'Don't pay your kids tuition fees upfront' Discussion Area

setmefree2 · 22 September 2011 at 9:00AM

Why do you always focus on the students who aren't going to earn much?

Plenty of students earn a great deal.

setmefree2 · 22 September 2011 at 9:01AM

And finally, why do your TOTAL REPAYMENTS factor out inflation in the tables in scenario 2 and 3? (At a time when salary rises aren't keeping ahead of RPI, I find it rather odd that you chose to leave out the repayment figures that include inflation.)

Surely, what people/students want to know when they are taking out a loan is how much they are going to pay back. That includes all the interest on that loan. Surely, you can't strip out most of the interest that's added to the loan repayments and say "this is what you'll pay back" - it isn't!!!

I think that your figures may be regarded as misleading?

setmefree2 · 22 September 2011 at 9:17AM

Other than that, I think it's quite a good article

2sides2everystory · 22 September 2011 at 9:56AM

MSE_Martin wrote:

Not quite sure i understood this - but just a note - Im not a govt advisor on student finance.

I head the independent taskforce - which has Unis and NUS backing. I of course talk to David Willets, but equally met with Gareth Thomas (labour shadow higher education minister) who also supports the taskforces aim.

Yes I am sorry Martin, more loose thinking on my part I'm afraid. What I meant was that since 2012 UCAS and 2012 SLC scheme is upon us, and we all agree that £9,000 a year tuition fees laid on students resident in England is a complete travesty, we shouldn't give up, we should claim back our rights, using the law.

You know better than most how important financial commitments get mis-sold. You also know how some of those mis-sold contracts can get taken down retrospectively.

No payments will be made towards the disgracefully unfair 2012 Student Loans scheme until 2015 at the very earliest. All that will happen is that students barely at the age of majority (and some not there yet?) will be coerced into signing paper under duress and then SLC think they can start accounting interest from October 2012 in the name of these unfortunates and start taking money from them at sometime in the future. At that stage, a large proportion of them will be wondering what the hell it is they have been suckered into.

Do you really think that these first mortgage type decisions are being made in a correctly sold fashion? I don't.

Now do you understand? Vulnerable people are being mis-sold student finance. RIGHT NOW. So someone should show them how to protect themselves by showing them exactly how they may register formally that they are proceeding under duress. They have not been prepared for making decisions like this. It was landed on them. It is grossly unfair. Even their parents don't know whether to pay tuition fees or stand back from them. I was told by one this week that he will pay half or two thirds in order to keep the loan size for his son down to something within shouting distance of what a 2011 entrant might end up with. He seemed rational and intelligent but he hadn't considered the scheme to the point of concluding that it was a tax and that his plan would not make a blind bit of difference to how much tax.

PS Whether you are a government advisor on student finance or not Martin, you are seen as such. You are seen as rubbing shoulders with politicians, and perhaps even doing some of their bidding. You are not Murdoch, but respective governments and politicians need you on board, don't they? You are indeed seen as onboard on this one.

You may like to be seen as the pilot who arrived on his own boat who is needed to point out the important rocks on an occasion like this, but the feeling is that your own boat can be seen hitched up alongside the main event quite often. You may not have your own cabin on HMS Great Britain, but you have been a frequent visitor to the bridge and engine room methinks.

silvercar · 22 September 2011 at 10:10AM

2sides2everystory wrote: »

Yes I am sorry Martin, more loose thinking on my part I'm afraid. What I meant was that since 2012 UCAS and 2012 SLC scheme is upon us, and we all agree that £9,000 a year tuition fees laid on students resident in England is a complete travesty, we shouldn't give up, we should claim back our rights, using the law.

You know better than most how important financial commitments get mis-sold. You also know how some of those mis-sold contracts can get taken down retrospectively.

No payments will be made towards the disgracefully unfair 2012 Student Loans scheme until 2015 at the very earliest. All that will happen is that students barely at the age of majority (and some not there yet?) will be coerced into signing paper under duress and then SLC think they can start accounting interest from October 2012 in the name of these unfortunates and start taking money from them at sometime in the future. At that stage, a large proportion of them will be wondering what the hell it is they have been suckered into.

Do you really think that these first mortgage type decisions are being made in a correctly sold fashion? I don't.

Now do you understand? Vulnerable people are being mis-sold student finance. RIGHT NOW. So someone should show them how to protect themselves by showing them exactly how they may register formally that they are proceeding under duress. They have not been prepared for making decisions like this. It was landed on them. It is grossly unfair. Even their parents don't know whether to pay tuition fees or stand back from them. I was told by one this week that he will pay half or two thirds in order to keep the loan size for his son down to something within shouting distance of what a 2011 entrant might end up with. He seemed rational and intelligent but he hadn't considered the scheme to the point of concluding that it was a tax and that his plan would not make a blind bit of difference to how much tax.

PS Whether you are a government advisor on student finance or not Martin, you are seen as such. You are seen as rubbing shoulders with politicians, and perhaps even doing some of their bidding. You are not Murdoch, but respective governments and politicians need you on board, don't they? You are indeed seen as onboard on this one.

