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

[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.