I think the fee structure should be influenced by what the country actually needs from its graduates…..

If you want to do some namby pamby degree in Media studies for instance then you should pay full whack for it.

If there is a shortage of decent engineers / scientists / whatever then relax the fees but set entry requirements for those courses.

But I do agree, there needs to be a viable alternative for practical/ skills based training rather than academic further education for those that would be better suited.

FWIW I have done both, time served on the tools and then back to university in ’98 as a mature student. (Self funded)
I took the full loan amount each year, and I have just finished paying it off
I worked it out once, to get my degree cost me £22k in actual cash, but factoring in loss of earnings over 3 years the total figure is closer to £60K

I consider it a valid investment in my future earnings potential, and I came straight out of University and into a job paying 2x/hour more than I had earned previously.
Not really been out of work for long since.

DIY degrees over the internet will be the norm very, very soon.

Or The Open University as it used to be known

Makes me sad that the country has hung students out to dry with 27k of tuition fees thinks everyone must go to Uni

Selection by economics is hardly a fair or indeed good way of selecting talent though is it?

Both my sisters, who went to uni under this scheme, don’t earn enough to cover the interest payments.

Seriously? Isn’t the interest 0.5% or something!?

I can’t wait to pay mine off (in about 18 months I hope, having graduated 5 years ago), it’s a big chunk of my pay check.

Didn’t really know the new system had far smaller payments, seems to rather undermine the huge fees in the first place if most folk won’t pay it back.

If degrees/ the Uni experience are little more than pieces of paper/”something to do”, then why should (slight simplification coming here) 100% of taxpayers fund <50% of the populations choice to engage in such a bizarre choice?

If the LLB example earlier is correct, isn’t this the educational equivalent of the CAP…subsidising something for which there is no end demand. How is that rational?

But lets be more optimistic and agree that degrees and the Uni experience are valuable in terms of specific education and in “growing up.” There must be some value on this? By allowing people to (partly) price this experience, proper choices can start tone made instead of the opaque nonsense that categorises a lot of higher education.

Try Maastricht Uni at <2k if 9k is too much. Experience Eu culture. Much better investment than a football season ticket and a SKY sub.

Will there be an elite systems – for sure. How can it be correct to value Oxford the same as the University of Central Metrolpolis? Unis will now have to prove that the experience is worth the money. If not why should private or public funds be used to support them?

Unis still cheaper than private secondary education in the parts of the UK!!!!

Is everyone here aware that the government is privatising student debt?

They’re selling the entire student loan stock from 1998 onwards. In order to make this more attractive to potential buyers* they’re allowing the loan terms to be changed retrospectively. Which means a private company** will be able to set its own interest rates regardless of what was written on the legally binding contracts signed 15 years ago.

So all this “people never pay off their student loans anyway” business will be a thing of the past when private debt collection firms*** start sending bailiffs out to collect the assets of those now finding themselves in ever increasing debts they never signed up to.

Yes, those contracts signed all those years ago? Worthless. The government has already retrospectively changed one law it was found guilty by the courts of breaking. And with its removal of legal aid for judicial review amongst others so the legal system can be gifted to lowest common denominator providers**** to operate at every level purely for profit, the only people that would be able to afford to challenge decisions like this in the future will be those born rich enough to never feel the need to.

So if you’ve been angered by this nation’s approach to higher education over the last decade or so, you’ll be glad to learn that a fitting punishment is finally being dished out to those who most deserve it.

As glad as others you’ve never met will no doubt be when misplaced public resentment at perfectly socially acceptable decisions you once made are used as an excuse for a government of inherited wealth millionaires to sell off public property to their friends***** and donors****** in big business.

*eg. Serco, G4S
**eg. Serco, G4S
***eg. Serco, G4S
****eg. Serco, G4S
*****eg. Serco, G4S
******eg. Serco, G4S

njee20 – Member

Didn’t really know the new system had far smaller payments, seems to rather undermine the huge fees in the first place if most folk won’t pay it back.

that’s sort of the idea.

most people: the new system is cheaper (yay!)

rich people: pay more (sounds fair?)

Did my degree way back in 83-86, all state funded and topped up by me working part time. Undergrad intake was around 8% and graduate jobs were well paid.

We seem to have eroded this from both ends, more students, no grants, most graduate jobs paid the same as they were back then.

