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?

"Some socsci, arts and hums depts who cannot recruit enough students will go to the wall"

Serious question: for the students, would that necessarily be a bad thing? Small departments have the same problems as small schools - they sound cute, but struggle to offer breadth and diversity - and in the days of the polytechnics (which are being praised on this thread) the CNAA regarded any course with less than about 20 undergraduates per year as educationally dubious, and refused to accredit those with less than 12. It wasn't the CNAA's money, but it was their imprimatur on the degrees, so their concerns were reasonably clean of hand.

There's only a finite number of undergraduates to go around, and the changes to the fees structure is probably going to reduce it. Is the loss of low-status courses, in institutions that have neither a strong research base nor good library and other facilities, actually bad for students? I think you can slice the argument in different ways, but I don't think the closure of unpopular departments is necessarily a bad thing unless they are undertaking other work that is irreplaceable.

Actually the suggestion is the sciences WON'T keep their full block grant, only the 'extra' bit, so frankly they are in the same postion as the arts.

I think you are missing my point, what I am saying is in some Unis arts subsidise sciences so if science aren't going to pick up the whole tab arts will be required.

This is aside from the whoel message that is being sent by cutting funding to arts, humanities and social science - that is indeed a completely different issue and says volumes about this administration.

But, tokyonambu, the problem with that is we all know how fickle fashions are in academia. What is a minority area one year, suddenly becomes the next big thing and groups can go from being ridiculed for their ideas, to being the enormous (and back again) in a very short space of time. That is just the nature of academia and in particular academic research.

The logical conclusion, UAM, is that all groups should be kept going forever, just on the offchance that they become fashionable again. At some point, we need to focus on current work. One year of hysteresis isn't enough, a hundred years is too much.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11598262

What about that?

Does that mean that tuition fees may be capped in addition to the outrageous cuts in funding? How will these institutions manage to survive?

Interesting question as most state that if block grant is removed the fees would have to go up to 6 or 7k for unis just to maintain current funding position, so, as when the initial top up fee was introduced and everyone (pretty much) charged the max you could see any capped fee being levied at top rate straight away..... where I am funding accounts for 22% and this cut is going to take that donw to 15% so I guess raising it elsewhere (overseas fees??)

Bring back polys for me. The subject terms for languages in particular were so much more interesting and useful than the unis. Now too much is like for like.