Want your children to be able to go to uni?

[GreatAuntLoretta]

I am really feeling the urge to join the NUS protest against tuition fees on Thursday 9th December. Although my children are both under five, I am really really upset and annoyed to think that if they want to go to university in the future we will be very unlikely to be able to afford to send them. Who knows what the fees will be by then?! Also when my children are a little older I would really like to have the opportunity to retrain and do a degree. That would be completely off the cards. (angry)

Is anyone else with young children thinking of attending? It would be good to stick together with some other parents. A large group of parents will probably be a lot safer than a random woman with a buggy and a toddler in a mass crowd.

Who is with me?

Is there already a family protest group out there?

I suspect all this talk of bridging the academic gap between state schools and private schools will become..er..academic once the new tuition fees come into play. Ability to pay will be the determining factor, and those able to pay for a private education (which doesn't mean all parents of pupils at private schools, but most of them) will be more likely to get into uni than they are now and those from state schools will be less likely to do so.

RRocks

I agree, I don't like the fee system at all. Is there any other country in Europe that has fees as high as we will have? Are we the only country in Europe not able to afford to provide a university system without forcing young people to take on such high debt?

Why did Labour start this process? Was that just the first brick in the building?

Most big European counries seem to have lower fees/no fees at all. In exchange, however, they seem to have a slightly lower % of the population going to uni. I find it interesting that the export powerhouse that is Germany operates with only 25% of the population going to uni.

The exceptions in Europe seem to be the Scandis. However, these are small countries who economically are in a far better position than the UK or Club Med countries. Ireland has higher % but that might change soon!

The US has higher fees and slightly more going to uni. Australia has many more going to uni but a fees system (I know having worked every day through my 5 year law degree). Not sure about Canada.

What I would find interesting would be: how many uni places would need to be cut to keep fees at current levels? How many unis would close in the situation? I still think that might be a better compromise.

let me put an idea out there.

Did you all know that currently it is permissible for any member of the public to attend lectures at any publicly funded university for free? It is known as 'auditing' a lecture.

So if you can get this for free, what extra benefit do you get from paying fees? Would it technically be possible to acquire the advantages of a university education for nothing by joining lectures in a small group with people you like, hiring university teachers to give you tutorials, and then working on assignments together?

This brings us to the big question - what actually IS a university education? And how is it worth £9000, if you're not studying medicine or practical science? What are you paying for? Student support for those with learning difficulties and emotional/financial problems. Library facilities. Chaplaincy. Subsidised catering facilities. Sport and leisure facilities. Outreach and AimHigher. Admissions Officers. Your lecturers to do new research so they grow the knowledge you need. But not all students use all of these, and much of what universities offer is available elsewhere at little or no cost, with some organisation and commitment on the part of the user.

If we strip back university learning to its 1840 level, we see students hiring their own tutors and making their own arrangements for learning, with attendance at lectures being an optional (free) extra. Now we have turned it into big business. But perhaps there will be a backlash and students will once again look to themselves for knowledge acquisition. Where will universities be then? And how will employers judge people who have all the trappings of a university education but no bit of paper?

yes but aren't you really paying for the piece of paper from a recognised, established, highly regarded university? It is that cachet that means they can charge that price.

The £9k fees will be what the Government currently pays so this will not fund expansion or more places or anything. It is just replacing students paying with tax payers paying.

And yes children will decide perhaps to go abroad to study if the economics become similar for that. What do you get? In many subjects you are lectured by the leading experts in their field so you're taught what they say. Some courses have more contact time than others of course and if students pay direct they may want more contact time and the universities might get better in the way private school parents demand things and get a better education for the chilren because they are paying whereas if you just pay indirectly you never get such good services.

Whether we should aim to get to Germany's 25% only going to university (15% went when I went by the way so that's a lot more than then) is another issue. presumably if it's too expensive then silly pointless courses will fall by the way so which will be great and market forces at its bestand jobs which don't need a degree will become non graduate again which would also be sensbile.

Interesting ideas, BoffinMum. Something along similar lines is distance learning, which most universities are frantically investigating. (I was wondering whether the OU is going to put up its fees. Suddenly something that once seemed rather expensive now looks like the cheaper option!)

So maybe this is why they're doing it. They actually intend to phase unis out altogether, rather than just privatise them, which is what I thought originally.

Because, apart from subjects that need laboratories, what's to stop us all reading away and doing our own research and then just presenting ourselves for examination (for a fee, of course)? Many students already do that anyway, because they have to work to support themselves and often can't make lectures.

Or we can do what people in Russia and Spain did at the beginning of the 20th century: small, local learning co-operatives, mobile libraries and theatres spreading subversive ideas by word of mouth ...

