Tuition Fees

[KateMumsnet]

As you've probably heard, the government has announced changes to the way universities are funded, and this means that, starting in 2012, the amount that students will be expected to pay for university tuition will rise to a maximum of £9000 per year. Here's the BBC's story.

We thought we'd test the water to see if there was a strong consensus on this issue amongst MNers, so do let us know what you think. Whether you're for or agin', it would be very useful if you could indicate (briefly!) your reasoning.

Those of you who are firmly against the changes might like to know that there will be a rally for students, future students and their families, on Horse Guards Avenue SW1 at 11:30am tomorrow, Wednesday 10th November. The event is organised by the NUS and supported by the British Youth Council, which includes organisations like the Scouts, the Woodcraft Folk, and St John Ambulance.

Winky, I think that 35% of people in the country cannot achieve academic excellence. How could that even be possible? I think that university ought to be limited to those who have a genuine need or desire for learning and the ability to really benefit from it (and they will presumably pay that benefit forward in their future working lives). We obviously cannot fund 35% of young people through university. If we were to cut numbers so that 15 or 20% got at least a decrease in the eventual amount of debt they would leave with, I think this would be a far preferable state of affairs. It would at least mean that really bright young people from lower-income backgrounds would have a fair(er) crack of the whip.

I'm not in the least against education for anyone that wants it. But I am against full time degree courses for 35% of the population. There is the OU (which incidentally is losing a massive chunk of funding), there are adult education classes, there are books, there are tons of ways to educate yourself if you want to. But university ought to be about encouraging the brightest and best and giving them the education they need in order to put something back. I think educating 35% of people to degree level is simply a) too expensive and b) not really worth it.

How can you be so very sure that 35% of the country cannot achieve academic excellence given the opportunity?

And I think that to reduce the numbers at university does not automatically mean that "really bright young people from lower-income backgrounds would have a fair(er) crack of the whip" at all. This has never been the case even when far fewer people when to university and there were student grants available.

I think the whole of education is under attack and it's bonkers. It's a very very short sighted approach.

Having said that, I think that a 'value for money' approach needs to be part of the ethos of universities and institutes of higher education for example, there are far few contact hours for some courses.

I completely disagree with the 80% cut to teaching grants and the removal of Govt funding to universities and colleges for a great swathe of subjects, including arts, humanities, social sciences. It's entirely short-sighted, and contrary to what virtually every other country in the world is doing to 'grow' their way out of recession through increasing the skills levels of their population.
However, I don't think this is a good idea for a MN campaign. If the money is to come off grants to universities, then the suggested package is the best of a bad deal to make up at least some of the revenue: education is still free at the point of entry, the graduate only pays back when earning £21k or more, fee loans now extended to part-timers.
If MN want to argue, as I would, that the funding should come through a funding council to universities, rather than primarily through students via fee loans, then you are going to need to answer other questions: how should BIS make savings? Should fewer people go to university (I don't agree BTW, based on international comparisons)? Or should BIS remain at current funding levels, and cash be taken from- I don't know- health, schools, roads, housing? Tax the rich is the glib answer I know.... I think MN should be a place for us to discuss these things, but I think for MN to campaign on a simplistic 'no fees for our kids' slogan is not sensible.

By definition excellence cannot be achieved by thirty five per cent of any cohort. It wouldn't be excellence would it? And when a large proportion are getting into university with two Ds, whatever, it's pretty obvious academic excellence isn't high on the list of their priorities.

Why not education for its own sake? Go on then - I am 45. I would like you to pay me to read the complete works of jean Paul sartre. I am quite entitled to this education for its own sake: and see no reason to employ an arbitrary or unjust age limit, or enrolment requirement. You can come round my house and test me on it.

Ridiculous? I think so. There have to be limits and paying for half the population to stay in full time education is crazy.

I've cut and paste from another thread I was on - in response to someone who felt that the £9K was fair enough:

Yes, there are crap degrees out there - but what about the people doing degrees in social work? We're always going to need them. One rule fits all (unless it's an NHS bursary qualification) - no one is out there to differentiate between the shite and the valuable.

My DS1 has a good degree from a good university and I have no doubt he will eventually go on to do good things with it and will contribute to society. He may well contribute rather more to society by becoming a higher rate tax payer. Impossible to know - but he might. He's 23, and he owes approx £24K in tuition and maintenance loans and that's with the fees capped at the £3K rate. Fuck knows how much my youngest DS will end up owing by the time he's through the system in 12 years time or so. As it stands, I'd advise him not to bother - I won't be able to afford to subsidise him. It won't be about ambition and ability, it will be about parental wealth.

Absolutely against.