MrsCat has just done a degree course in 1 year, funded by her NHS Trust, 90% DIY at home and online. If I am honest I would estimate my degree could have been achieved in 2 years and only because it was fieldwork based in the middle summer.

Agree with Binners on the privatisation route, seems like we have been heading that way for a longtime. Education for those ‘who have’ rather than those ‘who can’. I worry for my boys.

I’m off to Bangor in September, go me!!

@jackthedog – any links for more info?

Anyway…. A truism on results day

😀

If there is a shortage of decent engineers / scientists / whatever then relax the fees but set entry requirements for those courses.

I think that adjusting the fee based on ‘industry need’ is a mistake. One of the great things about the UK is it’s creative talent. China can churn out engineers by the thousands, whoopy do for them, the place still sucks. I’d rather live in a country with more artists than engineers even if it had less money. The last thing we want is talented young people going into engineering because they can’t afford to be creative; or the arts being the preserve of wealthy idiots. Yes I know this means alot of dullards doing ‘meeeja studies’ and the like, but even in all of them if there is just one with a spark of something that makes the world a better place, it’s worth it.

Idealistic? me?

I graduated 2 years ago and “owe” 21k.

Last year I paid back £500.

I had interest of £300.

I still owe 21k.

Which means a private company** will be able to set its own interest rates regardless of what was written on the legally binding contracts singed 15 years ago

Really? I’d be surprised if all these ex-students are suddenly stung for hundreds of pounds a month that that they weren’t expecting. Not only would it be extremely morally dubious but it’d be political suicide.

seems to rather undermine the huge fees in the first place if most folk won’t pay it back.

It’s because it’s a graduate tax, effectively. And a progressive one at that. I wish people wouldn’t get into such a flap about debt.

I’d rather live in a country with more artists than engineers even if it had less money

Wtf? Should I have given up science and taken up art, would that have made you happy?

I’d rather live in a country where those who want to be engineers can be, and those who want to be artists can also be.

Got my results this morning, so looking forward to my shed load over the next 4 years.

I’m completely happy with it though, I don’t see why others should pay for my education. At the end of the day, I’m going to Uni to qualify myself so I can earn more money. It makes sense I pay to do that.

I also hate the idea of person X paying taxes so that person Y can go spend 4 years getting a useless degree like media studies, when they could be getting a job and contributing to the economy.

At the end of the day, if the opportunity cost of going to University is higher, people will be more likely to chose a worthwhile degree, or get a job / apprenticeship if they don’t quite cut the mustard.

Reasonably right-wing I know, but I think it is fair.

On student loan privatisation:

One

Two

Three

Four

On retrospective changing of the law around workfare:

Caitlin Reilly & Jamieson Wilson v Secretary of State for Work & Pensions

On removal of legal aid for judicial review:

In our justice system, judicial review is the means by which the courts restrain public bodies when they act unlawfully. Access to judicial review is therefore essential to the rule of law.

Have to say I don’t see the point in getting a degree unless you’re entering a profession which requires that specific qualification eg Engineer, Doctor, Architect, etc.

Way OT! But big congratulations Sambob! well done, hope you have a great time at Uni mate. I’ve emigrated to the UAE I’m afraid!

I’d rather live in a country with more artists than engineers even if it had less money

You really wouldn’t you know. You might think that you would but trust me, you wouldn’t.

The last thing we want is talented young people not going into engineering because they don’t think that can’t afford to they can be be artistic and creative

I may be on my own on this 🙂

Yep, well done Sambob have a great time.

@jackthedog – thanks.

I think that adjusting the fee based on ‘industry need’ is a mistake. One of the great things about the UK is it’s creative talent. China can churn out engineers by the thousands, whoopy do for them, the place still sucks. I’d rather live in a country with more artists than engineers even if it had less money. The last thing we want is talented young people going into engineering because they can’t afford to be creative; or the arts being the preserve of wealthy idiots. Yes I know this means alot of dullards doing ‘meeeja studies’ and the like, but even in all of them if there is just one with a spark of something that makes the world a better place, it’s worth it.

Maybe we get off on different things, or maybe I’m just insulted as I’m an engineer. But an ‘artist’ spears some poo on a tent and relieves some Arab/Chinese person of several million, the rest of the world is interested for 5 minutes then just remembers it as an anecdote of how pointless the art industry is. An engineer (or more likely several hundred, or thousand well paid UK engineers in the UK) designs a bridge/refinery/building, creates thousands of construction jobs in the UK building it, a load maintaining it, makes life better for everyone who passes over it, fills their car with petrol, buys a plastic bag, or just works in it, and that expertise is sold all over the world.

