Tuition Fees increase. Why are they 'fairer'?

[LadyBlaBlah]

I genuinely don't understand why the coalition are saying that their proposed hike in tuition fees is fairer and more progressive than the current system.

They never seem to expand on this point. Can someone explain the detail?

Do you really think that UCL management give a monkeys that you've occupied a room and are suddenly going to change their stance on HE funding because of it.
Talk about delusions of grandeur

Educationforall posted on the thread about the police kettling on Nov 24 as well.

I wrote to my LibDem MP about the proposed fees hike and got back a (presumably standard) reply giving the answer a lot of the posters here have given - that the proposed new system is described as 'fairer' because of the threshold before repayment becomes due being set at £21,000 rather than the present £15,000.

I've written back to my MP that the difference between a £15,000 earnings threshold and a £21,000 threhold is immaterial, given that repayments of the proposed uprated amounts are targeted to commence in 2015-16.

My MP pointed out that he was one of only a few MPs to have a student loan himself - he said 'I am committed to a system which is fair to students and which strengthens educational opportunities for all.'

I pointed out that his contention that 'All graduates will pay back less per month than under the current system' smacks of sophistry. I asked him how the situation of a former student (such as himself, perhaps) - currently liable to pay back £7,000 or so in fees, can compare with that of a new graduate, four years hence, landed in debt to the tune of £18,000 - £27,000.

Would he, I asked him, happily swap his indebtedness for theirs? I don't think so.

Weasel, weasel words. No, the proposed new system is absolutely NOT fairer. You can't believe a word they say on that.

What are people's alternatives?

Universities have been saying for a long time that they can't sustain themselves on the fees that they charge. There isn't the money for the governement to continue to subsidise the amount of courses that are run or increase the subsidy.

So something has to happen. What are the other viable options?

poxoxo, do you think it would help if the students didn't protest. If they don't take any notice and pass the proposals at least the protesters have highlighted, to our future voters, what turncoats the lib dems are and who the Tory government really represent and they won't ever get in to power again. Fingers crossed.

I don't know what the alternative is but they need to look at it.

@lucky - I'm joining you on the bemused and scratching my head, chair.

The way I see it - Higher education is a publically funded service, mainly enjoyed by the middle and upper classes. The universities asked for more money and the last government (hesitant to use tax payers money) asked Browne to look into it.

He suggested that the extra investment should be funded by the main beneficiaries - the graduates.

Of course the student protesters (Education for all - the irony) are not just objecting in their own name - but in the name of 'poorer students' who would be put off attending university by the rise in Tuition Fees.

Yet a recent Sutton Trust Report found the biggest barrier to attending University was not the Tuition Fees - it was lack of decent A'level grades!

Social mobility is not so much a factor of who gets to go to university - it's decided by which school you get into at 11.

I struggle to see what business Bragg, Toynbee and Chomsky (ffs) have standing shoulder to shoulder with the products of a British class system they [appear] to despise.

"I don't know what the alternative is but they need to look at it."

But that's what the Browne report was doing - it looked into all the alternatives (as he was commissioned to do so by the LABOUR government) and this was the result. All the proper channels have been followed, all the options have been assessed.

Which is why, ultimately the student protests will fail because they're not suggesting a viable alternative, they're just sticking their fingers in their ears and saying "nononononono it's not FAIR".

The other option if fees aren't raised is that some universities will close, others will cut right back on the courses that they offer and lots and lots of people won' be able to go to university anyway. That will kick social mobility a lot more than this option, because if universities are only accepting people with AAA then, as jackstarbright pointed out, that is going penalise bright children in bad schools who aren't taught well enough to get those grades, only the truly dedicated and clever will be able to compete with the public school children.

Is that fairer?

Maybe they believe that university fees should continue to be subsidised from taxpayers money and be available to all bright students who get the grades regardless of which school they go to and how much their parents can help support them while studying.

Maybe they believe that we as a wealthy country (yes we are) should help fund the education of our future managers/academics/professionals fitting with a first world and not a third world country.

well said christmas.

so jackstar are you saying the public doesn't benefit from teachers, doctors, pychiatrists, engineers....the list is endless?

and these people will have foregone several years pay to go to uni and pay higher taxes for the whole of their working lives.

But the government can't even just maintain at this level, the universities are saying that they need to up their income somehow, either via higher fees or increased government subsidies. There isn't the money to do that, I doubt there would even have been the money to do that in the boom years.

We're a wealthier country than most, but that doesn't mean we've got an unlimited supply of money to hand out. We spend more than we make every year. On top of that, we're going to spend multple billions bailing out other countries. We can't increase spending in line with what is needed, without sacrificing something else. What else is their that can be cut which will save the requistite billions year on year?

I'm not an economist but I am sure there are other cuts than can be made from the top.

They should look at trimming degrees available because these are likely to be the ones that ultimately cost the taxpayer, part of the 60% that the government won't be able to recoup any repayments from the earning of those graduates. There are lots of alternatives. Labour might have commissioned Browne but it doesn't mean they would have acted on his report and in such a painfully short time.

agree don't have unlimited funds, so the way funding is spread out should be revisited. if wales and scottland can manage their funds in this way then so should england be able to. perhaps the funding formular needs to be revisited and england get more - after all we have lots of unemployed people, rural areas and the cost of living/wages is higher here.

dreamingofsun - Do we proportionally have more unemployed people than scotland or wales?

The way I understand it (and I could be totally wrong) is that Wales receives a certain amount of money each year to spend on what they like, but it covers hospitals, schools, building roads etc. They have earmarked a proportion of this money to pay for residents to go to university. So they will have had to take this money from something else. So, they have the benefit of not starting life with such a large university debt, but instead they might have gone to inferior secondary schools (so might not get into university anyway) or suffered through illness and disability because the hospitals aren't as good or certain drugs might not be available. They don't just get extra free money.

christmaseve - I suspect that every single top down cut that could be made is being made. If there was an easy way to slice off billions then I assume they would have spotted it in the furore of every department making cuts.

dreaming -

"so jackstar are you saying the public doesn't benefit from teachers, doctors, pychiatrists, engineers....the list is endless.....and these people will have foregone several years pay to go to uni and pay higher taxes for the whole of their working lives."

The good old 'value to society' argument.

Do I agree that the elite 35% of young people who go to University are of more value to society than the 65% who don't get to go?

I'm actually not sure.

What surprises me is that all these lefties seem have converted to this view.

Wales are 'top slicing' their HE budget.

They are actually taking money from their Universities to give to students, to pay back to the University .

The Welsh - you've got to love them!

lucky - they do get extra money per head of population from central gov. the usual reasoning is that there's higher unemployment and its more rural. they don't appear to be taking it from anything else they get free perscriptions, lower tuition fees, low hospital car parking charges ....

The Welsh and Scots can afford it partly because the English will be subsidizing their fees(just as foreign students do now).

Not happy about that at all.

From BBC Online

Welsh Education Secretary Andrews -

" told AMs he was proposing to pay for the subsidy by top-slicing the teaching grant for Welsh universities."

At least they are not taking it from their schools or health budget.

granted - Welsh Universities suddenly have less appeal for English students. More expensive yet less well funded.

I can't believe the Welsh Uni's are happy with this.

jackstar - i don't believe that the check-out person in a supermarket is any less valuable that the person that designed the supermarket; or the flight attendant any less valuable than the person who designed the airplane and the comms system that enabled it to let it fly safely - they are all necessary.

however, the flight attendant and supermarket check-out person don't need a degree to do their jobs whereas the other people i mention do. the proposed policy - of paying back tuition fees once you earn 21k actually encourages people who don't need degrees to have them.