Not exactly a bad thing, the way I see it. That is exactly how it should work. The reality of tuition fees should make students think long and hard about whether they really want to go to university, and whether their chosen course of study is worthwhile in the long term.
January 18th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
How can you say that?
All that tuition fees mean in reality is that children from POOR families have to think really hard before going whilst the children of RICH families will continue to go whether they are serious/clever enough or not.
How many poor potential scientists and great thinkers do you think we will lose out on?
How many poor families will miss out on the opportunity to educate themselves out of poverty (thus reducing the taz burden on the rich)
Pity the quality of our future generation’s contribution to society in the long run.
But hey, the well off still get the privilage of an education so its okay.
The craziest thing about student funding is that it was voted out by a bunch of middle aged MP’s who all lived in the days of student grants for all. Its a shame they didn’t consider their less well paid peers’ children worthy of the same support.
January 18th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
Sorry, hit return before entering my details…
The above comment is mine.
January 18th, 2007 at 5:56 pm
Hello puddlejumper,
in countries vastly poorer than our own, poor people have made it to university, borrowed money, worked through the holidays and graduated with good results. These are countries where people appreciate the value of education, something that is lacking in this country.
Higher education is not a right. If something is worth having, perhaps a few sacrifices are not a bad thing.
The Daily Mail yesterday reported that we are incurring debt of about a million pounds every four minutes. A large proportion of that is consumer debt. We are obviously not afraid of debt, only strangely, when it comes to borrowing to fund our education.
What I would like to see, though, is a bursary system for bright students who would benefit from a university education, but who would otherwise be unable to pay for it. That could be organised through grants from the Government and universities.
Other than that, Government funding of universities should stop, and the universities should be allowed to charge the fees that they feel the market can bear.
January 18th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
I would agree about having better bursary or grant system. But University’s at the moment already have an admissions procedure which is intended to ensure only those bright enough to benefit can enter.
Are you really saying you don’t think that procedure is working? If that is the case then perhaps we need to tighten up the admissions procedure. Not take away funding for education.
We already have a system in this country whereby education at school level is free for everyone.
My biggest worry about the big reduction in student funding is that this trickles down…how long before the government then decides that all post 16 eduction be paid for upfront, and then maybe secondary education?
I’m not saying it should be “free” because it isn’t at present. It’s paid out of peoples taxes.
Surely there are better ways of making these tax cuts.
Asking young people to start out in life with £18k debt minimum before they even get their first proper job is just fueling the problem of debt in this country.
Most students would be declared bankrupt if they ran up 18k on a credit card in three years yet we are expecting them to do that in order to get the same education their parents got for “free”?
As it is most students work through the holidays and whilst at university as it is. £3k per year being not exactly adequate to live on. Unlike people on the dole (at a rate of just under £3k/year living expenses) students don’t get any help paying rent.
So even on a modest room-sharing rent of £50 per week, £3k per year does not go far if you are to include buying books and oh…maybe luxuries like food.
Not everyone’s parents are in a position to help out.
I speak as a mother of three, two of whom hope to go to university in the next couple of years. We live in Scotland where thankfully there is slightly more help but even still they are worried sick about how they will manage, and are terrified of having to incur anywhere near that amount of debt.
January 18th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
In other countries in the world, people incur debt to go to university. Many regard it as a worthwhile ‘investment’.
Your suggestion about keeping funding in place, but tightening the admission procedure is similar to the Tories’ stance when top-up fees were debated in Parliament a few years ago. That didn’t get many takers then.
You are right, funding higher education is a big concern, but perhaps many would submit, not really the concern of the State. At least not to the extent of funding university tuition for one and all.
Bursaries would be a good idea.
January 18th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
I’m not going to argue that more people should go to uni, but just pricing people out of education is not the way to do it. The aim of 50% to go to uni is ridiculous. But it should be ability, and not finances, that decide whether or not someone does go.
Especially since there are now reports of vice-chancellors wanting to raise tuition fees to £6,000 or even £10,000 per year. I have written a post on this.
January 18th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Hi TD :), I’ll go check out your post.
I agree that pricing people out of the market is no way to do it. But universities simply cannot survive on the money the Government allows them.
January 18th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
grrrrrrrrrrrrr this is one of my most favored topics to rant about. In fact have posted most vociferously on this in the past. I am sorry but I suspect another aspect of the lowering in university applications is the fact that so many of our youth have decided why bother working hard and getting an education when financial rewards are much easier gained by playing football, taking your top off for the newspapers, entering the Big Brother house or generally playing the fool. It would be nice to know that some of the people who have changed their minds about going to University have decided to take up a trade. Finding a plumber for less than £100 an hour is an impossibility in my neck of the woods so I would say better you learn a trade and read the philosophers at night than assume that university is going to be your golden future. The government can be blamed for many things but our current lack of interest in education is down to many more things than just top up fees.
January 18th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
I was lucky enough to go to university just before tuition fees were brought in.
I think the real problem is the vast expansion of higher education in past decades- partly as a response to unemployment. You can fund 8% of the population going to university. 30% is a different matter.
