Really shocked at myself for thinking this (tuition fees)

[Concordia]

I don't really want my kids to be paying back debt their whole lives.
I want them to be able to buy a home of their own.
If they want to do a longer course or a course at a more prestigiuous uni i don't want them to go for a less good option because they are scared of debt. i want them to achieve the best they are capable.
was at myself when i found myself wondering if we would inherit any money in the next 15 years which would enable them to avoid this.
feeling
it's rough that teachers and social workers will end up paying so much more for their degrees than investment bankers who can pay off quickly.
this government really doesn't give a sh*t about those in the £18, 000 to £35, 000 bracket. after all we must be pretty feckless to be that poor and our education isnt' important at all now, is it.

As someone from a poor background I find it quite patronising to be told that I could not have worked out for myself that going to university would substantially increase my earning power and transform my life - and therefore it was an experience worth going into debt for.

I agree with you the benefits of going to university are obvious and going to university has transformed my life for the better but if I think back 6 years the propspect of such debt would have troubled me, although I would still probably have gone.

Funny enough I knew someone (on a Master's course) in the mid 1990s who was suing his Uni for bad teaching and refund of his fees, I wonder how that turned out.

In plans just passed by Parliament, I was under the impression that the debt can't be paid off that quickly -- it can be paid off quicker if you earn a lot, but in that case you also have to pay off a larger amount.

Whereas someone earning much less will clear the loan more slowly, but in the end they'll pay a lot less back.

So saying it's unfair that a banker can pay it back quicker is a bit incomplete, because the banker has to pay more back anyway (than the "poor" teacher).

Do I need to be corrected on that?

Also, unlike the old loan system, this accrues interest at commercial rates. So there's no advantage to getting a loan and sticking it in a higher interest bearing account until it comes due (DH did this, I know loads of students who did, always seemed a bit unfair to let students use tax paper money like that).

Seems to me like there are several very sensible aspects to the new system.

Riven- To be fair I don't think you can expect to have 2 degrees subsidised by the Government

huddspur - why not? You can't demand that everyone stays in the same job their whole lives. It is good for society if we have mature entrants to degree-only professions, who bring wider life experience.

Society and the economy needs a well-educated workforce. This policy is really about cutting state funding for university tuition by 80 per cent. That's not sharing the costs fairly between the graduate and the state.

The government wants students to make up the difference.

The claim that only a few will charge £9k is ludicrous. When they brought in tuition fees, every sodding university charged £3k. A bit of fiddling round the edges so they can claim they are doing a bit for poorer students doesn't address the problem. "Poorer" is defined in very limited terms as = free school meals. There are plenty of families who don't qualify for free school meals but do struggle to get by. And it's not just tuition fees, it's living costs too. Books ain't cheap. Students will end up having to pay back at least £40k even if they work - look at the rent charged by halls of residence.

edam- I believe that university education should be free for peoples first degree but its simply not affordable or sustainable to allow people to have as many subsidised degrees as they would like.

Halls are expensive but they are good for the social scene

"If our uni's lose 80% of funding, surely they are going to become shit?"

From the Coalitions 'fact on fees' website:

" there will continue to be substantial public funding for universities. The balance of university funding will shift from 60 per cent government, 40 per cent private to approximately 40 per cent government, 60 per cent private."

" A bit of fiddling round the edges so they can claim they are doing a bit for poorer students doesn't address the problem. "Poorer" is defined in very limited terms as = free school meals"

Again from the Facts on Fees website:

"There will be more support for students on low incomes: there will be a new £150 million National Scholarships Programme to help the poorest students into the top universities; maintenance grants for students from lower-income families will increase from £2,906 to £3,250; and partial maintenance grants will be available to students from families with incomes between £25,000 and £42,000."

I asked my students yesterday whether 9k a year fees would have put them off. 80% said yes. Those who didn't said their parents were helping them out already and would have done whatever the cost. The local, working class students, first in their family to go to university said they absolutely would not have applied.

The issue about consumer choice is going to be interesting. There is already this misplaced notion that 'oh for 3k a year I ought to get this, this and this...'. The minute you bring in a consumer ethic, the buyer thinks they are entitled to ask for whatever they want. The problem with this assumption is that with education the student doesn't necessarily know what they need. And certainly, we can't educate people properly by just giving them what they want, instead of what they need.

