'Is it time for a graduate tax?' poll discussion

billshep

I vote for no fees - as it was when I did my degree. But there need to be provisos - the courses need to be of good quality, ideally leading directly to employable qualifications - there are a lot of 2nd rate courses out there which are largely a waste of time. Prospective students need good advice as to the best way to follow their chosen path - is a degree the best or only way?

digikidz

I think that the push to get kids into university has got way out of hand and as far as I can see it is down to the employers out there insisting on a degree being required for jobs that, realistically, don't actually need a degree. Surely on the job training is much more relevant? As for those who will say that the employers use the degree as a way to 'sort' through applications, well, sorry, but that is not for the taxpayer to make their human resources life easier. Get in your own entry tests if you need to. I can't believe the type of jobs you need to have a degree for nowadays ... and how relevant are many of the degrees anyway? Plus, being able to get a good degree result is in no way a true indication of how well someone can work or apply that knowledge in a real life environment.

So my option (cos I haven't voted otherwise) is that the employers should be the ones paying the graduate tax, seeing as they are the ones insisting on the degrees.

ETA there should be more apprenticeships in a wider range of jobs. My own DH is self employed in the construction industry, pretty well a one man band, but he believes in the apprenticeship system and has had three in the past ten years. That's the best way to learn - doing the job itself.

Sorry another ETA, I went back to higher education as a 'mature student' and couldn't believe how much the ones straight from A levels messed around. Do you actually get kicked out of courses nowadays if you don't keep your attendance or grades up? If not, why not? Why should we pay tax for students who can't be bothered with their own education?

Gosh I'm sounding like a right grumpy old woman this morning! But it is close to my heart as my eldest is 15 so we will be hitting this phase in the not too distant future.

pteron

What we really need to assess is who benefits from having a highly educated workforce.

If the degree is in the right subject then not only does the graduate benefit, the country does too. I believe you'll find that the countries with the highest per capita engineering and science degrees also have the fastest growing economies.

As such, we should be making graduates in the most beneficial subjects not pay anything. Their creation of wealth and jobs in the economy more than pays for the cost of the degree.

matchmade

Speaking as a university lecturer in English, I'm afraid the quality of students has been dropping since the early 1990s. The best are as good as they've ever been, but the "long tail" has been getting worse and there are more and more of them with the same number of teaching staff. At the same time the unviersity sector is being casualised, as happened in the FE sector in the 1980s: I estimate 50% of staff are now on short-term contracts.

The principal weaknesses of contemporary students are:
- they spend way, way too much time working in term-time on low-paid jobs rather than concentrating on their studies. This is a massive change from my time at university, when modest grants and a willingness to go into debt meant almost no one worked when they were meant to be studying.
- they don't know how to write essays - they are used to a modular, cut-and-paste tick-box culture and spoon-fed teaching at A-level, so the majority lack independence of thought and simply have no idea how to use a library or research a topic properly. They think lecturers are there to tell them what to do and what to think. Unbelievably, you can get an A-level in English nowadays and only read 3 or 4 books over the two years of your course.
- the standards of spelling and grammar have slumped. They are very rarely taught in schools now. What are English secondary school teachers actually doing in their classes?

In my view university entrance should be made much harder and the numbers of students at least halved. The ones who don't get in shuold seek on the job tranining and vocational part-time courses, just as people used to do. There are too many mickey-mouse degrees and too many unprepared students who really need to get a life and do something more productive with their time. By making the university sector smaller and more selective, with higher standards, a degree might mean something again, and the HE sector would cost less all round.

pteron

digikidz wrote: »

So my option (cos I haven't voted otherwise) is that the employers should be the ones paying the graduate tax, seeing as they are the ones insisting on the degrees.

Of course, the money you are paid also comes from your employer, so adding the graduate tax to the employer simply means they will pay you less.

craig86

Absolutely agree with most of the points above. University should be a place where the brightest people (regardless of wealth) are able to further their knowledge for the benefit of society. In other words, to train the doctors, scientists, engineers and other professions that require degrees. That fact that so many graduates leave university and get jobs (or not!) that do not require degrees is just a waste (both to the graduates and to the taxpayers that subsidised them).

To that end, the government (taxpayers) should pay for people who are (i) intelligent enough, and (ii) want to study for a degree that is needed by society, to go to university. IMO this would be approximately 10% of school-leavers. Most of these people would pay back the investment many times over in higher taxes. Others, such as low-paid science jobs (e.g. medical research), would pay back society in other ways.

