse value for money now than in 2013, in the light of those stats? Because if so we should put fees up to £15k and be done with it.

If that doesn't sound attractive, we have to accept that if £9k was the right amount in 2012 then we're going to need to accept rather less for the same £note amount in 2025, given how much that £note has devalued in real terms.

I think a lot of parents think it is.

The fees haven't really increased for 12 years (RPI inflation in that time is 67% according to an RPI calculator). Fees should have increased to £15,000 to keep track.

That's a very selective time period you chose!

How much have fees increased since 2006? (It's over 300%).

Regardless of how much they have increased the average student only covers 70% of their tuition fees. Humanity students cover 100% of their fees and actually subsidise other students as it costs a university around 7k per student. STEM courses are around 12k plus per student and medicine around 19k per student per year.

Yes because during this timeframe the govt totally changed how universities were funded. I paid no tuition fees in the 90s, the govt covered the entire cost, then it went to more of a half and half model with students initially paying 1k, then 3k. Then it moved to 9k with the govt not paying (apart from fronting the loan system). So yes fees have leapt up at some points only because the govt simultaneously drastically dropped/stopped their side of things.

But that’s the issue, isn’t it?

If you accept the premise (which I do BTW) that universities exist for the greater good, for wider society - for research, and archives, and libraries, and even concert halls, swimming pools and activism - then surely there is an argument that they need to be paid for by society.

If you accept instead that they exist just to teach students, then they need to be paid for just by students. in which case they need to change dramatically to offer those students value for money in a way that the students themselves would recognise.

Living costs have increased dramatically since 2012 though as well, so maintenance loans go nowhere near accomodation costs in many places.

And when everything else goes up it can seem like you're getting worse value even if that is the true (or even subsidised) cost. In the same way when food prices go up and that is the true cost , (and farmers suppliers arent getting rich from it) but if you haven't got any extra money in your pocket, it feels like you're not getting value for money.

I was naive, neither DH or I went to uni, in my mind there were 3 terms albeit i knew significantly shorter than school ones. My mistake, and an expensive one given we're paying nearly 200/wk for accomodation that will be barely used until the contract runs out in June.

@CamillaMacauley
Universities in the UK spend more per head than any other country other than the USA and Luxembourg. Parents/students want to know why this is and how their money is being spent. If the too much money is being spent on supporting research that academics can't get research grants for, careers advice, admissions, wellbeing services etc then it needs to be cut back.
Students

On another thread a poster (Everyones talking rubbish) wrote, that if the tuition fees were increased to £15k. The compounding interest on the outstanding loan with the small repayments in the early years of their career would make it impossible for students to ever repay their loan unless the repayment terms were made much higher. ....... If someone has £28k of student debt, even ignoring the compounding interest, they would need to pay £2.8k a year for 10 years to clear their debt (a few being <10?) - and be earning £58k per year. Most students are only paying a few hundred pounds in the first few years after graduation. A minority of course in high earning jobs like investment banking will pay off their loans in a few years but most won’t. And if you add in compounding interest, the figures balloon quite rapidly. I think some people owe £280k+ from earlier student loans."

According to student debt statistics from the UK government, the average student debt for someone leaving university is around £45,000.
Even though the average postgraduate starting salary for a student is likely to be somewhere between £18,000 and £23,000 a year, students will not start paying back their loan until they begin earning at least £25,000 a year. When this is the case, they should accumulate around £3,500 worth of interest in their first year of working.
Assuming a salary growth rate of 6% a year and an interest rate of 7.8% (based on government figures at the time of writing), this means a typical student could earn £26,500 by the end of 2024. This could equate to £135 being paid off their total student debt, with a further £3,778 of accumulated interest.
As time goes on, and assuming the salary growth rate and interest rates remain the same*, the average UK student may be earning over £80,000 by 2043. By this stage, they should have paid off around £42,733 of their student debt, yet could have accumulated almost £146,000 in interest on their original loan.”
One of the - significant - problems for Govt is that if they increase tuition fees which purportedly increases the cost for students, it actually significantly increases the cost for Govt/taxpayers because of the likely non repayment of loans. They would probably have to get rid of the 40 year write-off for it to even begin to make sense. And I believe at least part of this cost has to be recognised in govt finances today. (When students fees/loans were first introduced they were all off-book so didn’t have to be recognised in govt borrowing figures. It was a sneaky sleight of hand which made student fees such a popular option at the Treasury at the time. This is no longer completely the case but I’m not sure of the %.)

