Three children, oldest 13, bright and wants to be a vet. Two still in primary. Assuming £9k tuition and £5k living/travel/book/IT costs per year, and that younger two do a three year course. Aside from the fact that I can’t see how to justify £9k for 36 weeks of 12 hours contact in huge lectures/classes on many courses, how did we get to this. Houses aren’t selling already as there are precisely zero traditional first time buyers, and nobody seems to have spare cash to put to a pension either, so I’m not convinced lumping forty grand plus debt on graduates is a smart thing for the country in general to do. Aaargh!

Seems to work OK in America 🙄

14k per year.

£4k – earn themselves during holidays
£5k – student loan
£5k – parents (if they can afford to contribute)

Seems about right to me.

My 2 [with another 2 to follow] get some off me, some off their grandparents, some they earn & some from a student loan

I’d swap them their lifestyle for mine

£4k – earn themselves during holidays

yes plenty of jobs about of that there is no doubt 🙄

think we all have the same fears /hopes for our kids.
Way too much debt unless you are guaranteed to earn way above the average wage as a result of your studies.
I agree it does seem excessive rates considering the teachers salaries are largely covered by research grants – WTF do they need the money for ?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8421092.stm
heres a link of nick clegg pledging to phase out fees over 6 years it is what they said at the election
and here is Daves BITCH taking a principled stand of I believe tuition fees are wrong, I believe they need to be abolished, I want to do it as soon as possible,” Mr Clegg told a rally of party activists in Bournemouth.
whilst caving in and increasing the charges
What a top bloke eh

I suggest not having them in the first place.

Don’t forget at some stage they will be after a deposit for a house, contribution towards a wedding, cars etc.

Junkie, what do you think would’ve happened if Clegg had put his foot down and insisted on no fees?

Don’t forget at some stage they will be after a deposit for a house, contribution towards a wedding, cars etc.

And?

If I have it spare they can have it, if I haven’t, they can’t

Helping the kids where I can gives me pleasure

Shortcut has a point. What are they costing you already in food, clothing, christmas & birthday presents. Then they expect you to take them with you when you go on holiday. Endless expense.

£4k – earn themselves during holidays

Or 12k+ on a sandwich course. Assuming they pick an employable course.

Book: Make Your Child a Millionaire, by Alan Oscroft (MotleyFool)

OK I paid a lot less, but it would have been well worth it and easily paid off once in proper employment.

To many clowns go to uni & come out with a crap degrees or failing!
I have a lot friends who went to Uni & ‘Lived the dream’, now approaching 30 complaining because they have shit jobs or no job! on the other hand i know a couple of people who did what you would call ‘good’ degrees and are reaping the rewards!

Looks like the people doing the real degrees are the ones likely to suffer the higher fee’s as well, which isn’t good for the development of our youth with whom the nations future rests 😉

The debt’s written off after 25 years, isn’t it? Run up the max and live with a slightly reduced income (x% of what you earn that’s over £y) until you’re 46.

My sister works for a sexual health charity. She earns just enough to make payments, but not enough to cover the interest charged on her student loans. Unless she changes career, she’s never going to pay them off. And that’s on the current system of ‘low’ fees with low interest loans.

It’s a Graduate Tax by another name.

They’re saying written off after 30 years

Three children, oldest 13, bright and wants to be a vet.

got a long way til uni! in that time fees could go up by X amount/be abolished/your kids could turn into international popstars and not need money again… why worry now?

The debt’s written off after 25 years, isn’t it? Run up the max and live with a slightly reduced income (x% of what you earn that’s over £y) until you’re 46.

Choose a course with good prospects and get a decent paying job. Hold hold back go for the max

Become ‘poor’ while they attend Uni, then they don’t contribute as much – or orphan them?

Not as odd as it sounds – you use to get a tax rebate for maintenance paid after a divorce; a number of couples did this to reduce the cost of private school…

Or move to Scotland – my parents live north of the border and if any of my kids want to go to Uni. they’ll be living with Grandma when they apply.

Fill them full of misinformation and misconceptions so that they really struggle with school at the higher levels. With any luck they’ll fail to get a university place

Choose a course with good prospects and get a decent paying job.

Choose a course in a subject you love. Get a job doing good.

got a long way til uni! in that time fees could go up by X amount/be abolished/your kids could turn into international popstars and not need money again… why worry now?

They could even [actually they will] decide that you’re a tosser & know nothing
They’ll then decide to do absolutely nothing & stay in bed

Junkie, what do you think would’ve happened if Clegg had put his foot down and insisted on no fees?

Please dont refer to me as junkie as I tend to get in an uppity fit about you insulting my nom de plume rather than my argument. I dont like yardie much either as they both have negative conortations., Clearly a Junkyard is a wholesome immage and should not be sullied etc 😉 with a bit of seriousness thrown in please dont ta.
Who knows what would happen if a politician stuck to a life long principle rather than threw it away in pursuit of power.
the coalition collapsed, the fees were not increased, Dave gave in fees went down, MPs voted on it etc.
What is your point politicians should not keep their electoral promises ? we should not be cross when they capitulate and do the opposite of what they were voted in to do?

Or would you prefer your children earn degrees that are getting more and more diluted/worthless?

Don’t forget at some stage they will be after a deposit for a house, contribution towards a wedding, cars etc.

They’ve got no chance. I didn’t get (or ask for) any of those, and the money wouldn’t have been there anyway.