I was hoping my Ds and later still my Dd would be the first(s) in our family to go to university. Now it probably won't happen as even when I return to work I would never be able to afford the fee's.

I don't agree. Look at nursing. That was turned into a degree. It doesn't have to be: it was nursing college then on the job. Why shouldn't someone train as a social worker or journalist or golf course manager without a degree? Why, because it's been decided that this is the case. Decide otherwise. Why do you need a graduate qualification to be a bank manager pr senior copper? Itcs not necessary.

This will take away the requirement of a degree for a lot of meaningful and important jobs that simply don't need it. And if ypu want to study beyond eighteen then show us that ypu do .. prove if. Get better qualifications gprs take you there. Otherwise it's just another entitlement people take for granted.

I agree appletrees. The theory was great: let's educate the population and become a knowledge economy. Unfortunately it has turned into a dystopia where you can be awarded certificates for ridiculous things like knowing the correct way to wash your hands. The amount of qualifications needed these days is excessive and is actually a barrier (ask anyone who tries to re-train later in life).
In the good old days you could start as a teaboy and get promoted, based on your ability to actually do the job, and work your way to the top. Now you have to spend a lot of time and money getting increasingly worthless bits of paper before an employer will even grant you an interview.
It used to be that having a degree set you apart but now it is merely another me-too qualification and the kids are being suckered into thinking that it is now necessary to get a Masters!
I'm not sure that the £9000p.a. is a good investment for a prospective student anymore.

I don't think Mumsnet need to be helicopter parents on this one. The students are managing pretty well themselves. Except for slimy Aaron Porter, with his refusal to make any statement to the effect that students' anger is understandable, and a measure of the sheer extremity of what this governement is doing across the board.

Interestingly a BBC reporter said last night that such extremity of feeling is likely to be manifest in several distinct areas as the cuts bite in, and that the govt's ability to withstand protest will depend on whether or not there is a single arena in which all of the diverse extremities of anger directed at specific cuts can converge. He thought there would not be. He is probably right

That italicisation was an accident. But it works quite well.

not retired that's exactly what I thought - heard him on R4 sounding particularly whiny actually listing damage to the building like an angry parent that had a party go wrong.

Of course I don't agree with demos turning into violence ( a handful of idiots out of 50,000+ might I add) but surely you can't breakdown pretty much everyone in the country's day to day financial security and future without having an eye on your glass windows. Make that everyone apart from the bankers. And politicians.

I think that to reduce the numbers at university does not automatically mean that "really bright young people from lower-income backgrounds would have a fair(er) crack of the whip" at all. This has never been the case even when far fewer people when to university and there were student grants available.

My point is that if people were properly funded, then you wouldn't be putting people from lower-income backgrounds off at the first hurdle (ie deciding that they simply cannot cope with that level of debt, which seems a perfectly reasonable position). I agree that more probably needs to be done to ensure that the brightest children are the ones who benefit from a university education and not just the ones that have some money behind them.

By definition excellence cannot be achieved by thirty five per cent of any cohort. It wouldn't be excellence would it?

Agree totally with this.

I think you CAN reduce the number of university courses and degrees (some, IMO, aren't worth the paper they are written on, I would scrap these) and still work much harder at making sure that bright young people from lower income or non-university-habit backgrounds are encouraged to apply.

Things you can do to widen access while maintaining the standard of degree coures: More efforts between universities and schools, more careful consideration by the admissions tutors of what sort of students they are attracting and admitting, different ways of advertising courses. More ideas for 2 year courses or part time options. etc.

Many universities witter a bit about increasing access without doing very much. That could change. even while cutting out the substandard courses.

Agree, Fennel. Someone earlier in the thread suggested that the fees-tripling would cause the needed reduction in the size of the higher education sector. But (although there will be some reduction) the effect of a market in higher education won't primarily be to filter out poor courses and poor institutions; it will be to direct poorer people to the low-quality education and richer people to the high-quality education. What we need is a mechanism to direct poor-and-rich academically able people into good higher education. We are being sold (yet again) the sham that a market (suitably caveated with token gestures of support for the poor) is the miraculous invisible hand that shakes down supply and demand into an optimal arrangement. Perhaps we should have patient loans to pull off the same trick in the NHS.

absolutely against the increase.

I have three children who all wish to go on to university.

DD1 needs a degree to become a paramedic and has based her GCSE and A level choices on the entry requirements for that degree.

Yet she doesnt want to leave university with £30,000 of debt and is now thinking she will do something else. She also knows that her salary will not be high in that chosen career and she will have no hope of paying it off.

Shocking situation and had this been announced prior to the election they would never have got in.

