Bloody students

[Enverex]

All they ever bloody do is winge winge winge, moan moan moan. Well now it's my turn to have a moan

Why are they so adverse to paying £3k for a course? "The debt is too much... we'll be paying it off until we're 80!"

Absolute bollocks. By the time they've finished the course and got a job (!) they'll have a decent enough starting salary to pay the bloody loan off within a year easily! I borrowed 11k last year, and I'm paying it off easily NOW earning far less than I'd be earning in 3 yrs time with a degree! Honestly, wtf is there to complain about?!?!

Always after a free lunch, that's the trouble. Too busy squandering their money on dope and partys. Irrisponsible, short-sighted fools sucking the blood and money from this country.

I feel better for that

That is the biggest load of bull I have ever heard. I don't do drugs, I don't go to partys and I don't even drink, yet my parents are having to support me through Uni as there is no way I could pay it all off myself, as there are basically no decent jobs around here, and definately not any that pay enough or fit in well enough with Uni to allow you to earn all the money you need, AND have time to do all the courses and work.

Not everyone can easily find the perfect job as soon as they leave and get all the money they will ever need, and some placed don't actually give a damn about anyone anyway, so you will be hard pressed even putting that education to use.

EDIT : Edited by Ferral for language

[Allen]

I don't think anyone will get any resolution to this as most students will post that 'not all students waste their money' and most non-students will post 'i hate those student sponges' type of posts.

This is gonna get into a heated arguement if people aren't careful about what is said, and we don't want that in our lovely forum, will we?

[Nacrisa]

Graduates dont always get a decent paid job at the end of their degree. Some sectors are saturated by the time they graduate. It's not always black and white.

Exactly! Having a degree is hardly a guarantee of getting a (well-paid) job like the one Shad seems to be describing.

Doesn't your likely salary depend on what field you go into, as well?

[Cat Woman]

Shad, are'nt you a student?

[Shad]

Shad, are'nt you a student?

Nope.

I think to be fair to the students here, you've made a convincing set of points. But you must agree that students don't have a good reputation for financial management, and I can hardly be blamed for generalising

Is there a solution to the problem though?

[Cat Woman]

Your website says you're a sixth form student?
To be fair, you dont hear students moaning about people in full time work, I have respect for both as I have been in both but everyone seems to forget that uni is encouraged because some people say its the best years of your life (apart from school)

Its an experience is what Im really trying to say!

[Shad]

Your website says you're a sixth form student?
To be fair, you dont hear students moaning about people in full time work, I have respect for both as I have been in both but everyone seems to forget that uni is encouraged because some people say its the best years of your life (apart from school)

Its an experience is what Im really trying to say!

My website hasn't been updated for about 8 months.

I know a few students I used to know at school who bragged to me how they'd be earning 25k in 3 years after a degree... which was somewhat amusing at the time

It certainly is an experience, no doubt. But the big question is, is it worthwhile so early in life?

[Cat Woman]

You're too young to be so bitter. Why be so harsh about us? It varies for everyone, I only decided I wanted to go to university after being in miserable full time jobs. Plus in my case anyway theres no chance of me getting a job in design if I havent got a degree and a great portfolio.
I know what I want to do in life and this is the route I choose to take. Are you suggesting we should start university in our 30's? When most people will have a mortgage and perhaps a family to support?
Your friends could be speaking too soon I think Shad. Many people I know who have a degree have had to do many shoddy low paid work experience type jobs(after the degree) to get where they are now

[Saracen]

Problem - Universities are short of funds. A resolution to this has to be found.

Options - reduce the cost of Uni's or raise funds from somewhere/someone, or both.


In principle, I see nothing wrong with students paying a contribution towards the cost of their further education. After all, students will, by and large, be the ones to benefit from that education.

As I understand the government's proposals, subsidisation will be available to the poorer students to offset the cost, in the form of bursaries. Unlike the current scheme, the proposed changes will also mean that NOBODY pays these fees up-front. They come in AFTER you finish the course and IF you earn a decent salary.

Forgetting, for the moment, the AMOUNT of debt, can someone please explain to me why students should not pay SOME of the cost of their further education. As it is, according to government spokepeople, the taxpayer will STILL be picking up about 80% of the cost. It seems to me to be perfectly equitable that students, who do after all benefit, should pay towards that cost. If you accept that, then it becomes a discussion of how MUCH they pay, and WHEN they pay it.


To be honest, I'm more bothered about the government's rather arbitrary 50% target. From what I have seen, there are an increasing number of courses that should be vocational that are increasingly being turned into academic courses. It might be a hackneyed example, but things like Golf Course Management make the point. The sole point of many of these courses seems to be to boost the figures for the number of school-leavers going to Uni or (hopefully) getting a degree.

We need, as a nation, to recognise some facts.

1. A well-educated younger generation IS of benefit to us all
2. Point 1 does NOT mean that ANY degree will do.
3. The drop-out rate from Uni, particularly in year 1, is growing
4. The more people you have with degrees, and especially when you dilute the degree base with some of the more recent innovations in course design, the less the degree is worth having.

If degrees become commonplace, you'll need one to get a clerical job in the local council. If THAT happens, the country does NOT benefit. It takes 3 to 4 years to get a degree. Part of the price that society pays for educating someone to degree standard is that each degree-holder COULD have been a working and tax-paying member of society for 3 or 4 years. We lose the benefit of that work, and that tax revenue, by sending someone to university.

So, by logical extension, society only benefits IF the degree enables that person to get a job, or do a type of work, that they would NOT have got, or been able to do, without the degree.

