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?

Tok doesn't that vary?

The bit about people failing; I would say spot on for where I studied tbh, we could ahve disposed of a fair few people who simply could not be bothered and justifiably; dh's uni otoh isn't exactly RG but happily disposes of people who fail because it ahs specialisms that it is proud of and DH is studying one of them.

'It wasn't that long ago they introduced the current system.

True; I graduated in 2008 under a different system to the one DH hs now.

SanctiMoanyArse - you are right, sorry, meant that as a bit of a "I could be being all PFB and assuming I've got a gifted child who will of course go to the best uni and therefore the most expensive."

Tokyonambu - money going into savings, while possible to be loaned out, is not being spent. For us, it'll be discretionary spending that will go. (we've bought one house, we'll probably stop in it for the next 15 or so years, longer if we can't afford to move due to saving for uni) It's the service sector that gets hit when people start saving money rather than spending. The property boom fuelled a general boom as we borrowed from the inflated house prices and people spent it. When people stop going out for lunch regularly, buying new clothes, spending less, it really slows the whole economy.

And while technically, yes, the parents don't need to find the money, it's the students, your children don't suddenly get to 18 and you don't give a shit anymore. £50k of debt is an obsence amount of debt to start your adult life with - if I can avoid DS having that, I will. It's going to really split the graduates of DS's generation, those who are leaving with thousands to pay off, and those who don't have that hanging round their necks.

No probs FPT , have an image as annoying Sn hole picker to maintain you know

FPT- I agree £50k is a lot but you know, under the current system they;d ahve come out with £25k or so: I can see why a parent would want to contribute and we would too, I think it can be a shared burden though.

" money going into savings, while possible to be loaned out, is not being spent."

It is being spent by the people who borrow it, though.

"The property boom fuelled a general boom as we borrowed from the inflated house prices and people spent it."

Remind me, how did that work out?

And anyway, at the moment one problem in the housing market is that mortgage lenders don't have any money to lend, because depositors aren't saving. If people were saving for university costs, that would be more money in the mortgage market.

You're hoeing a tough row if you're going to argue that increasing the marginal propensity to save is bad for the economy: if the money that is lent out by lenders hasn't come from depositors, it's come from wholesale markets, and that is the very root of the implosion of the UK financial sector. Had Northern Rock been holding the deposits of middle class parents saving for university, they'd have been fine; it was their need to borrow money on the open market that killed them.

A market in which people save money by purchasing liquid assets or by depositing it is far healthier than one where most people's net worth is mostly tied up in a completely illiquid housing market.

I feel so angry about this proposal. My dd has just gone to uni and because we are just above the income level, we are having to pay large amounts already. Her accommodation is £5,000, but she can only borrow £3,400ish, so how is she supposed to pay for accommodation if we don't pay?

Already she has nearly £7,000 worth of debt (fees and living expenses), she has been told that she is not allowed a part time job because of the demands of the course. We have another dd who is 15 and she is going to be hammered.

So angry - I can't tell you.

I read somewhere that early repayments will not be allowed, thereby stopping well-off parents from paying the fees for their children. Payments would have to be made out of future earnings.

This is good and bad - good in that I suppose it punishes all equally, but bad in that there's more than one way to skin a cat: some parents would still subsidise their kids. But this happens anyway. Some parents buy houses for their student offspring, some buy them cars - how could you make it a level playing field?

'Crappy' is how I think you see post-92s univs, - as you seem to think RG and Oxb are in all sense superior to the rest (but that is another debate). You can put the sums as you wish (and UCU, NUS and various other bodies disagree with you), the point is that students who might have gone to local post-92 universities are less likely to go now and those places will merge or close. Like all markets, the rhetoric is about broader choice - the reality is narrowed choice.

Oh and also, Tok, I don't think you have taken the fact of Full Economic Costings (rooms, electricity etc etc)/central univ clawback (registry costs, computers, study support, HR, ER etc etc) into your sums - the scourges of our univ - which means it does not produce sums such as those given to spend on teaching alone (and who pays for research etc) - just in case anyone gets that impression.

figroll- dh is at a unit where not part time job allowed.

He is ignoring them but theres an immense differene between a grown man with 4 kids and a young girl.

I think the no jobs phenomenon is rising and a silent back door class selection method tbh.

Sorry Sanctimonious arse - I haven't read the thread, so I don't know what you are on about, or what it has to do with my dd.

The being at Uni but not being allowed to work thing? Dh has that too. mature student (but sorry, I typed unit; jumping from SN to HE thread, apologies)

And i'm not a sanctimonious arse. I don;t think, anyway.

Surely the whole assumptions that divide students into rich/middle/poor are based not on their income but on their family's income? My son has no money of his own: I have an income.

The system assumes that I will pay to support him.

If students delay going to university until they are defined as mature students [22?], I think this link with parental income is broken? And if they then have no income, are they eligible for the bursaries etc intended for poor students (students for poor families).

The whole thing is already based on parents with over a certain level of income supporting their 18-22 year olds.

