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?

granted i'm not happy about the graduate tax either. in my current job there's a mix of graduates and non-graduates. why should i pay more tax than my colleagues just because i'm better qualified? I don't earn more.

it would also mean my husband, educated in wales, would pay less tax. despite the fact that he earns way more than i do. but i know that is really another topic altogether.

also, i don't trust governments at all. i would be worried that they'd use this as an excuse to increase my tax whenever they felt like it

I agree - I don't think it's fair - but it's fairer than starting work with a fixed - and rising, as interest is added - 45K debt round your neck.

Totally agree with your point re Wales/Scotland.

It's going to result in huge bitterness in practice.

Free education for all is the best solution.

Obviously not all will take it up - and I'd like to see much better vocational training and apprenticeships, for the less academic.

But those exluded should be on suitability for academic study grounds not on wealth grounds.

x-post - agree with your second point also, dreamingofsun.

Thanks for your reply granted.

(and I actually agree with most of your points).

Except -:

"Should add, I like the fact that the money will be earmarked for education, not just disappear into the general pot."

Is that not a criticism of the 'graduate tax'?

I do wonder how it would work out having recent graduates paying a higher marginal tax rate than earlier grauduates and non-grauduates on the same salary?

And how long they can be expected to pay it for?

I'm guessing banks will factor the higher tax into mortgage calculations.

Of course a 'graduate tax' removes all the 'free market element' of the Universities getting the money upfront.

Which maybe is the real point?

graduates

have you all emailed your MP's about this? They are due to vote on Thursday aren't they. Hopefully they have been reading these threads, but lets bung their inboxes up as well to show how much we care!

i went to a demo with my young daughter, im fresh out of uni 2 years ago. Its disgusting that generation telling young people today to pay 9k when their education was free, an we will be paying for their pensions.

nordic - not all that generation - i don't agree with it. i could stomach a smaller increase - say 1k but not 6k per year. disgusting.

jackstarbright - re the money not to go into the genera pot, I was referring to the oint on the link you sent that suggested the money be set asdide for a specific education fund.

I agree with you about the free market part of your comment - that's probably the main problem with the system as it is at the mo, that it enables pants courses to flourish at the samme time as good ones.

But then is one man's joke course another woman's dream course, say?

eg media studies - much derided, but then someone on here recently posted that most media jobs do go to people with media degrees, so not totally a waste of time?

etc.

And as an ex-History graduate, I am incensed by the fact that ALL arts/humanities degrees have in effect been judged worthless and not deserving of any subsidy.

Not for nothing were the Tories historically known as the 'Stupid Party'.

Even more so, when you consider that they've just announced they want everyone to leave school with 5 good GCSEs including a humanity subject. BUT they are withdrawing funding from humanities' degrees. So what about students who do well and want to continue these subjects up to university level? At what point do these subjects suddenly become worthless, then? And where are the teachers supposed to come from to teach these pupils, if all students are discouraged from studying humanities at university, and departments closed for lack of funding??

Talk about lack of joint-up thinking.

What a bunch of idiots.

The best revolt would be for everyone to refuse to go and encourage employers to provide good apprenticeships instead,

I think I'd feel differently if the sums of money involved weren't eye watering. I mean, £9k per year on top of living expenses?

I recall the poll tax. All seemed fair and dandy on paper, all 'user pays' BUT- it's biggest failing was that where once you had a household of 4 paying say £1000 a year, suddenly that household's bill became £4000.

Hence the riots.

I'd also feel differently if this government had started by creating all the FE/ tech school /apprenticeship places that so many poorer DCs will now allegedly 'flock' to before placing university degrees beyond their reach.

I'd agree that the Labour idea of 50% of school leavers going to university was ludicrous BUT haven't most of us in professional careers seen our Certificate morph into a Diploma, then into a Degree-level entry? The idea mooted about 6 pages ago about people starting as the tea boy and working their way up just can't happen any more. Especially in times of rising unemployment- I recall when I was young and one of Maggie's Millions, the posh tea shops in our local market town wouldn't look at a potential waitress unless she'd graduated the grammar school 6th form. I am also shocked at the quality of university experience many of this '50%' are getting- an hour or 2 actual contact time a week. But fee charging won't suddenly improve that- what will happen is a group of prestigious unis will break away, continue to produce sought after graduates but now their intakes will exclusively be the privately educated DCs of the wealthy whose parents will pay their £21k upfront.