Is that what DiCameron means by the Big Soc?

Xenia we used to have polytechnics and universities. Do we have figures for how many used to go to both in earlier times, is it any different to how many go to what are now called universities?

But grannieonabike, people graduating from Hull may know more than people graduating from Harvard. But employers probably won't see it that way. The do it yourself route won't count. If you can pay the fee for Harvard, that will always count. The top universities will charge more and fewer people will be able to go to them.

Or will the internet change the way study functions?

Why go to university at all, let alone sped tens of thousands in the process, when you can access all knowledge, potential tutors and fellow students at the comfort of your own desk, for free or an awful lot less than 9K for 3 years plus interest, maintenance costs etc? At your own convenience, maybe even accredited by a 'new' university, or foreign university? Or even our own?

WikiUniversity, maybe?

I teach foreign students, so am aware how much of a growth area online study is in my field.

no it won't. That will be for the poor. The elite will turn up on campus at teh top universities, whatever it costs. In fact they will be able to afford it, while brighter poor and middle class students won't. The top universities won't offer internet courses, and if they do, they will still cost an arm and a leg, just because of the name. It's business and maintaining a quality image, to differentiate yourself from the rest of the crowd.

They keep telling us that 50% go to university now. How many went to university plus polytechnic in former times? Was it also approaching 50%? How did we afford it then?

Do-it-yourself isn't the answer anyway, Claig. Few people can fire themselves up and have the self-discipline to keep going. Plus there's the socialising networking that goes on at uni - although that could also go on elsewhere, of course.

'If you can pay the fee for Harvard, that will always count. The top universities will charge more and fewer people will be able to go to them.' I hate to think that you could be right.

This is what I don't understand. It's not in the government's interests - any more than in ours - to restrict entry to university. What better way than uni to keep pressure off the job market, at a time when jobs are scarce, while keeping the yoof gainfully employed?

Presumably, for all the reasons of national prestige (seen the latest UK figures for school kids for Maths, Science and Reading levels? Not a pretty sight), international competition, blah blah - they also want a highly educated population?

The government have loads of our money swilling around in their coffers. Why do they want to give it to the banks? Is it because the banks support the government? The first priority of any government is to remain in power, as they can't do anything if they don't. So is it the banks who are holding the govt to ransom?

I'm no economist, and I only have a tenuous grip on financial affairs, so someone please explain.

'Is it because the banks support the government?'

no, it's because the government supports the banks

claig, as I was advised by Coalition on another thread, 50% was Labour's target. He says the current rate of attendance at university is about 35%.

RRocks

But not the unis??

The Government doesn't have any money swelling around in its coffers, we are borrowing enormous amounts of money in order to finance government spending at the moment.

The banks were bailed out in order to prevent the economy going into meltdown and there being mass civil unrest on the streets. The Government nationalised 2 banks and provided guarantees for others. Its worth remebering that the money put into the banks isn't part of the structural deficit and we should make a profit when we re-privatise the state owned banks.

really, 35%, they never give us that figure.
I wonder if much has changed if we add in polytechnic figures

Rrocks - that was me actually.

Twas 35% graduating in 2008. Down from 38% in 2000.

Hi Grannie,

The government have loads of our money swilling around in their coffers. Why do they want to give it to the banks?

The banks have huge amounts of bad debts and if the government didn't support them they would call in all the loans they had lent to businesses, which could all go bust, and possibly to you and me, so that we would lose our houses. The banks would then still all be bust. (The government would then have to pay to depositers much of the money they had deposited in the banks.)

The result would be an economic disaster with huge unemployment, homelessness and an inability to get credit to a much greater degree than exists now. Another Great Depression. They think that by shoring up the banks, and raising taxes and cutting services to pay for that, they can keep the economy going until the bad debts have somehow worked their way out of the system.

(I think.)

RRocks

Link to article on graduation rates From the Guardian

Hi Jackstarlightstarbright,

Apologies for getting you mixed up.

RRocks

RRocks - that's ok - I have done the same myself before...

Thank you, RRocks. But they're not raising taxes, are they? They're cutting services to people who are really near the edge, in order to support people who are already well off. And then they are cutting off the means for those who are poor to rise out of their poverty via education. It doesn't make sense, does it? Unless they are simply protecting the people who vote Tory. But even then, surely they realise that far more people are going to be harmed than helped by these policies.

When it's all so simple really. Raise taxes on a gradual scale. Voila! (Why don't they ask me to be Chancellor?)

grannie- They are raising taxes VAT is going up to 20% next month and capital gains tax is also going up to 28%.