Yes totally agree that’s the issue. But some people seem to be under the impression that 9k should be enough now because some years ago they were only paying 3k or even 1k so have leapt up since those days. I may have misinterpreted those comments but that was the impression they gave. So was just trying to point out that the 1k or 3k was not the only money the universities received.

ultimately universities do need more funding if they’re to continue in any way shape or form in a similar manner to what they currently look like. That further funding might be from tuition fees being raised, the govt giving universities more funding, graduate employers having to pay something…I don’t know. But if that doesn’t happen then things will have to get severely cut which will have a significant impact on the student experience.

@Exhausteddog totally hear you about maintenance loans not being enough either. Dd gets slightly over 4k a year which does not cover half her rent! Let alone food, other living costs. Part time jobs have dried up. Plenty of threads on here about people’s uni students dcs being unable to find a job.

I have one DC in uni year 2 and another who graduated last year. Both do/did STEM subjects and absolutely no let up until sometime in June.

If the too much money is being spent on supporting research that academics can't get research grants for, careers advice, admissions, wellbeing services etc then it needs to be cut back.

And possibly that will happen, all of which will affect students. How many threads do you see on here from parents asking what x university is like for student support and wellbeing? Quite a few. So will people be happy when that stops. For whatever reason students/people in general these days seem to have more mental health issues and anxiety than 30 years ago. Universities have responded accordingly to what they have been asked to provide by the consumers. People can’t have their cake and eat it.

I don’t know if you’re aware of the specific OFS standards of registration which all universities must fulfill in order to stay registered as a university and be allowed to award degrees? One of the standards is about the provision of student support. It specifically talks about careers support. So universities are audited/measured/have to evidence this support. They can’t just stop providing it unless the OFS remove the standard.

The OFS guide universities on matters such as well being provision, Prevent training. They’re just about to bring in a new standard saying every student must undertake training regarding sexual harassment and universities again must be able to evidence this has taken place.

The OFS I believe is ultimately a government run body, it’s accountable to parliament but is independently run/not a govt department. But the govt authorises it as it were. So in my mind it’s the govt making the universities jump through these hoops. And they can’t just stop jumping through these hoops unless the govt allows them to!

research is a grey area, a good research reputation is a selling point mainly for postgraduate and international students which obviously bring in more (often more lucrative) income streams.

Im no expert in research funding at all. But Nottingham Trent university drew up a breakdown of where tuition fees go and research doesn’t seem high at all. It states that 17% is invested in enhancing teaching, research infrastructure and student experience……so even with that 17% figure not all of the 17% is on research. Don’t know what they count as student experience or enhancing teaching?

A breakdown from Nottingham Trent per student showed:
39% spent on academic staff, course equipment and staff-related costs
36% spent on buildings, libraries, IT, sports, careers, admissions, staff, administration and widening access to poorer applicants
17% invested in "enhancing teaching, research infrastructure and the student experience"
8% spent on professional services, including marketing, finance and

Just giving credit to the poster everyones talking rubbish for the information on costings of raising tuition fees for everyone. I didn't put everything the poster wrote in quotation marks.

Ultimately, tuition fees can't be raised because then the debt is likely to never be paid off
And yes, parents/students can't have their cake and eat it. As a parent, I want a slimmed down university experience that costs less. Maybe just two years with more hours of tuition per year so it costs less in accommodation. Less careers advice, wellbeing provision etc. Merged universities offering a standard course to make things cheaper. More standardisation so that a 1st at one university is equivalent to one from another.

I don’t know if you’re aware of the specific OFS standards of registration which all universities must fulfill in order to stay registered as a university and be allowed to award degrees?

Some/most of the parent posters on this thread are pretty ignorant about the complex layers of requirements and legislation by which universities are governed? - not to mention universities' own regulations - always published for anyone to read - and the legal & financial requirements of maintaining charity status.

It's just a pity that some posters insist those of us with knowledge must be wrong, stupid, lazy, overpaid, no good at our jobs etc etc etc. There is a lot that some posters could learn. But they don't want to.

As a parent, I want a slimmed down university experience that costs less. Maybe just two years with more hours of tuition per year so it costs less in accommodation. Less careers advice, wellbeing provision etc. Merged universities offering a standard course to make things cheaper. More standardisation so that a 1st at one university is equivalent to one from another.

What you describe isn't a university. It's a technical high school.

It doesn't seem satisfactory from either side

Posters who work in unis are defensive because fees aren't sufficient to cover the staffing, building maintenance, facilities, research, admin etc to run university courses

More students are encouraged to go to university, but they leave in more debt than ever and struggle to find jobs. Maintenance loans are not covering their living expenses and the threshold for paying back loans is lower.

