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?

It shouldn't be a consideration now when fees are capped at the same rate.

Take up didn't drop when they brought in tuition fees you are right, perhaps I'm wrong and it won't affect the nos. applying.

"It shouldn't be a consideration now when fees are capped at the same rate. "

Meanwhile, back in the real world, an employer is looking at two candidates: one has a BEng, done in three years, the other has an MEng, done in four at the same institution. Hmm, that's a difficult choice. Over in another part of the real world, little Jimmy is considering if he should do medicine, but has just realised it's five or six years instead of three.

There have always been better courses. They have always required either more money at the time, or have been harder to get into which equates to more money 11-18. The Browne review doesn't fix that, which is a shame, but it's hardly introducing a new problem.

I don;pt think all NN's go to Uni do tehy? just ones like my siste (no debt, funded day relaease) who mange units and need to be trained to a higher level than their fellow staff.

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

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

becuase we need nurses, teachers, social workers, community youth workers...... for every banker / entrepreneur we need someone with a true vocation, but even a sensible person with a vocation won;t want to lumber themselves with debt they will have to pay abck but not at a rate they'lll manage to clear for deacdes.

from Guardian newsfeed

"becuase we need nurses, teachers, social workers, community youth workers"

None of which need degrees. Oh sure, there's been a hack done so that they require vocational qualifications that are claimed to be degrees, but they aren't.

"He wants to be a mathematician. Poorly paid."

Don't be silly. They end up as actuaries (very well paid), quants (unbelievably well paid) or working for GCHQ (more than comfortably paid). Cheltenham and the city can swallow up as many good mathematicians as the universities can produce, and insurance companies and investment houses take the rest.

Really? My MA in social work won;t be good as a degree? Ok.

tokyonabu
I do agree that nurses do not necessarily need degrees, but social workers and teachers? Not really candidates for vocational training.

And the mathematcians- exP- Maths from york; spent a year on the dole ebfore getting a 2 year council IT traineeship.

probably doing OK now; not more so than we were though.

I do not trust these universities and it would be foolhardy to give them greater freedom to set fees. If you visit a university today, Aston, York, Nottingham and Reading to name 4 I visited recently,the amount of building and improved facilities questions their need to increase fees. They get so much from overseas students who are charged a fortune. Plus I agree with the comment about number of lectures - who controls the quality of teaching and delivery? The schools and FE Colleges have been controlled until they are blue in the face but the universities just sail through. The government is petrified to take on and question these so called academics - how many actually do research and get work published?

I don;pt know why I sked about the MA; I will by then have a degree in an academic subject (Religion and Philosophy) and an MA in Autism;

I will be the judge of how demanding and degree level it is, not someone with an agenda from afar.

"Really? My MA in social work won;t be good as a degree? Ok."

A good test of a degree is how much currency it has outside its own field. An MA in Social Work is a vocational qualification. It's none the worse for that, but it's something that should be funded by employers, not done by students with their own money. The syllabus is set in agreement with employers (employer, singular, really) and it's got limited currency outside its own field. The same applies for nursing and for the only vocational qualification the middle classes will send their children on, medicine. As the only employers of social workers are the state and the third sector doing the state's work, the state should provide the training, just as it provides bursaries for PGCEs.

'I don't understand why parents say they will be paying x no. of £sss for uni fees. The debt is on the student, not the parent.'

We will be paying fees for ds if we can as we do not want him to start out with shed loads of debt. We will also presumably be funding his living costs. If he has a student loan then we will help to pay that back as well. I don't see that early payment will be refused as it clears the loan up and saves the possibility of default. He may as well have the benefit of the money now as when we are dead.

However if I can persuade him that Maastricht is an option if we are still over here, then that will be far cheaper than UK unis, and the courses there are taught in English.

The other point of course is that EU students will not want to come if the fees are that level, so demand will drop and presumably fee prices as well.

It will be funded by bursary.

It cannot be funded by employers becuase actually, it has quite a bit of currency- many SWs aren't employed by SSD as one would assume- plenty of work in charitable sector etc.

But them I don;t agree with your test for validity anyway. I am quite happy to stick with employability and academic rigour.

"The other point of course is that EU students will not want to come if the fees are that level"

How many EU students are there in the typical UK university?

"We will be paying fees for ds if we can as we do not want him to start out with shed loads of debt."

it's a choice, though, isn't it? There are people that buy their children cars and houses on the same basis, but no one suggests either that parents have an obligation to do it or that the state should subsidise houses and cars to remove those children's advantage or that parents who don't fund houses and cars are bad people.