Furthermore- at the risk of sounding intellectually snobbish- with every ex-Further education College acquiring ‘university’ status, the degrees of those of us who went to traditional univerisities are being devalued.
It is worth funding Arts and Science degrees. We need to bring up the Stephen Hawkings, David Starkeys and Richard Dawkins’s of the future.
Celebrity studies at South Bank University? Not so sure.
January 18th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
Encumbering young people with large debts for education is a very large hurdle early in their productive years. I did my first degree in Sociology in the UK at Stirling and managed to leave almost debt free other than my overdraft. My second degree was in the US, where I used the Community College System to start a more marketable degree in Engineering. Most of it I paid myself. I finished the degree at a State University. Total debt at the end $4,000. The thought of having multiple thousands of debt at that stage of my career would be scary. Here in Australia, although some student debt is getting alarming, it is paid back in a graduated way, depending on your income. It is just deducted from your pay packet. Perhaps the UK could benefit from a two tier system with some parts of a course provided in a cheaper setting.
January 19th, 2007 at 1:42 pm
Increasing fees would help save science departments, and deter students from studying useless subjects. The fact that Chemistry and Physics departments are closing for lack of money, at the same time as spending on universities is at record levels, shows that we have totally screwed up.
January 19th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
I had $40,000 dollars of debt when I finished my US degree at 22. Paid it off by 25 and bought a flat at 26.
Being in debt does concentrate the mind somewhat in terms of working hard to get and keep a well paid job.
If you don’t think that you degree is going to help you get a decent job on a wage good enough to pay back fairly paltry sums (i.e. 10k, that is less than the average price of a car) then don’t do it.
Or maybe, get a degree in a subject that pays well at the end.
I totally diagree with puddlejumper. This is a great way to let the market influence what people study by putting a price (albeit arbitrary) on what they get. I am hopeful it will signal the end of people doing kite flying and media studies.
This can be no bad thing for the country as a whole, which desperately needs properly skilled people to compete in the global economy.
January 19th, 2007 at 6:08 pm
It should depend, not on money but on merit - in other words, a marks quota.
January 19th, 2007 at 10:36 pm
CityUnslicker: Being in debt does concentrate the mind somewhat in terms of working hard to get and keep a well paid job. Serf talked about useless subjects.
As CU already knows, I think there ought to be a lot more to education than simply considering what job it might get you. Particularly once we start talking about higher education. And if the private sector needs some skills over others, then it damn well ought to stump up the training costs itself, not impose them on the hapless individual. Not to mention having the decency to offer a permanent contract with decent terms and conditions as opposed to fixed-term or temporary contracts, or, worse, hiring freelancers…
January 20th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Bel and I happen to be in the same line of work. And I agree with everything that she has written above.I would also concur with cityunslicker.
It’s worth noting that financially disadvantaged students should not be unduly deterred or penalised by the tuition fee system.Most of the money that English universities get for teaching comes through a block grant distributed by the Higher Education Funding Council for England. Universities have to recycle more than a quarter of that grant into bursaries for hard-up students and to recruit more people from families without a history of higher education.Interestingly, a lot of these burasries are not actually being claimed. At Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge,for instance, only 55 per cent of the £300 bursaries available to poorer students have been taken up.Make of that what you will…
January 20th, 2007 at 4:27 pm
1) “voted out by a bunch of middle aged MP’s”. Lets be precise: the MPs were Labour MPs who had made a manifesto promise not to scrap grants and then went back on their word.
2) Science departments are not closing only because the government funding system ensures that they don’t get enough money per student to cover their costs. They are also in trouble because the teaching of physics and maths in state schools is dwindling. More and more, students of science and engineering (and also languages) come from the private schools.
January 20th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
only 55 per cent of the £300 bursaries available to poorer students have been taken up.Make of that what you will…
I make that 10% of the annual tuition fees alone… If you’re struggling to afford the expenses involved in doing a degree, £300 is hardly going to swing the balance, is it? Maybe fewer but larger bursaries are the way forward?
January 20th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Another problem, that no doubt faces Ian and others here face, is the difficulty of working on advanced degrees and to then teach in University’s in the UK.
The issue being that the pay in the UK is so poor, especially compared to the US and Europe. Hence are universitys’ have poorer quality academics and are less respected than they should be. They also teach to a lower standard than would be ideal.
If Fees were allowed to increase/decrase, with low interest loans gauranteed, as in a market there would be a huge change. Uni’s would raise more money, be able to pay their staff better and therefore encourage teaching and tutoring as a super career choice.
The artifical system we have at the moment unfairly holds down the wages of professors and other teachers. No one benefits from this at all except the governemtn who can claim more people are taught.
The system has illogical and would benefit from market led reform.
January 23rd, 2007 at 6:26 pm
My degree was completely useless from the point of view of being ‘useful’ in some utilitarian interpretation of higher education.
Best years of my life, though.
I recommend it to anyone, as long as they don’t see it as about just a bit of paper at the end.
I did get my degree, but it’s not as much as you think. What matters more is the life changing experiences you can go through in those three years, if you use them right.