Maybe they'll call themselves the Russell Group or some such....

Don't forget, guys, contact your MP here:

www.familiesagainstfees.co.uk/

Do it today - if enough parents write to their MPs, esp Lib Dems, things can still change!

Remember - every Lib Dem MP in this country is likely to lose their seat at the next election if this goes through.

I would prefer the system to stay the same, with adequate funding from central government and the requirement of bursaries from the universities. If cost need to be cut then to look at trimming courses and increasing part-time study for those courses that don't need 3 years full time at university.

Agreed, christmaseve.

Ideally, I'd like to keep (well, return to, actually) free funding available to all. If that is too expensive, then ideally I'd prefer rationing based on merit.

ie free funding for the brightest, whatever their parent's income level, and extra places available, but on a paid-for basis, as discussions above.

granted -

I see you were referring to the NUS money fund .

Worth noting that one of The Browne report's issues with the graduation tax is, the problem in making sure the money ends up going to the Universities.

Whilst the tuition fees method guarantees that the Uni's get the money.

I did a 'vocational degree' at what was to become a 'new university'. It was great for me - they used to be called 'sandwich courses' . Most of us used our work placements as a springboard for our careers .

Btw - there were apparently 11095 students who had been in receipt of free school meals who started university this year. It's the government's objective is to raise that to 18,000.

ampere

Think you've summed it up well, especially your assessment that employers are asking for degrees when previously they did not.

However, there are some good apprenticeships getting going out there. EDF energy will pay £9000 a year for two years plus your living expenses, rising to £17000 at the end of four years. You would know where you are with that.

However, with a degree, you have to take out these loans with no feel for whether you are employable by the end.

Universities could do there bit too - why are some degrees so long. It would help students if they got rid of the holidays and taught intensively for two years.

And, is it worth it? I discovered how much doctors two years away from being consultants earn - about £36k. This is after a six year degree and 8 years or working.

A graduation tax can be ringfenced with ease, if they want it to be.

I would love to see a return to free higher education, but that won't ever happen. Something will have to change, so we are told, I don't want this to go through. It's not only the free market aspect, bad enough though that idea is, it's the sneaky way they are withdrawing help that is there in the current system. Most people don't realise as it doesn't apply to a normal income bracket family. It captured all students on FSM and from disadvantaged households. The proposed replacement cuts that to the bone.

Scrapping EMA won't help students from FSM families in any way. Also the timings, bringing this in 2012, scholarships 2014.

I take your point about intensive courses. However, it's worth pointing out that a university's place on the league tables and, to a large extent, an academic's pay, is determined by their research output, not their teaching. If you teach intesitive courses thisleaves the academics no time to do their research (and boy will the moan about that) and the university will slip in the ratings making it less attractive to students.

Most (though not all) of the academics I work with consider teaching an imposition.

There's no such thing as free education, somebody has to pay and I'd prefer the beneficiaries of the education to do that rather than me.

bluenordic

there's no such thing as free medical treatment and I'd prefer the beneficiaries to pay for it rather than me. And the dole too.

Well said Dreamingofsun, also Bluenordic, don't you think that society as a whole benefits from educating and training professionals.

A point nobody has made yet is that we seem to be running out of academics as the older generations retire, and the way things are going, there is a real question about who is going to be staffing universities in the future if people are going to have to acquire huge debts in order to train for a decade to do this job.

This concern dates back to a demographic panic in the 1990s as it was realised the 30 and 40 something group were almost entirely missing from the university teaching ranks, meaning than we would quite literally run out of people to staff certain courses within a generation. This was remedied by rapidly offering studentships for UK people to study for higher degrees.

However one strange thing we have noticed is that we are having trouble giving these studentships away to potential future academics now, as they invoke undergraduate debt and poor future salary prospects.

It's a major problem looming and the Government seems to be ignoring it completely.

boffin - co-incidently, i was just thinking would i become a teacher and incur these huge debts on a not massive salary and wondering if that would affect the quality of teachers in future. guess the same could be said of other lower paid professions such as nurses.

why would you take on 30k of debt if you were only going to earn 30k per year? i think i'd do something potentially better paid that you didn't need a degree for