The recent headlines about a shortage of university places made me laugh. So, poor Johnny Average with 3 C's at A-level can't get accepted to do a Media Studies degree at the University of Bolton. It's a disgrace! Getting a place at university - no matter how clever you are and no matter what you want to study - is a basic human right, isn't it? Oh sorry, my mistake: I'm thinking of school!

Most people going to university today would be much better served going to college or getting an apprenticeship and learning a skill that could give them a secure job. Many people seem to go to university because they feel they 'need a degree'; then they leave uni and end up getting a job that makes no use of it.

Whereas in the past the vast majority of students got O-levels, a few got A-levels, and even fewer got degrees; it has now shifted so that A-levels are becoming the new O-levels, degrees are becoming the new A-levels, and PhDs are becoming the new degrees. It's a worrying trend, probably related to the political desire to show improving exam results - regardless of whether educational standards are actually improving. (I remember, when I was doing my A-levels, being shown an exam paper from 10-20 years ago. Wow, it was hard!)

As an aside, exam grades should be re-based every year - in the same way that IQ tests are so that the average remains 100 (IQ scores improve by around three points per decade - known as the Flynn effect). That way, we could strip out results "inflation" and political interference and know that, for example, someone with an A is in the 90th-100th percentile in that subject. The fact that many top universities now insist on their own entry exams because A-levels are not discriminating enough shows the problems it has caused. It was also why an A* grade was introduced.

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mattarth

cjt105 wrote: »

Early results seem to favour the default setting - to get proper figures, I'd recommend changing the order which the results are presented to users randomly... :money:

Quite right, this is a very biased way to take a poll. One response above that suggested the default answer is the best and hence is fine is ridiculous. Just because one person has one opinion that agrees with the default answer doesn't excuse the biasing at all.

Randomly is the proper way to do it, second best would be forcing users to drag the answers into order from a selection rather than allowing them to accept what's shown.

minerva_windsong

I don't mean to sound snobby or hypocritical, but I agree with those who've said there are too many students. Certainly when I was in sixth form (and high school as well) there was a subconscious sense from both the students and the lecturers that our A-levels/GCSEs were to prepare us for university and that if we failed the exams and didn't get into university our lives would be ruined forever. That isn't saying people who want to go to university shouldn't be allowed to for whatever reason, but more that the pressure that it's the two extremes of 'go to university and get a fantastic job and be made of money, or don't and end up living on benefits' is not helpful to the kids who aren't that academic. This also needs to tie in with better careers education in schools.

In answer to the original question, I say keep it as it is. The current system is fair - you pay back what you can afford, and if you haven't paid it all back after 25 years it gets written off - and I don't actually think it's dissuaded that many teenagers from going to university. A graduate tax applied across the board would.

kerri_gt

If someone with a degree is doing the same job as someone without one, how is a higher level of tax for the graduate fair? I'm fed up with paying back my loan when I work with people who don't have degrees and earn the same as me - in essence, taking home more. I worked hard for my degree and got a good grade but there are so many graduates out there these days that they do not all get the elitest jobs they used to. Plus, you can only get into some professions with a degree so would that mean there are fewer people who would choose to be a nurse, doctor etc?

digikidz

craig86 wrote: »

Most people going to university today would be much better served going to college or getting an apprenticeship and learning a skill that could give them a secure job. Many people seem to go to university because they feel they 'need a degree'; then they leave uni and end up getting a job that makes no use of it.

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I agree - but who offers apprenticeships nowadays? And many employers now stipulate a degree to be considered for many jobs that previously you wouldn't have needed them for.

I really don't want my children to have to rack up serious amounts of debt for the privilege of going to university in order to gain a degree just so that an employer will even consider them. But really, the job prospects of anyone 'bright' but not exceptional aren't there if they don't go to university. Want to get ahead in a bank, many corporate jobs, accountancy or whatever .... you can't get a job after A levels and be trained up any more .... you have to have a degree to get that job .... and then be trained up.

I am in my forties and people of my age could do that, (I know many people now who say that they wouldn't have been able to get into the job they are doing, and pretty high ranking jobs at that, if they were leaving school now) but not any more. So if you want your child to keep their prospects open, you really have to be looking to getting them into university.

I do think the onus should be on employers to give school leavers the opportunity to train and progress without having to go to University first. And not just in the typical vocational jobs either (construction, catering and so on) but in lab work, food technology, production, engineering and so on.