You may like to be seen as the pilot who arrived on his own boat who is needed to point out the important rocks on an occasion like this, but the feeling is that your own boat can be seen hitched up alongside the main event quite often. You may not have your own cabin on HMS Great Britain, but you have been a frequent visitor to the bridge and engine room methinks.

If the fees were deemed miss-sold, more accurately miss-charged. Then they would have to be refunded to all who had paid, not just those who had taken by their own choice a student loan to fund the payment.

big_Daddy_Dave · 22 September 2011 at 10:23AM

started reading the article and a question came into my head

can you get a maintenance loan and grant WITHOUT the tuition fee loan? or does it all come as one?

2sides2everystory · 22 September 2011 at 11:02AM

The Student Loan Company tuition fee loan apart from being a stitch-up is a complete separate issue, Dave.

Grants/loans for accommodation and living expenses are separate and involve different organisations. I forget the correct names for them and who administers them/how you apply, but grants are means-tested based on the student's parents' household income. Another stitch up for any household that has worked hard for what modest wealth they have accumulated which they are now expected to spend on supporting their own kids through university.

Our system is a total mess.

I have two kids who want to go to university.

Other families in the UK thesedays may have four kids or more. If I believe my kids should be supported free through university, then what about four or more from some families? Surely it is equitable that they too should get a free education?

Should families with four or more kids get child support in proportion to how many kids they have? In Europe that doesn't work like that in some places. Maybe in effect that is what it is like here too when they reach 18. University for all? Ha! Yeah right - for all that lot coming through? On yer bike !

Is the current average 2.4 kids or is it now much higher? Is this a significant part of the problem that the government has been faffing with?

I want my kids to have a free university education like I did, but they can't because the country has become swamped with too many other people's kids? Is that it? And other people will take this 2012 SLC scheme in their stride because they are used to taking everything with a pinch of salt? Afterall, we are groomed for it: Cough up when told - everyone does. Take what you can get. Beat it if you can, but stop moaning and get on with it. There's people starving in this world. Earn your crust. Be thankful for what you've got. If you don't like it, get off.

melancholly · 22 September 2011 at 11:24AM

setmefree2 wrote: »

How do you know it's a laudable aim gone wrong? Why did you shiver with fear? How do you know that's it's wide of the financial mark? How do you know that she misunderstands the system?

the quote was "so her parents don't have to borrow for her £9,000 tuition fees"..... now that to me indicates a complete missing of the point of how student finance works..... parents don't have to borrow anything......on that one, i think the article is spot on!

i think it's important to focus on all the graduates who won't earn a lot. there has been a massive misconception for many years that everyone who gets a degree can walk into a £30K starting salary job and work for life. that isn't true in the vast majority of cases. plenty of graduates get a huge reality check when they realise how few of these types of jobs there are and what their actual salaries will be.

it could only be a good thing for student to have an idea of realistic expectations before going to uni. that might mean they decide not to go, it might mean they decide to work even harder to get a top grade to improve their chances or it might mean that they just don't worry about it. but at least it would be informed. to only focus on those who go into city-type salaried jobs would be unfair (it may have been more appropriate 25 years ago, when there were far fewer graduates, but it isn't the case now and hasn't been for some time).

as far as the suggestion elsewhere that we should make degrees cheaper and shorter, i personally couldn't disagree more. perhaps we need a decision on what is the point of universities. should they be a qualification producing extension of school or should they be separate from that, as mainly research institutions?

unis aren't all about undergrads. they do huge amounts of research (which is what the majority of funding from government used to be based on). if we reduce student holidays and make unis all about teaching, are we prepared to sacrifice the research? (which would have consequences for a variety of sectors; perhaps to many the consequences wouldn't outweigh the 'benefits to undergrads' but they have to at least be considered). should teaching and research split completely? wouldn't that have consequences for getting taught at the cutting edge of subjects? it really isn't as simple as just making degrees shorter; it would require a complete restructure of higher education.

fwiw it isn't the government that says that most jobs need degrees; it's employers..... apart from some select jobs that need degrees (perhaps nursing being the one in the news right now that's debated), most jobs asking for a degree don't use any direct knowledge from the course. responsibility for that isn't on government policy, it's on the HR policies of companies. general management training schemes or consultancy or banking jobs could take other background but they don't.

setmefree2 · 22 September 2011 at 11:43AM

melancholly wrote: »

the quote was "so her parents don't have to borrow for her £9,000 tuition fees"..... now that to me indicates a complete missing of the point of how student finance works..... parents don't have to borrow anything......on that one, i think the article is spot on!

I don't think I'm missing the point at all! From the BBC article

The very rich bypass the student loans system anyway, by paying their tuition fees upfront

Ask yourself this why do the very rich pay upfront?

melancholly · 22 September 2011 at 11:47AM

setmefree2 wrote: »

I don't think I'm missing the point at all! From the BBC article

Ask yourself this why do the very rich pay upfront?

'rich' parents do it because they choose to, not because they have to. the quote suggested that the child saved money because otherwise her parents would have had to pay the fees. that would never have had to happen as the student does the borrowing from the SLC.

i'm not denying that parents paying upfront to help out kids is an option and a very generous one at that, but that is not what was being suggested in that quote from the article, which i still think misses the point of student finance.

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