Graduate Top-Up fees

[andrewducker]

Mr Clarke said it was "reasonable and fair to ask graduates to contribute a proportion of the costs of the university education which they benefit from for the rest of their life".

But UCL students said this overlooked the fact that society needed educated professionals.

"Everyone needs doctors and even stockbrokers and so on because the wealth of our economy feeds down to everyone," said European, Social and Political Science student Mark Harper.

Yes, society does need those people, which is why they get paid a darn sight more than most.

I'm going to take a somewhat contentious position and say that I think that the top-up fees are actually perfectly reasonable. Under the new system students are going to pay nothing whatsoever in advance, and only start paying back their loans once they are earning £15k a year.

I don't have anything against people going to university to spend 4 years finding themselves, I just object to me paying for it. Hopefully this will dissuade people from going to university unless they actually want to, and possibly even persuade people to take degrees that they believe will be useful to them.

I _do_ object to the American system which leaves people in debt while they're still at university, but a system that charges effectively no interest and only asks you to pay back the loans when you can afford to do so seems to be the best solution.

Comments

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

And FAR better than the 'scrounging off your parents' system that was in place before loans came in. They would have had to be actively (on inactively) unemployed before I'd have got a full grant (which was about £2,000 IIRC) - I got about £800 first year and nothing thereafter.

I really resented that my parents were my only real income option. I worked in the holidays, which gave me money for living expenses - parents could just about manage to stretch to paying my rent. It's a sad fact that male students ahd WAY more earning potential in the holidays (building labouring paid twice what anything I could get paid).

I might have been interested in the sort of system they are now proposing.

As an aside, I'm not sold on the 'trickle-down' theory.

[missedith01.livejournal.com]

My father worked when I was at uni, and I still got a full grant. There were and are some pretty poor wages out there.

I have no objection for students paying for education in theory, but in practice I think it puts students from low pay families off more than it puts off students from wealthier families.

I think a Labour government should refocus its attention on why students from low-incoem families aren't flooding to our universities, and whether there's anything they can do to redress the balance. By that, I don't mean that people should be admitted to university on anything other than merit, but if merit happens to correlate with parental income, we should be finding out why and seeing if we can do something about it, or else equality of opportunity means nothing.

[kpollock.livejournal.com]

I think that the costs do put people off.

It could be to do with expectations and local culture. My school was the scummiest one in town but most folks did Highers and many went to Uni.

I actually think that it'd be preferrable to work for a few years before going to Uni, saving cash and getting real world experience. I was SO lazy at Uni, and the workload was a breeze compared to real working life - If I were to do a degree now (or any point after my first year in work), I'd do SO SO much better.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

I took my degree straight out of school. Got a 2:2. Worked for 3 years, went back to take a Masters, got a distinction (equivalant to a first) without working as hard as I did at work yet far, far harder than I did during my first degree.

The majority of my class had been at work before their Masters, the majority got distinctions. The minority of other courses in our department had been at work before their Masters, the minority of them got distinctions. I don't think this was unconnected.

Mike

[rahaeli.livejournal.com]

I don't want to talk about the US system. Suffice it to say that I was delayed in going back to school until I was 26 partially because of the debt I was in from my ONE year at a private university at age 18.

I'm at a public uni now, but I'm looking at grad school, and I'll easily be $100,000 in debt after that.

[allorin.livejournal.com]

I agree, more or less.

Then one thing I've really objected to about New Labour's attitude to higher education is that everyone deserves a crack at it. They seem determined to have more and more people in higher education simply to suit a statistic, rather than thinking about whether that is practical or necessary.

The real goal should be to reduce the number of drop-outs or failed degrees, so that higher education is as productive and least wasteful as it can be. Then they might find that there's less of a need for top-up fees, as the funds that are there to support our education system are enough.

Also, they have to face up to the fact that not everyone is suited to higher education, and that includes, sadly, a lot of people who are currently at university. Everyone has a natural 'level' that they can reach in life, and it varies from person to person. This mad push to get everyone we can into university makes no sense - we should be aiming to get the relevant people properly educated, no more, no less.