"Oh and also, Tok, I don't think you have taken the fact of Full Economic Costings (rooms, electricity etc etc)/central univ clawback (registry costs, computers, study support, HR, ER etc etc) into your sums - the scourges of our univ"

A glance at my university's accounts reveals that staff costs are more than fifty percent of the expenditure. So halve the numbers I quoted, if you want to get raw staff costs: they still don't seem unreasonable. If you assume a lecturer is teaching perhaps a quarter of their time, and there's 500 quid an hour available to fund lectures and 120 quid an hour to fund seminars, that seems to work out quite reasonably. Undergraduate fees aren't the only source of income for most departments.

I work in the public sector (don't hate me). I took my two year pay freeze on the chin, am resigned to the fact that I'll work longer and pay more for my pension (like everyone else) and figured out that we'll just have to cope without child benefit as I'm just over the threshold of pay. Tuition fees have sent me over the edge though. We have saved for years to try to have some money to put towards the eldest's costs of living at Uni, though we knew he'd have some debt at the end. Now he's saying he doesn't want to go. He is predicted A*s and was applying to Russell Group unis - the ones who will charge the most. It's not just the student debt that gets him - like FakePlasticTrees - it's the other stuff - how will he get a mortgage with the cost of housing so high? He said this morning 'I'll be 50 before I can afford to think about having a family!' What have we done to this generation? Huge debts, no homes, few jobs...not to mention climate change. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole generation rose up and got out the guillotine! At least with the other two I have ten years or so to squeeze the ambition out of them, discourage them from working hard at school and lower their expectations so that university won't be an option.

I've heard that it will affect the current year 12. It's terrible that they are going to be arguing about this leaving people in limbo about what it's going to cost, what burseries are available on what income etc. I can see that students will be making choices on which Uni is better value for money. We need to know before travelling to open days and before applying, if she can afford it all.

We have a year to make a decision.

I just cannot see how all these institutions are going to survive if the uptake of places are low due to the high costs. So they can double the fees but what if the uptake is significantly less.

" I can see that students will be making choices on which Uni is better value for money."

And that's a bad thing because...?

"So they can double the fees but what if the uptake is significantly less."

Is there any reason to believe it will be?

People here are being very irrational.

You don't have to pay anything upfront.

Under the proposals, you only start paying back at a salary of £21k (higher than the current £15k).

Parents don't have to pay anything - and their children don't have to pay anything either until they earn a relatively decent income.

I don't like the redistributive interest rates, but could live with them I guess.

I don't like debt whether it is national or personal - but I would much rather have the Browne funded proposals than a pie-in-the-sky brain-draining graduate tax. Under the Browne system, the unis get the money upfront, instead of maybe never.

NUS propoganda about parents having to fork out £50k is deeply irresponsible. It is completely untrue.

I agree with abouteve. Why are people talking about having to find £60k to fund their DC's education.

The children take out the loans and pay it back from their future earnings.

I can see that the parents are going to have to help financially to begin with, but after that the graduates can pay back their loan.

I think that less people should be studying, and that more should be invested in vocational training. Why does a nursery nurse have to go to college and saddle herself with debt? Or even a nurse?

"Why does a nursery nurse have to go to college and saddle herself with debt? Or even a nurse?"

Because the Labour government set itself a ludicrous target for university education which it achieved by rebranding as "degrees" a wide range of vocational qualifications. Now they're caught in the current morass.

"I can see that the parents are going to have to help financially to begin with, but after that the graduates can pay back their loan."

And people want to be careful about their choice of golden age. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were means tested grants, but if your parents didn't fill in the form, or didn't pay their share, that was the end of it. I don't know when non means-tested grants were available, if ever, but they certainly weren't available at any point in the lifetime of people likely to be posting here. My parents are teachers, and I didn't get a grant in the early 1980s, because their income was too high (!): they had to pay my accommodation costs with hard cash, as there were no loans available. Remind me, please, why this was better for the middle classes than the current situation?

It's a bad thing because students who have parents that can help may take the better courses and students who's parents cannot help may have to take a cheaper course. Thought that sort of thing ended at 18.

It might reduce the uptake but I don't know. I would have thought people might just forget the idea of going if they will have double the debt they originally expected.

I am bothered about the time it's going to take to put it all in place given that the lib dems aren't going to let this go through easily.

I wnet to uni on a full grant and came out without a debt, got a graduate job and bought a house 3 years later with (now) DH using savings we had both accrued since starting work.

If these proposals go through DD will go to uni, come out with £30k of debt, compete hard to find a job and will immediately be taxed more than I was. Her ability to save a deposit for a house will be considerably less than mine was.

I don't want DD starting her working life far more in debt/taxed than I started out. Luckily I should be able to pay some of her fees. However, my parents were unable to contribute to my uni costs and if I had not had a full grant I doubt very much whether I would today have a job for which the mimimun requirement is a degree, or be sitting in my nice house in a nice area with a reasonable amount of disposable income with a paid off mortgage.

"It's a bad thing because students who have parents that can help may take the better courses and students who's parents cannot help may have to take a cheaper course."

Yeah, like that doesn't happen already.

"I would have thought people might just forget the idea of going if they will have double the debt they originally expected."

You mean like the way takeup dropped when top-up fees were introduced?