Ghastly Tory plans for wealthy students to buy university places

[Hathor]

Unbelievable. Fast-track to a more divided society through our children.
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13343824

The idea of allowing rich kids with minimum but not impressive grades to buy their way into the best courses is despicable.

But even if this idea has been ditched, does that mean it would be a problem to pay even a year's fees upfront without forfeiting your rights to other loans? Even low paid parents must have considered saving what they can to keep these loans down a bit. I'm alarmed at the principle that every student should be forced into debt or pay huge penalties assuming that you must be rich.

And when students graduate are they also going to have to pay a penalty if they pay the loan off as fast as possible by living with their parents/eating only rice crispies and working nights in a restaurant?

"does that mean it would be a problem to pay even a year's fees upfront without forfeiting your rights to other loans"

Yes it would be a problem.

Don't think of it as a "loan" or "debt" but as a tax. The system will need the "income" from the "tax"/"repayments" in order to fund more students through University. If people can dodge out of paying the "tax" then the system will break, again.

"And when students graduate are they also going to have to pay a penalty"

Yes, again the system needs the income from the students after they graduate.

Allowing people to not take the "loan" out or "repay" it early will cause the system to break, there have got to be those repayments in order to fund more students.

So as said it really is much more like a tax than a loan. You won't pay it back until you earn a certain amount and you finish paying it after X years of work regardless as to whether your balance is £0 or not. And being as how you're forced into taking out the "loan" it really is just a tax that all graduates will pay after they graduate.

So why they didn't just call it a Graduate Tax like the Lib Dems wanted to is a mystery to me.

Hang on, I'm confused.

You take out a loan of X amount, interest in calculated at Y per cent. You work and pay off the load + interest. Ifyou have a higher income you pay it off quicker (surely earning less interest?). If you have a lower income you pay it off more slowly. If you don't meet the threshold you don't pay it off. But surely you don't pay MORE than load + interest if you're a high earner? How can you?

"However I do have a problem with parents being able to buy a place for their dc at university as there is a basic principle of fairness at stake here"

It is not a case of this.

BP I haven't had time to read all your stuff but will later

It's going to put off those from families on modest incomes who have a horror of debt and/or would rather get a house and get married. It's a completely shit policy that squeezes the middle classes - the Labour party was split on the graduate tax idea and I don't see how it is fair unless you never aspire to earning over £21K or are earning so much that you can afford to pay an accountant to help you dodge your other taxes..

"But surely you don't pay MORE than load + interest if you're a high earner? How can you?"

No, and it appears that that is the only aspect that make this more like a loan than a tax. Yes in theory if you do earn a large salary then you will "repay" quicker, however you'll still have paid interest, so the system still "profits" and can fund other students which won't happen if people are allowed to pay up front.

However there are plans to increase the interest rate for high earners so while you'll pay the same % of your salary (9% I believe) as everybody else you'll be paying more interest so the "loan" will take longer to repay.

At least a straightforward and honest tax would mean that those high earners keep on paying for longer and can therefore fund more students.

badger its not a tax its a loan. you can try and dress it all up as much as you like but we aren't stupid. you might believe the lib dems but we all know they are nuts

All the material i read says that for a uni to charge 9k tuition fees it must make some provision to subsidise students with poorer parents - so yes in effect the students are subsidising ones from poorer backgrounds - who could then go on to earn the most.

i still think that the most able students should go to uni and that they should all be treated as adults at that point - ie parents funds are not relevant. plus degrees that benefit the public should be encouraged and ones that don't and we only need a few of should be very restricted - yes we need some artists, archiologists, dancers but not that many so lets just have the really gifted ones doing degrees. Future system is unfair and doesn't encourage useful degrees.

badger - you seem to forget that high earners pay a lot more tax anyway. they usually earn a lot for a reason - they are doing a very unpleasant, stressful job or have a really special skill. or they have lots of responsibility.

"badger its not a tax its a loan"

You can't avoid it, you can't pay it back early and you stop paying it back after X years regardless of what the balance is.

It's a lot more like a tax than a loan in my eyes. Personally I'd rather it just be a proper full on tax but there you go.

"you might believe the lib dems"

No I don't, and I'm not sure that anyone does any more.

I'm not a massive fan of the new system, but I think it's taking some steps in the right direction. That was until it seemed that the Tories had a cunning plan to try and let "rich" people dodge out of paying it.

"badger - you seem to forget that high earners pay a lot more tax anyway"

True. But for that money to fund other students you'd have to fund students out of the general taxation pot of money and when most graduates earn above the average (well they used to) and people feel that taxes are already high enough that's going to go down like a lead balloon.

I'd rather see a proper graduate tax that you'd pay for X years and that's that. So at least a higher interest rate keeps the higher tax payers paying the "graduate tax" for longer while not increasing their actual monthly outgoings as the rate of repayment would stay the same.

But I don't want my children funding other children to do useless degrees to keep them off the unemployment roll.