Parents are expected to make up the shortfall because the maintenance is not sufficient

It's just a pity that some posters insist those of us with knowledge must be wrong, stupid, lazy, overpaid, no good at our jobs etc etc etc. There is a lot that some posters could learn. But they don't want to.

Thats awful. You should report those posts.

I would, but I can’t seem to see them.

A lot of posters (especially academics in universities) post about the cost of students and how current fees don’t cover the cost.

But these are all nebulous. Anyone who has ever done any cost allocation/accounting will tell you that you can make the numbers mean whatever you want.

How do you allocate the cost of the library between undergraduates/postgraduates/academics?

How do you allocate admin time amongst these groups?

How do you allocate the cost of swimming pools/gyms/landscaping?

How do you allocate welfare (which shld be paid for out of the NHS/social services budget)?

etc etc

There are a million different ways to allocate these various costs which would show that any one of undergraduates/postgraduates docs/research are loss-making.

I think we can all agree that humanties degrees are cheaper to deliver than STEM degrees. (Please?) So why aren’t humanities degrees cheaper? They should be! Several posters on this and similar threads have been keen to emphasise that employers are subject-blind so it must just be willfulness/ignorance that means STEM subjects are more heavily oversubscribed than humanities subjects. Surely if you made MFL cheaper than engineering and yet the career options were the same, at some point parents/students would clock that and switch? Ok not all students but a lot (most?). Or perhaps the starting premise was wrong?

It doesn’t take a genius to spot that it suits universities to under allocate overheads to research (so that their applications for research grants are globally competitive) and they over allocate their costs to undergraduates (whose costs will be decided by politicians swayed by opinion polls and parents who only realise too late that perhaps this doesn’t represent value for money).

Post Covid with more people at least working part time from home, a lot of businesses, including the civil service have reduced their office space. This has been accepted and is a cost saving measure. And yet we still seem to think the model of students paying for year round accommodation is the right one? How about double entry year where another set of students attend during the holidays with supplementary online courses. This would mean the fixed assets - the library, the gym, the swimming pool 🙄 were used 365. Yes, you would need more staff, but your fixed costs would not increase so much, so overall it would be cheaper.

So much of the discussion on this thread (& similar) is academics say “no, but, you don’t understand..” How about a bit more of “yes, and ….”

Do the government still give universities extra funding to cover more expensive STEM courses?

@Exhausteddog I have tried to say this on another thread. It’s university amnesia that means they don’t change. We have 91 universities offering history. Why? We need mergers and rationalization. We then need better work and study opportunities.

Universities spend money on many things to support students. Whether the students that need all this support should be at university in the first place is a moot point.

As for the semesters - yes 2 is normal. Exams are May usually. Often return is October if freshers start mid Sept. look at the wonderful opportunity to work and earn money!! Or an internship! Or even volunteering!

No - stem students won’t do MFLs if that degree is cheaper. Loads of them will just have one MFL GCSE or none. My MFL dd would not have wanted sciences either so it works both ways. The big problem is some universities are not that good and should merge with better ones.

@EveryonesTalkingRubbish

Several posters on this and similar threads have been keen to emphasise that employers are subject-blind so it must just be willfulness/ignorance that means STEM subjects are more heavily oversubscribed than humanities subjects. Surely if you made MFL cheaper than engineering and yet the career options were the same, at some point parents/students would clock that and switch? Ok not all students but a lot (most?). Or perhaps the starting premise was wrong?

All (most?) employers aren’t subject blind. The chance of getting a job as a biochemist or civil engineer if your only degree is in MFL is virtually nil.

All (most?) employers aren’t subject blind. The chance of getting a job as a biochemist or civil engineer if your only degree is in MFL is virtually nil.
86% of graduate vacancies don't specify a particular degree subject.
Of course there are jobs that will require a particular qualification but the vast majority are looking for skills as opposed to subject knowledge.

The poster I quoted specifically mentioned engineering.

All (most?) employers aren’t subject blind. The chance of getting a job as a biochemist or civil engineer if your only degree is in MFL is virtually nil.

Well of course. That's not a sensible argument, and seems to [wilfully?] misconstrue the point about generalist degrees and graduate employment.

And it's fairly clear that there are STEMM generalist degrees as well as generalist Humanities & arts degrees. For example, Biology, Physics, Mathematics ...

No. Only Medicine I think