Paying for university

[Powderhound]

OK, it's that old chestnut of tuition fees again, and here's the new story:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11419172

And it's one section in particular that's got my goat this time:

There is also the suggestion that high-earning graduates would pay an extra premium.

The report also suggests that wealthy students could avoid such an excess charge by paying their fees in advance.

I'm just staggered that they're even suggesting this. As it was I was against the 'graduate contribution' since this disregards the fact that your degree subject won't necessarily dictate your future earnings and as far as I'm concerned framing degrees in terms of earning power devalues the whole concept of academia. But to say that someone who's wealthy enough to start with to pay off the fees in full? In my mind that's a full-blown tax on social mobility. The best bit is that this is supposedly to placate the Lib Dems who are (rightly) concerned that the 'contribution' is a tax by another name.

I suppose I ought to point out that I've a personal axe to grind here, since I'm about to start a six year medical course, and don't especially want to have a £60,000 bill for tuition at the end of it, especially since I feel very strongly that medicine of all professions needs to represent a cross-section of society.

Sorry for the rant. That story just touched a pretty raw nerve.

[Lucio]

TBH, I think the tution fees need to be totally overhauled to reflect whether or not a particular degree cause has a benefit on society as a whole. Courses such as medicine, the hard sciences and finance all contribute towards society, whereas courses like "media studies" rarely contribute in a direct fashion.

In essence, pay if you want to study academia, get paid for if you want to study for particular careers.

[Perfectionist]

pay if you want to study academia, get paid for if you want to study for particular careers.

Sounds nice if you ONLY care about economy, but it'd plunge the country into intellectual stagnation, with those who don't have the right daddy being drove like cattle into good little worker jobs... Do we really want to be China? Have to take the wider view, economics is just a means to an end...

[jim]

I think it would be much easier just to cut out all of the stupid courses, personally.

Stating that 50% of the population have a degree is very little use if a third of those degrees are completely pointless.

[Powderhound]

TBH, I think the tution fees need to be totally overhauled to reflect whether or not a particular degree cause has a benefit on society as a whole. Courses such as medicine, the hard sciences and finance all contribute towards society, whereas courses like "media studies" rarely contribute in a direct fashion.

In essence, pay if you want to study academia, get paid for if you want to study for particular careers.

But that's a shortsighted view that is going to kill off fundamental scientific research, which can only really be carried out by universities rather than the private sector. It's that research which can have a massive economic payback a few years down the line even if it doesn't appear to at the time.

Do you really think that Einstein did his work because he was laying the foundations for the nuclear industry, or Watson and Crick foresaw the biotech revolution?

[nibbler]

Scotland manage to pay for people's tuition fees, and it seems to be working here. That said nothing ever gets done by the local council so maybe the money is wrongly allocated.

[scaryjim]

Stating that 50% of the population have a degree is very little use if a third of those degrees are completely pointless.

This plus 8million. And then some. Education to degree level is not a right - it's a privilege. It certainly shouldn't be denied someone for financial reasons, but it's still a privilege - I can think of plenty of people I went to school with who'd drown in the academic rigours that universities ought to be demanding...

I'm afraid that in many ways I agree with the concept of student loans: after all, we're theoretically the ones benefiting most from our education, so why shouldn't we pay for it? I have plenty of friends who left school at 16 and went to work in factories who would complain - justifiably - that they didn't benefit from the government funding me through a religious studies degree - yet they paid taxes that contributed towards both my fees and maintenance grant.

I'd also oppose certain degree subjects getting better financial terms: what happens to the person who studies medicine for 6 years then comes out and specialises in cosmetic surgery? Is it fair that they should get an easier ride through uni? What about people who do teaching degrees then go into corporate training (very profitable) instead of secondary schools?

No, I'm afraid the "fairest" way to handle it is to make it free at the point of entry, with some form of repayment scheme afterwards. I don't think what we've got now is right (it's certainly hampered by this artificial target of 50% of people in university: I'd rather see quality over quantity any day), but I think the concept isn't too far off...

[Powderhound]

Scotland manage to use English subsidies to pay for people's tuition fees, and it seems to be working here. That said nothing ever gets done by the local council so maybe the money is wrongly allocated.

Fixed.

[nibbler]

Fixed.

Quite right, I've been here for so long they've convinced me that Scotland could be independant and survive under its own steam. Either way, It's something to consider.

[redddraggon]

Quite right, I've been here for so long they've convinced me that Scotland could be independant and survive under its own steam. Either way, It's something to consider.

From what I've read, if Scottish independence was put to the vote only in Scotland it wouldn't get passed, but England was allowed to vote, there'd be an overwhelming majority for Scottish independence.

[badass]

Rather than adjusting the liabilities per course - just supply government funding for some courses, not others - on the others, let the universities charge what they like. That would get rid of Surfing Studies and Golf course management degrees and the pointless taxpayer burden they represent.

[nibbler]

http://www.toptenz.net/to-10-useless...es-degrees.php
With the exception of number 1, that's the kind of crap that needs to go.

[Saracen]

There's a pretty obvious conflict in all this. First, decent universities cost a lot to run, and the UK has a pretty decent collection of very good ones. So, either we fund them properly or we loose international competitiveness if we cash-starve them.

But, as a nation we have serious expenditure issues and as pretty much everything is facing cash restrictions, it's a question of either doing a lot less, or doing it a lot more poorly, or finding the money from somewhere.