I don't mean this to sound snobbish, but there is little point in having roadsweepers with PhD's. And by extension, if you could get a given job without a degree, why bother getting a degree if you then end up with the same job?

The more we put people through degrees simply for the sake of it, the more we devalue the degree. Employers aren't stooopid. If you raise the numbers going to Uni, and ESPECIALLY if you introduce the dafter courses, employers will simply start looking for Master's degrees where they previously looked for Bachelor's degrees - anybody care to tell me this hasn't already started?

Time was (my time, that is) that a degree (or at least, a half-decent result) damn near guaranteed a decent job. Is that still the case? Yeah, quite.


Instead of artificially raising student NUMBERS in order to hit some arbitrary target (and being able to claim in an election manifesto that the overall standard in the country is increasing simply BECAUSE numbers are up), I feel we ought to have more attention to vocational courses, and ought to be concentrating University education on people and subjects that will benefit from the academic approach.

To hell with a 50% target. Refocus Universities on ACADEMIC subjects, increase attention and encouragement to vocational courses, and correct the balance.

Attendance at University ought to be subject, in my view, to two factors. Ability and inclination. If you have the ability (and wish) to be a doctor, physicist or engineer (etc), you ought to get the chance regardless of background. But we need electricians and plumbers too.

As for anybody that might think a degree is a guarantee of a better standard of living, or a cosy future income, think again. It doesn't even guarantee a job these days - and then take a look at what plumbers can earn

[Kezzer]

i read all that and all i have to say is bleh.

So is that why Uni's take us offshore students? we pay more money to go to uni, but won't that mean that more of it goes to tax?

[TomWilko]

But the net amount will still be greater than what a normal UK student gives

[Lee]

Good post Saracen, but Labour's policy of this refunding of universities still won't work and many other people like yourself have been again brainwashed with a policy that simply is utter nonsense when looked at it greater detail. Can I draw your attention to this statement by Tim Yeo – Shadow Education and Health Secretary?

The introduction of university tuition fees will be a disaster for taxpayers as well as students, Tim Yeo has warned.

As the Government prepares to publish highly controversial legislation authorising the new top-up levies, the Shadow Education and Health Secretary said they would not only saddle students with massive debts, but also impose new burdens on taxpayers who will have to subsidise the system to make it work.

And Mr Yeo argued that there would be a gap of hundreds of millions of pounds which would have to be plugged by taxpayer funding. "So Labour's plans simply don't add up. They will cost taxpayers considerably more than they will raise for universities," he added.

And Mr Yeo warned that if variable fees are eventually introduced, universities will inevitably step up the pressure to have the initial £3,000 cap raised. "The sums for the taxpayer only make sense if the level of fee is raised not to £3,000 but to £8,000 or £10,000," he declared.

Mr Yeo told conservatives.com: "That is the hidden agenda from Charles Clarke, which he does not want to admit. Because if he did, he would have even more trouble with his own backbench MPs.

"We know that just as the Government broke its promise about not introducing top-up fees, so it will break its promise to keep the cap at £3,000. Quite soon the level of fees that the universities can charge under Labour will rise very sharply."

[Beta]

I graduated in July, i was lucky, i only have about £7k of debt as i worked for a year before going to uni, but some of my mates came out with > £18k debt.

Now shad says that you come out of uni and get a higher paid job - well in reality this doesnt happen to the majority of us.

I went to a good University (Leeds Uni), did a a good degree (Pharmacology) that was an incredibly hard course to do. In fact the drop out rate for my course was 75%, over 120 started it in first year, 30 of us graduated.

So what am i doing 6 months later? Im temping in a school doing admin for £7.58 an hour because there are too many graduates and not enough graduate jobs. Not a good situation to be in, and certainly not able to pay any debts off.

People will always winge about students fliting their money away on drink and partying because they choose to see that. Whilst yes i did go out drinking a lot whilst at uni, this time last year i was doing 9-5 in the lab, then working from about 6pm til 1am writting up what i had done in that day. I had to be up at 7 to get into uni for 9, so that left me a great 6 hours sleep!! How fun!

Uni is certainly not an easy life for 3 years (although first year definetly is )

[Cat Woman]

We've all read/heard about the technical stuff from the media a few times now (I know I have).
Does anyone happen to know when this law starts? Cos Im hoping to be at University in September-I'll be really pleased if it starts in say err..... 5 years?
Anyway, its the "lazy, workshy" (etc) comments that are unnecessary

[Steve]

2006 I think, Cat Woman.

[Enverex]

In principle, I see nothing wrong with students paying a contribution towards the cost of their further education. After all, students will, by and large, be the ones to benefit from that education.

Forgetting, for the moment, the AMOUNT of debt, can someone please explain to me why students should not pay SOME of the cost of their further education. As it is, according to government spokepeople, the taxpayer will STILL be picking up about 80% of the cost. It seems to me to be perfectly equitable that students, who do after all benefit, should pay towards that cost. If you accept that, then it becomes a discussion of how MUCH they pay, and WHEN they pay it

Right, so I am paying £1500 a year for a rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishty Uni, and apparently, that is only 20% of the cost. So, of course, this extra money is just going to grow out of my ass to pay for the rest of it, wont it.

I'm sorry, but I just don't see where they expect this money to be coming from. And I think they are talking utter BS if it costs £7500 A YEAR for one person at University. Also take in to account the fact that you are expected to pick up 2 of the course books for each module (again, out of your own money) which is another £35 each, times by 8 modules a year, for 3 years and that is another £1680 in books alone).

Sorry, but this thread just isn't funny in the slightest.

Cat Woman: The fees are retroactive, i.e. You will still have to pay for your time at Uni EVEN if you have already left.