Tuition fees

[stoatsrevenge]

So we are to expect a massive increase in university tuition fees, as well as increasing interest ib student loans...

Here is the 6 year plan from the LibDem manifesto:

1
Scrap fees for final year full-time students

2
Begin regulating part-time fees

3
Part time fees become regulated and fee loans become available to part time students

4
Expand free tuition to all full-time students apart from first year undergraduates

5
Expand free tuition to all part-time students apart from first year undergraduates

6
Scrap tuition fees for all first degree students

How are they going to square this one?

I've had a night to sleep on it and a day's work to distract me.

I feel quite different, my anger has leeched away to leave just a sense of loss and betrayal.

There has been much talk of the 'value' of education - totally re-framed as 'investment'. Should we take it further? Society has always benefited hugely from the fine intellects in our universities. So many advances have been made and so many minds developed to make advances elsewhere (not all minds but very many). To speak from the same hymnsheet then - Society used to make a contribution to this by funding these young people and in that way it paid for the benefits it received. Will this now change?

Perhaps we should all consider the 'intellectual economy' of the universities something that they/we largely own (as we are all members of our universities on graduation) and therefore are entitled to charge for (personally I have been to three universities - to study). How about a levy on every employer who takes on a graduate - like a transfer fee in football? OR maybe we should have a reverse graduate tax - we could 'means' test it, if the subject is considered more worthy then the graduate could get more of an allowance. Crikey, if the graduates are paying for their education hey why not?

The new watchword in business is 'knowledge economy'!!

Oh Vince.

The idea of the Browne report proposals (if the ability to pre-pay is removed) is that the government pays the institution a fee for tuition. A sum of money is then borrowed and the students are charged variable amounts to repay that money when they graduate (dependent upon income).

It is not the same as tuition fees are at the moment.

Haven't read whole thread, as am in uni right now in meetings all the time planning cuts, but want to point out that in US a great deal of higher ed is tax deductible for parents (unlike here) and it looks like they now have more public money going into it than we do currently anyway, despite lower tax regime over there.

Accommodation around here at my uni ranges from about £63 a week to £100 a week for fairly reasonable digs, for 38 weeks/year, so £2394-£3800 pa plus food.

Doesn't make sense to cost courses per hour of face to face time as learning at uni is more complex than that, and providing things like excellent libraries and good student support for self-study costs millions a year, so you have to factor that in too. It's not about 'just' having 12 lectures and then feeling ripped off because you have to do reading in the library on your own, etc. So 12 hours a week face to face time per module actually translates into 1200 hours of study time a year over six modules, or 31 hours a week (we assume students have jobs for part of the week these days). Therefore £6.66 an hour to access all facilities, support, teaching, etc., if you want to be an accountant.

Hope that helps.

"It is not the same as tuition fees are at the moment."

Yes, I'm sure Lib Dem MPs like, oh, John Hemming, will be keen to argue that as they troop into the lobby to vote for a policy diametrically opposed to the policy they stood for election on. It's tuition fees. Any argument it isn't is just the stuff that Lib Dem MPs like, oh, John Hemming will attempt to convince themselves of when they look in the mirror.

that is assuming higher fees of £8000 a year - currently £2.75 an hour

"but want to point out that in US a great deal of higher ed is tax deductible for parents"

That's interesting. It would be seen as a middle-class subsidy, though, as you have to have the taxable income to use the relief.

The ability to pre pay cannot be removed. I think that would be unlawful. In addition if you follow internatinoal models and indeed law there shoudl be a discount for prepayment - again to make it lawful. It's going to be fun if that isn't made so. It will be challenged.

If you have the funds (and some students will have an inheritance or be 60 and saved up for years to pay the fees not just some with parents who will pay) you will be allowed to pay. If you are only able to obtain state university provision by taking out loans that woudl be fundamentally wrong. If the Libdems think that will get pushed through they are wrong.

It would be interesting to see just how many parents (a) could and (b) would actually fund children through university at elevated levels of fees. The sheer weight of 09, 59 and 10 plate Minis driven by nice young girls in the university car park implies that the number isn't zero, but what percentage it is at different institutions would be interesting to see. 5%? 25%? 50%? Bristol might be more. Oxford and Cambridge are >50% privately educated, so it's reasonable to assume a large portion of them could stand the extra outlay (after all, we're talking about, at the moment, between 10 and 20K more than the existing arrangements, which means one or two years' school fees).

If day school fees cost £10k (is it 18% of sixth formers' parents who pay? (it's higher than to age 16 which is nearer 7%) and university fees are £7k then it's not hard to pay. For my daughters it cost me the same as their school fees when I paid their much lower fees, rent and a modest allowance which they topped up with paid work. I think roughly it cost me £10k a year so just like extending school by another 3 years. If the child boards at £20k plus then university is currently much cheaper of course.

If I am not allowed to pay for my boys then that will be challenged and the reports 2 weeks ago said students could pay up front if they want to. I can't see how legally they could force people to take on debt. or if they did you would take out the loan and pay it back the next day or get yourself registered as a foreign student or go to university abroad or go to a private university if any decent ones emerge in the shakeup.

Why does everyone have to go to university these days? To do degrees in Embroidery or Mime or Interior Design. FFS - what use is that to anyone?