Bottom line - there should be an entrance exam required to get into higher education, above and beyond the current requirement of attaining Highers/A levels, and any entrance exam any indivdual university may set. It's just the same as applying for any role in life - not everyone is suited to it, some just can't do it, there may be several who can but there are always some suited to it more than others.

[spaj.livejournal.com]

I agree, actually. I had been thinking "what an injustice"... but I hadn't really taken the time to think about it. There's a problem with university these days: Ask any university graduate... graduating from uni is no longer a guarantee of a job. Infact, It used to be. Infact, we were brought up to believe that degrees were needed to be succesful in life.

It's a simple case of supply and demand. It used to be that the supply more or less matched the demand, and that uni = job. But by increasing the amount of university education, without really increasing the demand, we're having people come out of university, and find themselves doing jobs well below their level of education.

A part of the problem is that capitalism doesn't reward lesser cogs. "Society", speaking in a macro sense, works through capitalism. Let's view a corporate CEO as a large cog in the system, geared to output a lot of power, and let's view a warehouse storeman as a small cog, geared to simply transfer the angle of the systems action. Well, it's clear that the CEO is driving the company. But it doesn't work without a storeman. Yet everyone wants to be the CEO, because in capitalism, the CEO is who will be viewed as "most successful", who will make the most money etc.

To be the CEO, you need a University Degree. We've managed to bring up a generation who want to be CEO's, but with no interest in being storemen. And that could well be our downfall.

Don't have a solution, mind you. Just recognising the problem, albiet in rather a ramblin manner.

Adam

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Disagree.

brandnewgun wrote a response on her journal that I agree with: have added a post there that represents my opinion and experience.

Students and loans and money oh my

[ekatarina.livejournal.com]

I am torn on this.

Yes, I see a lot of people wasting time and money at university, but I also see people who should be here able to attend due to the crippling costs. It's not as horrific as in the US but it is not good. BC has turned to an "income contingent" repayment, so that means that after paying the maximum they can for seven years, you can owe more than you did when you left school! Also, a student cannot declare bankruptcy on their loans for 10 years.

It doesn't help that my university has more than doubled tuition over three years. Yes, the previous government froze the fees, but the current government keep stalking about "opportunities" for people and then makes it very hard to stay in school.

I have loans and I work. I used to think that loans meant you could concentrate on school and get good grades without having to work three jobs. Apparently I was wrong. One cannot live on the amount of money they give you unless they don't buy textbooks, do not go to the dentist, need no medications, and generally live in someone's closet.

Then I thought that a little work could do me good, and give me a bit more cash. Wrong again, since they take every dollar away. Oh, because I own a vehicle, which I cannot afford to insure or gas-up, I therefore have assets and get part of its value deducted from my loans. What? I'm supposed to sell off the hubcaps? The front end? Sigh.

Sometimes I think I would like a system similar to the military colleges. Educate me and I work for you for x-number of years. A tv show was based on a guy going to medical school and then owing the state of Alaska a certain number of years of being a doctor in a small small town in Alaska. I'd be up for that. I would teach, research, or dig ditches for a couple of years where ever they told me to.

I just want to get finished. I want then to stop changing the rules regarding what I need to graduate. I want my piece of paper. I want out. I want to do something else.

I think that is part of what is driving me to seriously consider moving to the UK. If I am going to struggle for many years with my debts and my career, if I am going to live in poverty on a shoe-string budget, I might as well do it in a foreign and exotic locale. Heh heh.

Katja

[wordofblake.livejournal.com]

Well, as a card carrying foreigner, I was never entitled to a grant and I bitterly resent the mound of debt I was forced to build up which I am still paying off.

Of course asking people to pay will put them off. It is hugely unreasonable.

I suppose it is all about priorities, where do you want the money to go? I think to Education is not a bad answer.