I agree with scaryjim - it's wrong to set a bar to academic achievement based on financial resources available as you go in. And the current system leaves a serious debt to be paid back and takes scant account of whether the student goes on to become a teacher or a social worker, or ends up asa GP earning £100,000 a year or a business boss or banker earning that in a month.

If it's free at point of entry and the amount you pay back depends on subsequent income, then the barrier to the worst off should be minimal and as those that earn large sums every year could afford to contribute a bit more every year, it seems perfectly equitable providing you know what the deal is going in. Then, after all, the have the option of not going in in the first place.

The point is that someone has to pay for the universities, and I struggle to see why it's not reasonable to expect those benefiting most directly to pick up a chunk of that cost, and the more they benefit, the bigger the chunk.

It's also worth thinking about the changes over the years. In my day, the grant system meant we came out with zero debt and zero graduate tax. But that was with uni attendance being in the low single digits of percentages. If you're funding 40-50% of the population rather than 5%, you have a money problem of a vastly different order of magnitude.

Uni's have to be paid for, and charging those that directly benefit a proportion of the cost according to ability to pay seems to be a fair way to do it.

As for allowing the wealthy to pay up-front, the devil is in the detail. If they pay up-front, what do they pay? One aspect to that is that by paying up-front, the state is not having to finance what boils down to a loan so the provision is cheaper since it does not accrue the cost of financing the education by the state and getting it back over what may be decades. Compound interest can be a powerful thing. Take the average 25 year mortgage and compare the total you pay back to the capital you borrowed to see the effect. Paying up front avoids the state incurring that compounding of the interest on providing the funding. So .... allowing it lowers the cost to the state, and therefore allows the limited funds available to the state to go further in provision of services for those that can't afford to do so. And the devil, as I said, is in the detail - it depends what they pay up front, and whether it allows a cross-subsidisation of the amortising on the costs of others.

Suppose the native cost was £30,000 but that that was going to cost £75,000 if paid off over 30 years by a modest grad tax. You could allow those that can to buy out of that at £45,000. It costs them less, but then, they incur less cost for the state and contribute £15,000 (50%) over and above the cost they incur towards the costs of others. In other words, they pay a fee for buying out.

One way to look at that is not that the wealthy get off lightly. It's that the wealthy can afford something most people can't, so the provision of funding by the state allows those to gain access to something that used to be the preserve of the wealthy.

It's also worth remembering that a decent education isn't exclusively provided by the UK. If you make the provision of a top education in the UK comparatively expensive to, say, the US, the wealthy are exactly the ones that can afford to go elsewhere. If you seek to tax them for ever for a UK degree, the risk is that they go to Harvard, or MIT (etc) and the UK uni system misses out on any funding from them.

It may seem that the wealthy are getting a bonus by being able to buy out of the tax scheme (if that happens) and that may not be "fair", but hey, that's the way of the world. There always have been options open to the wealthy that the rest of us don't get, and there always will be. It'd be a good idea to get used to it.

[Lucio]

But that's a shortsighted view that is going to kill off fundamental scientific research, which can only really be carried out by universities rather than the private sector. It's that research which can have a massive economic payback a few years down the line even if it doesn't appear to at the time.

Do you really think that Einstein did his work because he was laying the foundations for the nuclear industry, or Watson and Crick foresaw the biotech revolution?

Actually you'll note I included hard sciences in the list outside academia, given that one of the biggest industry's in the UK is medicine....

[Konan555]

What troubled me the most about my particular degree course is that it was far easier than A-Level standard. Most of the initial years study was well within the reach of a reasonable GCSE student. The whole thing left me rather disillusioned with the system. You front up fees and have a degree.

I'd be far happier to see the old Tech colleges get rid of their daft 'university' titles, reduce spending and concentrate on 2 year HND level courses.

I have plenty of friends who left school at 16 and went to work in factories who would complain - justifiably - that they didn't benefit from the government funding me through a religious studies degree - yet they paid taxes that contributed towards both my fees and maintenance grant.

I guess we'd have to look at projections and figures about what the higher education system feeds back into the economy in real terms. How many factory jobs would exist if people hadn't been funded through engineering degrees? How many jobs could depend on the output of someone with a higher education in Religious studies when you think about it?

[peterb]

<---snip

It's also worth thinking about the changes over the years. In my day, the grant system meant we came out with zero debt and zero graduate tax. But that was with uni attendance being in the low single digits of percentages. If you're funding 40-50% of the population rather than 5%, you have a money problem of a vastly different order of magnitude.) snip--->

And therein lies (part) of the problem. At that time, higher education was selective on academic ability - now it is selective of financial grounds, which I think is worse. But the other side is that those that didn't go to University still had the opportunity for careers in industry or manufacturing through an apprentice scheme or other form of higher education, and those opportunities have reduced, so that University is now perceived as the ONLY way to get a good job and career.

But an additional graduate tax is unfairly discriminatory. If, as we are lead to believe, those with a degree get better jobs than those without, then they will be paying more tax through the progressive taxation system.

I think it would be much easier just to cut out all of the stupid courses, personally.

Stating that 50% of the population have a degree is very little use if a third of those degrees are completely pointless.

Which then begs the question of what is a degree for? In the case of Medicine, engineering or similar scientific or vocational subjects, it is about teaching to a higher level - but a degree is also about teaching academic discipline - which then leads on to higher academic degrees.

So is someone who has a mind trained by studying a non vocational degree any less valuable than one who is?