I didn't go to university, but I did get taken on a graduate entry scheme with A levels (crappy ones - a C and a D - so by someone's reckoning here, I would have been too thick for uni anyway). My career has at least kept pace with, if not overtaken those of the thick yock yocks with their degrees in geography.

Yes but Xenia some of us are counting the days until school fees end not just adding another 3 yrs per child to the bill/responsibility as if it didn't matter.

Well if we can afford school fees we can afford university fees. We're privileged and if we have to wait 3 years for spare money to buy shoes I doubt we'll starve in the mean time and it is totally voluntary. Masses and masses of my daughters' very very rich friends have parents who take the view (a perfectly legitimate view) that childn appreciate what they work and pay for thesmselves and at 18 you're not even a child and that they will do better and work harder if they are funding this themselves through work and debt.

No mumsnetter needs pay a penny to their child at university (unless the're a divorced parent in which case there can be a legal obligation - quite an intresting anomaly or unless they are in the labour Heartland of Scotland in which case there are discriminatory and possibly illegal laws favouring Scots who don't I think pay).

You can become very rich as an interior designer - that's the use of the training, responding to market demand.

And I know that in France Chanel has bought up some of the last remaining maisons that do embroidery, make lace etc in order to prevent skills from being lost.

And performing arts are a big sector too.

The private sector has all sorts of interesting facets to it. Not useful in the civil service/public infrastructure definition of useful, but with no private sector we would not have any money to pay for public services.

You're right, Xenia. Parental contribution is voluntary. Sadly, however, until a student is 25 (or 21 if they can PROVE they've been living independently of their parents for at least three years - and that doesn't mean in a flat paid for by daddy and a part-time job in a bookshop), they are considered to be dependent on their parents for the purposes of means-testing. So, the student is caught; if they have well-off parents they are assumed not to need full funding. And yet we tell them that at 18 they are adults.

So the people who can afford to pay for their children to go to private school can pay for uni as well. That's great then they should be allowed to pay it up front and maybe the uni can offer students from lower paid families generous bursaries. I'm happy with that, although I realise that the actual tuition fees will never be subsidised.

Anyone know when the actual facts and figures will be out?

Bonsoir - and without the public sector a number of private comapnies will go to the wall, and without the balls-ups of private banks the public sector would not be suffering as it is.

Never forget that the private sector comes first. No private sector = no economy.

I think the children of the poor will be helped under the plans.

It's only those on very low family incomes who get that help. I presumed without checking the figures that most people wouldn't.

Isn't it a fundamental divide between people though that some think the state has some kidn of God given duty to provde for them and others feel gosh I'm lucky that the streets are cleaned and there is an NHS.

There is an inequty even now that those from rich families who pay 18 year olds not a penny get no extra help and children from lower income families do.

Anyway my point is if we make it a free market (and i'm very much in favour of free markets) then you have to let those who can afford it pay

I work in an "old" university. A third of "our undergraduate students receive the maximum maintenance grant. That means they live in families where the gross annual household income is less than £25,000 a year. Unless they're ALL lying about their finances in order to get full grants, I think it highly unlikely that their parents will be paying their fees once they go up to £6,000+. And the Browne report says that universities will no longer have to give bursaries, although IIRC they will be "encouraged" to do so.
So actually, stuff "if you want a degree enough you'll pay for it" or "what's wrong with debt if you pay it off at blah blah rate", or "it's only as much as school fees" - if the proposals in this report are adopted as enthusiastically as it looks as though they will be, bright young people from poorer backgrounds will think twice about going to university and even more times about going to a good university. That is not fair/social justice/right/civilised/good for the future of this country/insert bloody comment here.

" So, the student is caught; if they have well-off parents they are assumed not to need full funding"

They can, however, borrow 75% of a full grant, irrespective. Having to work to obtain the remaining 25% is possible. Contrast with the previous system, when someone whose parents refused to pay or to even fill in the form would prevent the child from getting any money at all.

i am hoping there will be more bursaries - we are looking abroad.........

The "full" loan, however it is made up, isn't enough to live on. And Browne is suggesting one loan of £3750 non means-tested. I think that's the lowest loan you can get now.

Monkeysaving, yes I was about the bursaries being optional as we were hoping we would qualify for something extra to help with living costs so that the maintenance loan could be kept to minimum.

The only reason I am 'poor' is because I am a single parent working nearly full time for a charity. If I had a partner with a reasonable income then I would provide some living costs for DD, why wouldn't I?

I believe it is a fundamental right for a bright child to have the opportunity for a good education no matter what their family circumstances.

" bright young people from poorer backgrounds will think twice about going to university"

And yet university take up has risen as grants have been replaced with loans, and university take up from those from poorer backgrounds was far lower when there was full funding available (in, say, the 1970s) than it is today.

We just cannot afford for 50% of children to go to university under the current arrangements.

NO one of coruse who wants tio provide for their family should ever work for a charity. As teenagers we take career choices which determine what kind of life we will be able to afford to lead and that might a decision - I will do X and keep Y as a hobby because I don't want my children to have huge loans etc.

Yes the proposal is one means tested £3750 loan for something or other. Not sure abotu the rest. Is that for maintenance? ANd then I assume you can borrow the fees too. Then many students work too and there are fairly long holidays. My daughters worked.