If you want to change the world, be an Engineer.

Really? I’d be surprised if all these ex-students are suddenly stung for hundreds of pounds a month that that they weren’t expecting. Not only would it be extremely morally dubious but it’d be political suicide.

Morally dubious behavior by politicians? No… you’re right. That really would be a first

You are open to the possibility that this government, despite the labour parties best efforts, knew full-well they’d be a one term government, hence the fixed term parliament, and are setting about doing as much irreversible damage as possible before they’re booted out

Most of which revolves around handing the assets of the state over to their friends (the aforementioned G4S and Serco, Capita, Virgin Medical and other similar parasites) at fire-sale prices, before, purely co-incidentally, popping up as non-exec directors or consultants for said companies, on eye-wateringly huge salaries

Have you noted who Blair, and all the former nu labour ministers are working for nowadays?

Wtf? Should I have given up science and taken up art, would that have made you happy?

No that would make me sad. You should be able to take whatever education based on what best matches your talents, not on ability to pay.

I’d rather live in a country where those who want to be engineers can be, and those who want to be artists can also be

Yes I want that too

Really? I’d be surprised if all these ex-students are suddenly stung for hundreds of pounds a month that that they weren’t expecting. Not only would it be extremely morally dubious but it’d be political suicide.

I’ll have to end after this as we’re in a thread about student loans, but as Binners quite rightly says, this government never intended any other strategy beyond actively committing political suicide, and has already quite openly performed morally despicable acts knowing this full well.

It’s pure, blatant smash and grab tactics. Get in (with a minority vote, no less) while the country is reeling from global financial collapse and two decades of bad leadership, lock yourself in for the maximum possible term, give as much public property to the private companies where you’ve got directorships waiting, then get voted out with a smile on your face, knowing you’ve crashed the state into a wall, thus leaving the entire system so smashed that any future administration is rendered too impotent to challenge you in your new position in the businesses you helped to create by gifting them any and every valuable public asset you had the keys to.

Along the way you’ve been able to use the growing unrest and resentment among an otherwise largely apathetic public to turn the population on itself rather than focusing attention on their leaders, using this to fool the public into supporting measure after measure that, when looked at free from petty prejudice, all too frequently looks effectively like nothing but social cleansing.

And who do we have to resist this? Labour? Hell no. Even if they were anything other than a tragically ineffectual shambles long alienated from their own voter base, they’re just as bought and paid for as everyone else.

OK you engineers, keep your shirts on. I am an engineer. I personally could not imagine doing anything other than what I do because I am rather good at it. I’m not really saying that art is more important that engineering, or vice verse. I just think that it is a dangerous path to go down to say that the arts have less value. I don’t think the fee structure should be set with that in mind.

Take the telecoms industry in which I work. There are thousands of engineers making ingenious things that you lot will never ever know about. But all your devices would never work without them. However let’s face it, the device that really kick started mobile data and made it something people wanted was designed by a brit who did an art and design course at a poly.

Sure for every Ive idea there are a load of engineers behind it, the point is you need both.

My mum’s god daughter is at uni in Holland, with fees around £2-3k.

Younger sister (half), who has dual Danish/British nationality, went to uni in Copenhagen for free.

I don’t know where they get their £25k average graduate salary from. I wasn’t earning that until I’d been out of uni for about 8 years. My partner still doesn’t earn that. Graduate schemes, outside of London, tend to pay around £18-20k. Looked at a few with my sister, I don’t think we saw any outside London for any more than that, and other “entry level” jobs were paying much less. After graduating, I didn’t even earn the £15k a year required for the repayments to kick in. My first “proper job” that wasn’t temping or call centre work paid £17.5k and that was 4 years after leaving university. By which time, they’d put the interest up on student loans from back then to 3.5% so I’d been accruing interest but not paying the loan off. Around half the repayments I make every year go on interest.

I’m sure that salaries have gone up a little since then, but judging by the job boards, not that much, certainly not when you account for inflation. Because of having such high unemployment, a lot of today’s graduates will end up on the dole, because employers simply don’t seem to want them with no work experience. There seems to be a vast disparity between what universities provide and employers want. The courses with a year in industry seem to be trying to address that, and those graduates are more likely to get a job after graduation than those who don’t do a year in industry, but still, the outlook is pretty bleak for today’s graduates. Not sure I’d have gone to uni in today’s climate.