Mine is the first generation from our family where anyone stayed on in school beyond 14, and all I’m after is being able to help my children to have a similar(ly privileged?) start to me. I went to Trent Poly in the eighties and had a combo of tuition, grant and parental contribution. This was tough on my parents in overlap years (I’m one of five, four went to college). Worked paper, football pools rounds and Saturday jobs from as soon as I could, and in holidays too. It’s the paying £20 per hour for tuition that I resent, in a course cohort of 280, that’s over two and a half MILLION pounds collected to run a single year group of a humanities course, of adults(?). That’s more than two and a half times the budget of our 280 pupil primary school my children are at, and it’s rare for there to be a ratio of one to thirty children there, often half that.

You’re assuming your kids will do courses which command the highest rate. There is a ‘soft cap’ at £6k moving to a hard cap at £9k. So you might not need quite as much dosh as you think. Also, your kids might not want to go to university…

Start saving now just in case, but I suspect that before all of your kids reach university the government (in whatever flavour it is in by then) will change the goalposts again…

I agree it does seem excessive rates considering the teachers salaries are largely covered by research grants – WTF do they need the money for ?

Junkyard – this is balls I’m afraid. You are assuming lecturers get paid 100% of money for doing research and that they can therefore teach for free. Many lecturers do not get any funding for research (there is a limited government pot for research money and you have to bid for it) and when they do it does not account for 100% of their time. 20% of their time would be more likely. It costs money to teach and someone has to pay – a university cant just do it for free… The costs in the Browne report do reflect the real cost of doing a degree accounting for the pay for lecturers, cost of infrastructure etc. its just that the true cost has been hidden from view for years because the government have been paying instead.

sell them for £100K and go on holiday

It costs money to teach and someone has to pay – a university cant just do it for free…

It doesn’t cost £6k a year though.

Similar dilemma going on here – we worked out it would be £130k per child (another one on the way).

Hmmm…

They could even [actually they will] decide that you’re a tosser & know nothing
They’ll then decide to do absolutely nothing & stay in bed

wow, what part of my comment offended you enough to lead you to calling me a tosser?!

😯

I agree it does seem excessive rates considering the teachers salaries are largely covered by research grants – WTF do they need the money for ?

Some lecturers salaries are covered by research grants for the time they spend researching. Some lecturers are just purely paid for by departments. But cost of time spent teaching comes from fees and government grants for teaching, which they’re planning to remove, hence the need for 9k fees.

A few subjects, where teaching time is low, teaching is done in large groups, and they don’t require labs or other expensive equipment might just scrape a profit at 9k, but it wouldn’t be surprising if a fair number of departments are making a loss on their teaching.

I would also imagine that departments will fight to be allowed to take more foreign students in – if you look at he 15k or so a foreigner pays, that makes a slight profit for most departments, they currently only take a relatively small number because of limits from government, but if government stops subsidizing teaching, why should they control who is taught ?

As to whether it’s good value for money, I think that is very dependent on the course – frankly I think even at current fee levels, there are some courses that are a rip off and aren’t fair to those who do them. Not the things people moan about like media studies etc, which are perfectly valid subjects, which everyone is clear are not vocational career things, more some courses that sound like they’d set you up for a very specific job in something, but actually by being at a rubbish university, you’ve got bugger all chance of getting that job afterwards*. At higher levels, you’re going to have to be a lot more discerning about choice of course and university. I think my degree was easily worth that kind of money.

Joe
* I probably shouldn’t name names here, as I’m posting under my own name.

Many uni’s are a business. Back in 94 they wanted £80 a week from me to stay in one of their own halls. Ridiculous.

The 5k living fees are paid for by working holidays and student loans why should you pay all of it? – the cost is higher now but my parents didn’t contribute to my university education. The 9k tution fees are for you children to pay once they start earning avove the average salary.
Your oldest want to be a vet, that’s a well paid profession so I why not pay from the education that gets them it.
Tution fees may make stop some people going to uni who go just for the ride instead and have no intention of furthering themselves.

I seem to remember Clegg promised to abolish fees when they were elected. They weren’t, were they?

And you should be able to see that you have to make compromises to get things done.

Btw I called you Junkie short for Junkyard, not as an insult. People have called me Molly or Mol before now, but I don’t assume they are calling me a female street vendor of shellfish or the con-artist daughter of a tansported criminal. But I shall respect your wishes even though they don’t respect my fingers 🙂

b r – Member
Or move to Scotland – my parents live north of the border and if any of my kids want to go to Uni. they’ll be living with Grandma when they apply.

The Scottish Parliament are still to decide what to do about university fees and we should find out about them soon according to the lunchtime news.

no way the cap will still be that low by the time your kids go to uni

most expensive courses in america are $200 000 a student
thats where the governmemnt would like us to go

lets face it it wont be long till the only way you can send your kids to uni is if you are as minted as gideon or dave

if not best prepare them for a life below stairs

I seem to remember Clegg promised to abolish fees when they were elected. They weren’t, were they?

Yeah they were – every single Lib Dem MP was elected to the job

I must admit. I had to work part time at Uni. I had no choice really, it was either that or take out the full student loans and run up more debt/overdraft.

Always has been and always will be the kids who are too lazy to actually do this though. They tell their parents ‘working will affect my studies/potential’.

BOLLOCKS.

Why should an element of the population get a free ride to further education at the tax payers expense whilst the rest go out to work? If you want a degree, then you should pay for it, and ensure that it is something worthwhile which will pay well rather than Lady Gaga studies.

On a side note, those noble, government funded professions where wages are still scandalously low (teaching, nursing, social care etc) should get an alleviation of some sort.

Too many people go to University, a degree was for the best not just the default. I don’t need a degree (and haven’t got one) for what I do.

Why should I be paying for other peoples kids to go to Uni?

Education to 18 free.
Further education you pay for.