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