Back when I was at uni, it was treated as something of a middle class doss – most of us didn’t work that hard, and we didn’t even think about what we wanted to do afterwards, we spent most of the time in the pub. I don’t think the students of today can afford to do that, given how competitive it is out there now – to stand a chance in the job market they really have to stand out from the crowd and demonstrate that they not only have the paper, but the work ethic, attitude and ability to cope in the workplace, and sitting in the pub for 3 years isn’t going to cut it.

Sure for every Ive idea there are a load of engineers behind it, the point is you need both.

The only person implying otherwise was you.

The point on fees that is sometimes made is that as vocational degrees are generally result in better remunerated jobs that government funding should’t be targeted here but rather at the non-vocational degrees. This to me is utterly illogical. Either you see higher education as a “good thing” and therefore all degrees should be treated in the same way or you see it purely in economic terms in which case the government funding should go to vocational degrees as they provide the best return for the taxpayer.

I just think that it is a dangerous path to go down to say that the arts have less value.

I think people were attaching financial value to certain types of degree (both to the individual and society). In that case, it can be said that many arts degrees are of less financial value than engineering degrees, particularly so when both degrees cost the same.

In saying that, I would have thought that a BA in Jurisprudence was one of the best investments a student could possibly make! There can’t be many degrees which rival that for £in v £out.

Not all arts degrees were created equal 🙂

University is a business. Students are a cash cow. Overseas students pay even more.

Back when I was at uni, it was treated as something of a middle class doss – most of us didn’t work that hard, and we didn’t even think about what we wanted to do afterwards, we spent most of the time in the pub. I don’t think the students of today can afford to do that, given how competitive it is out there now – to stand a chance in the job market they really have to stand out from the crowd and demonstrate that they not only have the paper, but the work ethic, attitude and ability to cope in the workplace, and sitting in the pub for 3 years isn’t going to cut it.

That raises an interesting point. I went to Uni in pre-fees days. I had student loans, and a job at the weekends and in the holidays

As we weren’t paying fees, and thus a financial burden on the taxpayer to a certain degree, dossing about wasn’t really tolerated. We were timetabled (namby-pamby, poncey arty degree) for 30+ hours a week in the studio. And if you didn’t show up for those hours, you were booted off the course. It was as simple as that. You got one warning, then you were out!

I’m just wondering if that would still be the case if you’re now a revenue stream generating £27,000 over 3 years, while spending your time not requiring any actual teaching or resources, as you’re sat in the pub?

Morally dubious behavior by politicians? No… you’re right. That really would be a first

Obviously not. But screwing over a huge section of the middle classes – seems fairly unlikely. Working classes, yes, but not the middle.

Molly, have you seriously not noticed how much less this lot care about the previously revered middle classes? And their previously sacrosanct interests? And done things even Maggie would balk at?

Class doesn’t come into it with this shower. Well… below their own top tier, obviously! They genuinely don’t give a **** about anyone. They take the middle class (southern) vote for granted, in the same way as the Labour party is openly contemptuous of their northern working class voter base, whose interests they’ve given up even pretending they give a flying one about. Their attitude to the people who (didn’t actually) vote them in: “**** ’em! Who else are they going to vote for? We’re here for one term only, unless the great unwashed, are really, really really that mind-numbingly stupid! So lets dismantle the entire state, year zero style, before the apathetic bovine masses realise whats really happening.

The present tory party, and the labour party, to an almost-inperceptably smaller degree, now exclusively represents the interests of multinational corporations, banks, and the super rich. The rest of us don’t even appear on the radar.

In’t neo-liberlism brilliiiiiiiaaaaaaaaantttttttttttttt!!!!!!

We’re here for one term only, unless the great unwashed, are really, really really that mind-numbingly stupid!

Unless there is no credible opposition, in which case there is the horrible possibility they may squeeze back in for another term. I don’t know which I fear more a morally bankrupt Labour Party or this shower of shits again.

Whoever we get, the policy differences will be almost imperceptible. That’s why Millibean is so quiet, and forlorn and useless looking. He knows he’ll just be the custodian charged with delivering more of the same. On behalf of the corporate interests paying his wages. And that’s not really something you can shout about with much conviction.