However unpalatable for consumers it is, it isn't just a case of handing over your money and getting your degree and it's your teacher's fault if you don't get it. Our VC rather helpfully has stopped using the word 'teaching' and uses 'education' instead. He's right: to some extent, with my and others' guidance, university IS about educating yourself: learning to learn independently, learning to apply knowledge to solve problems (including your own), learning about how to judge sources of knowledge. These are meta-skills that can't be taught in curricula.

I do think though, that the NUS would get its best outcome by pursuing a consumer-led approach though to put the thumbscrews on VCs. My biggest fear is that the VCs will collude in siphoning off the cash for things other than 'education' so we will be expected to simply 'teach' more, but for less money.
It will, truly, dumb down the university product. If you double, or triple or quadruple the teaching load of a university lecturer overnight, it will not lead to a better university education, it will lead to, um, more teaching.

But that teaching will stay put. And listening to Willetts and Cable muttering in the background, I think this is what they plan - that teaching will move to centralised curricula, centralised examining. Overnight, teaching will become fixed, separated from research-led critical thinking. And lecturers - in huge numbers and in pretty decent institutions (we're not just talking about the tail end here) - will be shifted to become not thinkers but tutors.

Parents and students might think this sounds like a good thing - value for money etc - but it really, really isn't. Research will be concentrated in a very few elite institutions (which may in itself be a good thing) but teaching in universities across the board will become extended A levels. We all know how well A levels deliver thoughtful, independent, critical learners .

This will be the final nail in the coffin of research activity for many, many lecturers. And your kids will no longer be taught by experts.

Sure, now, those experts are erratic, problematic, in dispute with each other, walk in to lectures with egg down their ties. But they know stuff, and they know how to think about stuff.

This week I taught research methodology to some Masters' students. They included a senior police officer, a forensic specialist, a paralegal. They WANTED to know how to think like me. They WANTED to have space outside of their professional lives to think creatively about solving research problems. They wanted to know how I had conducted my research and how I had used other scholars' critical ideas to do this. That has a value in itself and will - in different ways - feed back into the economy, because they will apply what they've learned in their working lives. But when I teach the same things at a different pace to undergraduates, they increasingly ask 'why am I doing this? I'm not doing a dissertation...'

When it becomes all about cost, and direct measurables, we lose something enormous.

jackstar, 80% of the budget for specific subjects has been cut, namely in the arts, humanities and social sciences. And even in those fields (STEM subjects - science, technology, engineering and maths) it is unclear whether the new funding regime will be sufficient: thoughts are by many that sciences will only break even in teaching funding because the higher level is to maintain equipment, labs etc in those fields.

There will be NO additional money for learning resources - all calculations show this plan is a net loss overall to the current funding of teaching. So 3k to 9k with a drop in actual resources provided to deliver the student experience. I can see this kicking off for a long time yet...

that should read '...fields where central funding is maintained'

I would just like to ask - if anyone knows this - when you say that University Graduates will earn 300K more over their working life, where do you get that figure from?

My concern is this. I am not vastly old but when I went to university it was rather a small number of people who went, the employment prospects for all of us were quite bright because there were so few of us. It seems to me that we should be factored out of current 'projected salary' assessments because it really isn't the same now. So - what is the figure for only the CURRENT graduates? And how do you come by this figure?

Obviously I meant 'graduates under the current system'.

alicatte -

" when you say that University Graduates will earn 300K more over their working life, where do you get that figure from? ....what is the figure for only the CURRENT graduates? And how do you come by this figure?"

The original £400k was based on research done when the last government introduced Tuition Fees. I think it's comparing average graduate salaries with average non graduate and projecting over a life time.

Later research compares graduate salaries with non graduates who were qualified to go to university but chose not too. This puts the average premium at around £100k. As other posters have said averages are not always useful. Some graduates will earn very large salaries - pulling the average up.