Totally against.
We are now in our 40s and only just solvent after years of living impecuniously - and that's with me doing further ed (vocational) and my dh being a grad.
My 13-yr-old and 10-yr-old will not be able to access HE, pure and simple.
I also think cutting the amount of worthless 'degree' courses available and providing some financial help for young people to pursue proper vocational training might be in order, to help minimise some of the skills gaps in the UK.

The Golden Goose has been killed.

By encouraging too many people to go to university, it has all been devalued.

Bad news for those who are actually academically inclined.

"DD1 needs a degree to become a paramedic" But she SHOULDN'T !!!!! For pity's sake, where were all the ambulance people, nurses, journalists, etc etc etc 40 years ago? Yes, we still had them. And guess what? They didn't have degrees. And guess what else? They were just as good.

Against rise in tuition fees. Education should be a right, and that includes higher education. It is disingenuous to suggest otherwise when children from richer families are able to see it that way not because of their academic ability, and some enhanced ability or willingness to contribute to society, but because of their family's wealth. It should be available to those who will benefit from it and who will go on to make a contribution to society using the knowledge and skills they gained from that education. I marched yesterday (just - massive coach fail), and I will march again. I think there is a discussion to be had about the numbers going in to HE, but attacking Golf Course Studies and nursing degrees detracts from the real issue: the money for HE should come from the state and not from the student or their families in order to avoid a two-tier system of HE.

And, just in case someone asks "where will it come from, black hole, labour deficit blah blah" I think tax increases, actually. Higher taxes. They would make a pittance of difference to many, but all parties are so bloody scared of saying the "T" word it's pathetic.
Just to clarify - NO-ONE under the present proposals for 2012 will have reduced fees to pay. You will pay what the university of your choice charges and you can take out a loan to do that. If you are from a low income family, tough. You may receive a grant to help with your living expenses but it's not likely to be much higher than it is now (around £3k) and the Govt is going to reduce the income threshold so that if you earn up to £50k a year now your chld can get some level of grant, and they're lowering it to £42k. You may receive a bursary from your university if you come from a low income background, but so far the planned sanctions for univeristies who don't do that very well don't look too scary.
Saying you won't pay back your tuition fee loan if you earn under £21k and assuming that will apply to 25% of graduates is just proof that the graduate premium no longer exists for many.
As parents, as citizens, being involved in this isn't interfering or unnecessary; if you believe our society relies on a well-educated people you should be interested.

Hear hear Monkey.

"For pity's sake, where were all the ambulance people, nurses, journalists, etc etc etc 40 years ago? Yes, we still had them. And guess what? They didn't have degrees. And guess what else? They were just as good."

Were they just as good? Really? How do you know? Hasn't science and knowledge required come on in leaps and bounds over the last 40 years? Do you not think it's better to have a well educated nurse, thoroughly grounded in his knowledge and training than one who has learned only a bit of this and a bit of that?

Paramedics - I don't know if they need a degree but I'm surprised at everyone being so very certain they don't. Since when was everyone expert in who needs exactly what education for every job?

So to go to university, you have to be "excellent"?

You should have to be pretty good academically sure but I don't think excellent is a realistic aim for many (one should of course strive for one's own personal level of excellence) but that doesn't mean they are not perfectly capable of getting good degrees and should be excluded from that option simply because you don't have the money.

I still think there are a lot of cruddy courses out there that should be culled and better value for money from universities that offer only 8 contact hours. I remember friends on a history of art degree course that only had 2 contact hours a week!

More contact hours could mean shorter degrees for some too which would speedier moving into the workforce to become productive, tax paying members of society who contribute to the next generation of well educated, civilised British people.

Absolutely against the increase and the cuts in the teaching budget (which will make fee rises inevitable), and absolutely for a MN campaign. I went on the march yesterday, feeling impressed to see so many peaceful, enthusiastic, committed young people there and disappointed not to see more parents. A greater presence of campaigning and protesting parents would keep the media from demonizing students in isolation, and might well have quelled any violence on the march - and most important of all, it would give kids the message that we care about their future and just maybe stop them from blaming our generation for blighting it. As mother of two kids who have worked so hard at GCSEs and A levels, and dreamed of university since primary school thanks to my encouragement, to see them get just this far and then have the door to higher education slammed in their faces - it's heartbreaking. How are we ever going to urge kids to work hard again? Why aspire? Where's the incentive? Things like not bothering to try for university, or keeping the payback level for earnings at £21,000 (which is hardly high-flying), are disincentives. This is a far bigger and more fundamental issue than child benefit cuts. A couple of placards, perhaps tongue in cheek but still poignant, at yesterday's march said 'What about the children?' So let's campaign and show the children that it's this government and the bankers, not their parents' whole generation, that has let them down.