Just watched the lunchtime coverage of the student protests – is it just me, or does anyone else find hyped-up ‘we’re all gonna die’ TV coverage quite amusing? Anyone recall the ‘Brass-Eye’ series?

(looks like the Journo’s are gonna have to bung some radicals a few quid to get some ‘proper action’ later)

Listening to some of the students claim that it’s their right to go to university makes me giggle, unless things have changed it was a privilege to go and you had to work hard to get there.

good on the students

I think anyone who is unhappy about the fees/university funding and the other cuts to, just off the top of my head, coastal defences, child benefit, child trust funds, NHS, school sports, childrens centres and also lending to the irish while letting vodaphone off with the tax bill and selling off FC land, should join them.

Listening to some of the students claim that it’s their right to go to university makes me giggle, unless things have changed it was a privilege to go and you had to work hard to get there.

I suppose it depends on how you define “right”. I certainly see free Tertiary eductaion as a right, just not a universal one but one that must be earned.

You’re right Joxster it is no ones right to go to uni, but it is their right to have the choice. The gov fee’s system will only serve to remove that choice unless you have rich parents. As one of the protesters placards says ‘Rich parents for all!’
My only concern is that in terms of recent history students are an apathetic bunch so if they’re riled, who’s next? Also don’t forget these are people who are at Uni already and so presumably won’t pay the increased fees (or at least not three years of them) so they are protesting for all the sixth formers now who have worked hard but won’t be able to go as they don’t have a trust fund from Mater and Pater.

Even though I think their reasons are wierd and somewhat dank I do like the idea that students nowadays are finding their voice again, actually becoming involved/active.

+1 for hora
School kids too which is good.

They should all be in lessons/lectures getting VFM not poncing about on top of police vans.

Even though I think their reasons are wierd and somewhat dank I do like the idea that students nowadays are finding their voice again, actually becoming involved/active.

Right on!

I’m not gonna defend or attack the students for protesting, as it and the whole cuts thing is a pile of poo. It’s the sensationalist media coverage that I find laughable – some of the TV presenters really should be shown ‘Brass-Eye’. Mind you, maybe they have seen it, and their whole presentation is a parody….hmmm

Oh, btw, good point made by Papa Lazarou – most of the Govt’s cuts wouldn’t be required if they closed all the existing tax loop-holes. Ahhhh, but that’d involve squeezing the Tory party funders & supporters, like Lord Ashcroft etc. So, though the Govt say ‘we’re all in this together’, as usual the general low-middle income part of the population is in it a whole lot more.

If they put the same amount of effort into their studies we wouldn’t be in this mess! 😉

But the extra fees are only for the crappy courses (so far anyway), if they don’t want to pay the fees they don’t have to, but they will have to earn a place onto a course that will prove an intellectual challenge.

Brass Eye was AWESOME, remeber them firing a paedo into space but accidentally leaving a 12 year old boy in the spaceship?

Sick of apathy in our society. I do feel the few spoilt it and scared off the masses with Police overbearing on protests/marches.

Police/Politicians after all are here to serve, then protect. Not contain and dictate to.

Joxster. No one is suggesting that you shouldn’t have to work hard. But the Govt plans mean that in future being able to work hard won’t be enough. You’ll need a well off mum and dad as well. My mums a hairdresser and my dad is a shift supervisor they struggle to help me already.

I might be being ignorant and/or stupid here but surely the rate of unemployment is going to soar if the fees rise, at least in the first year that they come in where we’ll have the same number as usual graduating from uni and a lower number going in?

They should all be in lessons/lectures getting VFM not poncing about on top of police vans.

How true! Let me guess; they should also doff caps to the landed gentry in Westminster and say ‘thank you Guvnor!’ in a Oliver Twist style mockney accent.

The Lib Dems broke an election promise and need to be acountable for that irrespective of whether fees are right or wrong most of the people protesting now will not be affected by the fees. Good on them for actually standing up and being counted.

No UK student has to pay their fees up front – instead, the university is paid directly from the public purse, and the student pays the loan back after graduation.

Im at a loss as to why effectively a graduate tax is upsetting the smelly people so much?

You dont NEED rich parents to go to university.

You dont even NEED a soul-selling high-paying job on graduation to fund it either, as the marginal cost of the loan repayment is zero or low initially.

The alternative would be to get a job, god forbid having to start working at 18, when they could doss around for another 4 years free loading off the tax payer 😉

just watching the live coverage on the bbc website – is it just me or are 75% of the people there journalists/photographers/camera crews? Seems like about 25 people causing a ruckus.

I had to laugh this morning when I listened to a NUS member talking about how the government was trying to push science and business degrees at the expense of arts and humanities…

Yes, there’s a serious thing to take away from that, but the only thing that will get the country back on track in this “knowledge based economy” that people talk of, is something knowledge-y. Like science.

Having attended university before whacking great student loan increases were introduced, I feel sorry for kids today.

Not everybody leaves university & works for BarCap – & regardless of the mechanics of paying ’em off, the simple prospect of that debt hanging over you is pretty daunting.

Yeah where does the BS argument you need rich parents now to go to Uni come from? You just get a little bit shafted later in life if you get a decent paying job, hardly something to be throwing fire extinguishers at police about.

willard, perhaps like maths degrees? Like y’know all those maths graduates (quants) that started working for banks…

But the extra fees are only for the crappy courses (so far anyway), if they don’t want to pay the fees they don’t have to, but they will have to earn a place onto a course that will prove an intellectual challenge.