Of course no one knows for sure what the future average graduate premium will be. But it's pretty evident that non skilled jobs will decrease in number and earning capacity - due to global market pressure.

im agreeing back with expat on the first page i'm afraid. it's got to change sooner or later, and the time appears to be now.

we are (also) expats, living in canada. the dcs are 7,(almost) 9 and (almost) 11. it is the norm for parents to set up education savings programmes at a very early point and start paying a minimal amount into them every month. the cost of tertiary ed is extortionate, but it is the norm here, and the state has specific policy stuff in place to help each family save for it. if a family is below a certain income level there is an additional grant which can be paid into the programme each year - but in order for this to happen you do have to have an education savings programme in place, however minimal.

personally - i've eventually paid off my student loan lol (not because i earn enough - i earn a pittance, not enough to pay tax lol, but i found ethically i was unable to pull that card) and have done virtually nothing with my degree. i have self funded two masters because i believe in education for and of itself. i'm still paying the loans for those.

if we go back to the uk, the savings programmes are portable for the dcs - as long as the institution is approved by the govt here.

if the people who can afford to pay, do, there will be more bursary/ scholarship stuff made available for those who genuinely can't. it's just going to be a bit uncomfortable over the next 5/ 10 years whilst people realise they do have to plan in advance for their dc's education (like 10/15 years in advance). there does need to be some phasing in to remediate, but longer term i think the uk will move to this sort of model.

i'm not awake enough to make any specific comment re grad/ non grad jobs, but i'm pondering.

Thank you Jackstarbright,

So it would need to be adjusted to take out the older graduates who might, perhaps, be able to command a higher incremental difference. It would be really interesting to see what the 'graduate premium' is for the '25%' graduate generation. I guess you would have to limit your sample to people graduating from a first degree after - actually I'm a bit hazy on this - 1998??

Its a bit of a rough figure - as you say.

Madwoman,

I think funding systems were changing but it was, previously, being phased in, essentially what all this is about is the withdrawing of that phasing in so very suddenly.

It is impossible to plan if you do not have the information in good time. The problem is that because of this some young people must now miss out on an education that they were suited to and could have afforded with just a little more help.

Personally I think education should be funded because a well educated population can create a richer society - whether or not the graduates 'make money'. I've spent a lot of time at home and been involved in a voluntary work where I have used my skills - no one paid me but I still made a contribution to society.

WilfShelf - very interesting, thank you. I've no doubt you're right. But I'm not following how you make the jump from increased pressure on lecturers to teach to a centralised curriculum? Please could you explain in a bit more detail?

Hi snowball... I think that students will demand more hours for their increased money. But in reality very little additional money (in fact a net cut in many subjects) will be coming into the system. So there will be LESS money than currently (because the govt are taking away their central subsidy currently provided) yet the 'consumers' will require MORE for that money.

Lecturers are contracted to teach, to research and to write their own courses, do their own preparation, decide what the curriculum is. Given the inevitable pressure to do more for less, I think we can interpret Willetts' and Cable's mumblings as meaning centralised examinations based on curricula written by certain bodies (like the examination board system for A levels). This will possibly be certain universities, possibly independent bodies.

It is the only possible 'cost saving' I can see that is possible because unless they want all lecturers to stop doing research (which is also a possibility) there is nothing else to give. So students may end up with more contact hours, but they will be contact hours of material delivered on the FE model, not the current HE model. The good research active lecturers will therefore either be sucked up by elite institutions, leave the country or lose heart and become drones, uninterested in developing their material.

I think the university system is likely to be irreparably damaged by this.

I assume there will be a huge brain drain - both of students choosing to study abroad, where it's cheaper, and of academics preferring to work abroad where there aren't a load of peeved 18 year olds demanding value-for-money.

As I've said before, my Oxford history degree consisted of maximum 1.5 hours a week of contact time with a tutor (often shared with another student). So a maximum of 36 hours tuition a year, or about £250/hour.

Was that contact time 'worth' £250? No way.

I also had v long reading lists and access to a library. No lectures remotely relevant, no pastoral support whatsoever.

If I'd paid 9K a year for it, I'd certainly expect a lot more than that.

And that's from Oxbridge!

I remember a friend at Birmingham telling me she was doing 2 essays a term!!

'I assume there will be a huge brain drain - both of students choosing to study abroad, where it's cheaper, and of academics preferring to work abroad where there aren't a load of peeved 18 year olds demanding value-for-money.'

And where are they going to go if they only speak English? I can assure you, university education as an international student in N. America is more expensive, even at state universities.

And you pay up front, at the point of service.

Strangely, no one is peeved by this and plenty of people still go.

Maybe Australia and NZ offer free university education to foreigners?