It's harsh but so much uni education is little more than the pointless accumulation of debt. And they end up with a degree that's worthless.

Like languages, English literature, classical studies, archaeology? Lord no, Arts subjects should be the preserve of the aristocratic hobbyists. Museums and libraries will have been abolished by tben and we don't care about teachers. Let them all study law or accountancy and be boring bastards.

Like anything they aren't qualified to study and won't benefit from in any way.

Don't know why you would assume the above muminlondon. I'm an arts graduate.

The arts will suffer - jobs where arts degrees are most relevant are often poorly paid (publishing, academic research, museum work etc.) and departments will close, particularly language departments where it's a 4-year degree. So then we will have fewer language teachers in state schools.

If all courses cost the same, most arts graduates will be subsidising those on courses more expensive to run, like medicine, engineering, etc. even though their earning potential is lower. So arts subjects will be less attractive.

I'm not saying that medics should pay more as their studies are even longer but they should be subsidised by the state anyway. Arts subjects won't look like value for money, especially compared to the equivalent degrees in other European countries. Universities abroad might flourish though, but that doesn't do much for the cultural life in this country.

As I pointed out on the other thread this was mooted by a vice chancellor in Feb 2010 according to this article, which by my reckoning was pre coalition and thus under a Labour Govt. Comment from the Prince of Darkness at the bottom of the article on what the unis needed to save even then.

www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7264728/Rich-students-should-pay-international-level-fees-to-guarantee-university-place.html

muminlondon - if arts jobs are poorly paid then they the graduates won't end up paying off their loans at all. Its the people who do other degrees - ones in jobs that are normally more crucial - hence the higher pay, who will end up repaying. this is one of the silliest aspects of this loans scheme.

and yes i know some museum work etc is crucial - but we don't need as many of these types of graduates as we do medics, engineers, accountants etc

But dreamingofsun as a student you may have a talent and a passion for history/english literature but a lesser ability in maths - or no interest. You dream of a career in arts management or publishing but it will mean 5 years earning under £18-20k and though you get promoted, or even give it up and go into teaching, after 20 years you're still a basic rate taxpayer.

The point is that the loan never goes away and although you might end up paying a bit less interest than your lawyer friends, you're paying a bigger proportion of disposable income and/or paying back the loan for longer. With that sort of loan you even less likely to afford to buy property or save into a pension.

Not everyone has the particular skills to be an engineer or a medic. We've also got too many qualified lawyers and not enough training contracts so even choices that seem sensible may not give you the return you expect. So if the alternative is to give university a miss (and those from poorer backgrounds are most likely to back off from a debt they can't imagine paying off) I don't see a sudden increase in jobs for bright 18 year olds.

And I hear that even in the US there are colleges where you would not be paying as much as £9k per year and there are way more bursaries available and a longer tradition of legacies and philanthropy etc. It's going to be very chaotic picture of departmental closures here for a long time..

...which is why we are looking already at overseas unis for ds, as it will be cheaper and broaden his experience.

Makes a lot of sense.

if the country can't afford to educate graduates then perhaps a better way is to limit the numbers and focus on subjects that the country needs and not increase the tuition fees as much. Just because you have a passion for something i don't think that necessarily means you should be allowed to do a degree in it.

Take our family - some students will be paying 9k a year to do a psychology degree because they want to help the ill, another a business or accountancy degree. whilst one will pay 3k to do a dance degree. this is purely based on where they live and i think is madness.

"I don't see a sudden increase in jobs for bright 18 year olds."

Actually there is evidence of this: that big firms are finding it so difficult to discriminate between the mass of graduates at 21 that they're seeking out clever sixth formers to take on an mould. Now that makes sense.

"if the country can't afford to educate graduates then perhaps a better way is to limit the numbers and focus on subjects that the country needs and not increase the tuition fees as much."

I completely understand the sentiment there and the gut reaction is to agree completely with you.

However if you give it some further thought some very worrying problems emerge.

For example who decides what the country "needs"? Sure in some cases it might seem very obvious but sometimes it's not. In my field what about certain areas of computer science that might seem to be abstract and going nowhere. Do we fund those or is it just geeks with a passion who shouldn't get our help? As a worrying example consider what would have happened if we had stopped funding Universities researching and working on the internet, we'd have a generation of students completely out of touch with one of the biggest areas of computing.

And then it also means that if you're rich you can go ahead and get educated in whatever you like, if you're not then you'll be fighting for access to a limited number of spaces on a limited number of courses that some possibly short sighted bureaucrat has decided that the country "needs".

And all of that sounds terribly worrying to me.

I think I'd rather fund what is hopefully a relatively low number of students to study Peruvian Dance and Nasal Decoration for three years and keep a spread of education available to all regardless of your affluence.

I think it's pretty safe to say we don't need 50 pc graduates. That's just number crunching. That's forcing young people into debt so that they're not unemployed.

Especially when primary and secondary education in this country seems to have been rather damaged and downgraded. Better to focus attention there.