Perfectly summed up here

The only significant difference is that the Tories really really look like they’re enjoying hammering the poor, and disadvantaged. Because they are! They absolutely love it!!!!

As we weren’t paying fees, and thus a financial burden on the taxpayer to a certain degree, dossing about wasn’t really tolerated. We were timetabled (namby-pamby, poncey arty degree) for 30+ hours a week in the studio. And if you didn’t show up for those hours, you were booted off the course. It was as simple as that. You got one warning, then you were out!

I’m just wondering if that would still be the case if you’re now a revenue stream generating £27,000 over 3 years, while spending your time not requiring any actual teaching or resources, as you’re sat in the pub?

My degree was pretty darn slack. I did English Literature and we were timetabled for 15 hours a week. The rest of the time we were supposed to be doing self study. Most of the time we were taught by postgrads, particularly in first and second year. We got one tutorial a term, and the academics didn’t particularly appear to care about the students, or teaching, because research was what they wanted to do (and what has the prestige, in the academic world).

I am currently engaged in a battle with the university where I did my postgrad, to recover the MA top up fees, because I had a tutor who couldn’t be arsed to respond to emails/phone messages, arrange tutorials, I work full time and she refused to do tutorials out of hours (despite the university in question advertising itself as being great at catering for the needs of students needing flexible learning) and then when I made a complaint it took 6 months to get someone in the department to actually address it. If universities are going to charge these bonkers fees, then shouldn’t they be actually providing some kind of a service to the students who pay them?

I work in the private sector and if I ignored emails and messages from a customer, I’d be hauled over the coals.

Obviously not. But screwing over a huge section of the middle classes – seems fairly unlikely. Working classes, yes, but not the middle.

And yet it’s happening. Some of the things that are going on seem so unlikely that people just aren’t looking for it, so they don’t see it.

If the plans for the legal system come to fruition, it could soon be perfectly plausible that you could be arrested by G4S officer, held in a G4S cell before being transported in a G4S van to be tried in a G4S court by G4S prosecutors using forensic evidence gathered in a G4S lab, while you’re defended by a G4S lawyer, before being transported in another G4S van to a G4S prison, where you will have no choice but to to provide unpaid labour for a G4S company before eventually facing a G4S parole board and, if you’re lucky, being released into the care of a G4S halfway house wearing a G4S ankle bracelet, reporting to a G4S parole officer.

This is the same G4S responsible for countless newsworthy failures prior to its rebrand and continues to be responsible for failures under its new flag today, the same company that reneged on its contract to provide security at the 2012 Olympics, leaving the tax payer to come to the rescue.

Scary, no? At what point are we as a society incentivised to tackle the causes of crime when there is so much money to be made profiting from cheaply and badly managing the symptoms? And what incentive is there for a company to provide a solid defence in court when doing so would reduce the future income of its other branches?

Unlikely? Seems it doesn’t it. That’s why we’re moving towards it. Nobody is paying attention. Just like the NHS being carved up and privatised as we type. Nobody believes it, because we choose not to look.

Those who do choose to look are being left increasingly with no option but to take to the streets with regularity, trying whatever they can to spread the word, gain support and grow some kind of resistance to it. And what happens? They get heckled, laughed at, dismissed and derided by the very public they’re trying to help. I’ve watched it happen. I’ve been on the receiving end. It’s just astonishing.

If the plans for the legal system come to fruition, it could soon be perfectly plausible that you could be arrested by G4S officer, held in a G4S cell before being transported in a G4S van to be tried in a G4S court by G4S prosecutors using forensic evidence gathered in a G4S lab, while you’re defended by a G4S lawyer, before being transported in another G4S van to a G4S prison, where you will have no choice but to to provide unpaid labour for a G4S company before eventually facing a G4S parole board and, if you’re lucky, being released into the care of a G4S halfway house wearing a G4S ankle bracelet, reporting to a G4S parole officer.

Thats almost true. But I believe, due to potential conflict of interest, the defence lawyer the government chooses to represent you will be supplied by that well-known legal authority….

You really couldn’t make it up

University Education in this country is still very cheap in comparison to a lot of other countries.

The UK taxpayer should not fund this.

It also will provide further focus to student to go and study worthwhile degrees rather than David Beckham studies.

All round win win.

Good luck to everyone who has results coming out today.