I think you’ll find that *all* students will end up being charged a flat fee by universities. At the moment it’s proposed that the Science, Technology, Education and Medicine courses will retain funding. However 3 of those areas are very expensive to run, and it’s considered likely that the government will changing the expense band of these courses to a lower one, meaning the extra expense may come from have a flat fee across all courses.
We shall see.

Have to agree – this rich parents only thing is total bollox and a real red herring. I wonder how many folks have actually bothered to find out how this will be working?

Look at it the other way around – £9K tuition fees + £3-4K cost of living per annum is waaaay above what all but a tiny, tiny minority of parents could cough up for their kids (and if they do there is an extra levvy for early payment). 99% of this will be met by the student themselves in later life and even then if they have a job that pays only an average income (teacher or lower) they will never pay it off in their working lifetime. Only solicitors, GPs and the like will end up paying it all back and I don’t think many of us would feel sorry for them being hard up. Your background and parent’s income has zero effect on your ability to pay this back out of your post graduation salary.

The real question is – should any students pay tuition fees? The only people who can answer that is the electorate – would they vote in a higher tax pledging government?

I thought that the starting salary of teachers was actually higher than the repayment bracket these days?

The main pay scale post qualification for England & Wales starts at £21,588.

The proposed loan repayment threshold is £21,000.
The repaymnent rate will be at 9% above that threshold.

Which means qualifed teachers will have to pay 9% x (£21,588 – £21,000) / 12 = £4.41 pm

those poor, poor bastards 🙁 Oh the humanity!

It is a mishmash of a policy, as Stoner suggested it is a graduate tax grafted onto a fee scheme. Its complication means that the Libdems are unable to get the message across that less people will be paying fees than before so they are being accused of hypocrisy. I fear that its complication will make it expensive to administer as well. Probably the first area where the compromise required to get a policy agreed within the coalition produces worse policy rather than better.

I have three modest student loans… without question the easiest credit I’ve ever had (esp since they paid for three years drinking at various splendid Oxon pubs). My plan is earn ****-all until they get cancelled (aged 65, iirc) – and then my real career will begin! 8)

real career will begin

lemon party gummy blow job gigolo?

The new funding arrangements are just a very long winded and bureaucratic way of setting a graduate tax. The government clearly doesn’t want anyone to pay upfront, even if they are rich enough, and will be adding penalty charges for those who can pay it off early, to ensure it acts as a tax. They just couldn’t get round the legalities of calling it a tax, as taxes are meant to be universal, and money raised can’t be ringfenced. The one thing I haven’t worked out yet, but haven’t delved too deep, is by how much the university will gain from the new way. I suspect most will never do the sums though and just see the £9000 figure.

midlife:
http://www.bis.gov.uk/news/topstories/2010/Nov/student-finance

Graduate contribution
Any university or college will be able to charge a graduate contribution of up to £6,000.
In exceptional cases, universities will be able to charge higher contributions, up to a limit of £9,000, subject to meeting much tougher conditions on widening participation and fair access. It will be up to the university or college to decide what it charges, including whether it charges at different levels for different courses.
Any university or college will be able to charge below £6,000. Universities and colleges wanting to charge above £6,000 a year will have to show how they will spend some of the additional income making progress in widening participation and fair access. The Office for Fair Access will be able to apply sanctions in cases where universities do not deliver on the commitments in their access agreements, up to and including withdrawing the right of the university to charge more than £6,000

I prefer the mechanism that has uncapped fee levels but a tapered recovery after a threshold.

i.e. say cambridge charge £15,000 for a particularly attractive course, but the threshold is £9,000, they then get to keep only half of the increment (£3,000, making net income of £12,000), the other half is sent to BIS for redistributing.

lemon party gummy blow job gigolo?

Ah, the Tab old boy network… nope, not eligible.

you’d be staff, not a member you know 😉

The main pay scale post qualification for England & Wales starts at £21,588.

The proposed loan repayment threshold is £21,000.
The repaymnent rate will be at 9% above that threshold.

Which means qualifed teachers will have to pay 9% x (£21,588 – £21,000) / 12 = £4.41 pm

those poor, poor bastards Oh the humanity!

I take the point but if your calculations are right, the average student would pay back just over £52 / year. So to pay £27,000 (fees only no living costs) completely takes all of 509 years. So either your maths (or mine for that matter) is wrong and there’s a piece of the puzzle missing.

Also is the £21,000 salary figure the mean or median?

Fight the system fight back.

I take the point but if your calculations are right, the average student would pay back just over £52 / year. So to pay £27,000 (fees only no living costs) completely takes all of 509 years. So either your maths (or mine for that matter) is wrong and there’s a piece of the puzzle missing.

nope maths not wrong. That is actually the one of the main principals of the scheme: that a significant proportion of borrowers NEVER repay their loan.

After 30 years any outstanding balance is written off (as it is now).

Theyre also consulting on a penalty regime for accelerated repayments which otherwise cost the loan scheme the incremental real interest rate that they would recover if the borower were to repay over 29yrs and 364 days..

Also that £21k is the starting rate for a qualified teacher. Its just illustrative.

Its very hard to determine an “average” repayment profile as in each year it depends on your salary and people can have very volatile salaries both up and down over a career. It also effects your interest rate too.