"I don't see that early payment will be refused "

Never assume anything that relies on Vince Cable - the Clare Short of the Lib Dems, all gob and no delivery a natural man of opposition - not being an idiot. But if he did try to insist that you couldn't repay the loans early and (by implication) that parents couldn't pay the fees upfront, you'll have a haemorrhage of affluent students heading for the US.

Ai50, most academics under 50 grew up in very hard times, and they all publish or they perish. Whether this is of any lasting benefit is very debatable. There are also millions of university administrators... that's where the last fee increase went; a 30% (!) increase in administrators. A violent triage is in order.

I think tuition fees should depend on the income of the parents.

Well this Lord Browne has recommended help for poorer students which would apply to us but I don't know what help. I'm sure it will only put it back to the current level.

My MP reckons he will vote against this, remains to be seen, how many others vote against and stop this.

By their own admission his report is flawed.

"I think tuition fees should depend on the income of the parents."

Should people of 21 and 22 be legally dependent on their parents?

I have two friends who did medicine because their parents refused to fund anything else (this in the 1980s, when you were reliant on your parents to sign the maintenance grant form). As soon as they graduated they left and did something else. How is this a good thing?

"There are also millions of university administrators... that's where the last fee increase went; a 30% (!) increase in administrators. A violent triage is in order."

This university's rule of thumb for calculating overheads was total cost = salary x 2 in the 1980s, and is salary x 3 now. And the nicest building on campus is now full of administrators, when in the 1980s it was a small cadre of administrators and a several substantial departments.

Tokyonambu's points might be more accessible if they weren't dripping with sarcasm and contempt for other's opinions. Every person reading and writing here lives in a real world. Their thoughts and concerns are as valid as your own. So to pick up on some of the comments:-

'That's a bad thing because?'

It's a bad thing because students who don't have the bank of Mum and Dad to fall back on will consider their future lives holistically. Do I want children in the future? Will I want a mortgage? Those who are considering the impact of huge debt on those future choices will 'shop' for a cheaper degree in a more affordable location.

Research shows that students tend to stay where they study or move nearer to family upon graduating which means fewer will study and stay in major population centres like London. That affects public services. It also creates a system whereby students who do not have to worry about future debt can apply to the more expensive and more highly regarded universities, re-inforcing the current system whereby decisions made which affect the bulk of the country's population are made by upper middle class men with Oxbridge degrees and healthy bank accounts.

Tokyonambu's observation that some degrees have always been more expensive than others (medicine, architecture for example) is true. This is why few working class or lower middle class pupils make it into these professions and why our health care and social/low cost housing buildings continue to be made and designed by people who have absolutely no concept of what it might be like to be poor.

Finally the Sutton Trust report showed that most students were prepared to stomach a raise of up to £5000 but that £7000 would reduce interest in applying from 80% to 46%. In an era of prosperity, when tuition fees were introduced, they did not put off students from applying - this is true. The hidden statistic is that very many more chose to live at home and travel into university. This has had an impact on parents and on the social and regional make up of university populations.

It's a complicated issue - parents have a right to be worried. Many people have pointed out that the debt is the child's not the parent's but who wants to see their child struggling to have a decent standard of living well into their late 40s and 50s? If Higher Education needs higher tuition fees in order to survive then we as a society have to take a long hard look at the cost of our housing and take a big hit on property prices. Tokyonambu makes the ridiculous assertion that all middle class families are squirrelling money away into buy to let investments. What tosh - most of us are putting tiny amounts of money into savings with derisory interest rates, hoping it will be enough to fund university/retirement. We are reducing our spending and feeling the pinch. That's the real world.

It's somethijng I'm going to follow with intrest luckily ds2 has quite few more years to go he's year9 .But he already knows that he is going to need find job to help with costs for uni did say what if they say no pt job he's already worked out that well where they rather I spent my extra hrs in the pub. Or working

And has worked out if can get courses he wants where he wants understands living at home be cheaper and more swnsiable in the long run

Good post, squeezed at both ends.

RTB- for dh's degree it's pub becuase theya re making the specialist facillities they utilise stretch by scheduling classes until 8pm some nights.

But if he needs work he must get work; the now ork thing is delusional pants.

And of all pants, delusional pants are the woprst

yes if ds gets what he wants think he be limited to weekend and summer break working but he is determined to do what he needs .Though do worry as he has set heights high at acambridge ekkk but he's a pratical young man already and has started making plans already

Ds1 is doing vocational wants be a chef so it's horses for courses in my family .ds3who knows same for dd