tuition fees - cap raised to £9k

lemonjelly

There are some interesting moves here. The current limit is £3290 (expected to become approx £3370 this year). Currently, you don't start repaying until you have an annual income of circa £15k, so the move to an income of £21k is interesting. It also means you won't start paying it off until later.

However IIRC there is a bigger issue here. Whilst the debt rises in line with inflation whilst you earn below £21k, once you get to £21k you pay interest at inflation + 1.5%, and if you earn above £40k that means you pay inflation + 3%.

tomterm8

Hm, with that, the loss of child benefit for higher rate tax, plus all the cuts in benefit, it makes you think there will be quite a few people who would benefit by refusing wage increases. In the south east, £40k isn't a huge amount to live on.

ruggedtoast

It'll end up like the US where we have the "virtuous poor" working two jobs and studying part time in the evening to learn the skills that will enable them to work in an economy where people have to work two jobs to study part time in the evening.

Oh wait, Vince Cable has just sent an email to Lib Dem members about this, everything is going to be fine apparently. Its affordable and fair, and most important, its fairness is based on its affordability.

The true extent of the fairness may not be evident for many months however, apparently.

lynzpower

How long do we think it will take to realise there will be a shortage of essential staff, my niece has just gone off to do radiology. thats a hellofalot of debt for a job that is not exactly megamoney at the end of it. She already has to work 3 days a week for free for the NHS to aquire her qualification. ( and little time for part time work around it) I worry for her.

likewise im grateful im doing my course now. the uni im at would be charging top money, well its one of the best in the UK. again, i wont get megamoney at the end of it, so I wouldnt be paying a lot more for effectively a 25k a year job at the end of it

lynzpower

lemonjelly wrote: »

There are some interesting moves here. The current limit is £3290 (expected to become approx £3370 this year). Currently, you don't start repaying until you have an annual income of circa £15k, so the move to an income of £21k is interesting. It also means you won't start paying it off until later.

However IIRC there is a bigger issue here. Whilst the debt rises in line with inflation whilst you earn below £21k, once you get to £21k you pay interest at inflation + 1.5%, and if you earn above £40k that means you pay inflation + 3%.

Whats also interesting is that the super-low interest rate is also going adn student will have to pay whatever the new student-loan-book owner wants to charge.

Im assumuing that this interest will continue to accrue whilst not earning to the threshold as it did to me -I might have only been earning 13k, but the interest was accruing. More interest will accrue once the 2low rate" is lifted and its ever-s-sweet of them to raise the bar to 21k, but what happens to interest in the meanwhile?

Radiantsoul

I am not sure it is a debt in the normal sense of the word as it is contingent upon having a reasonable salary and is written off after a period of time. The minus side is I don't believe it can be included in bankruptcy proceedings.

lynzpower

Radiantsoul wrote: »

I am not sure it is a debt in the normal sense of the word as it is contingent upon having a reasonable salary and is written off after a period of time. The minus side is I don't believe it can be included in bankruptcy proceedings.

It is a debt in the sense that
a) its acruing interest
b) it goes against you as outstanding unsecured debt when you go to get a mortgage

I wonder whether it would be write-off-able if the loan book is transferred to a seperate company

torontoboy45

well, I've just skimmed the bbc site and those commenting appear to concur that - you guessed it - uni's will max out on this. quelle surprise...
a wickedly unholy alliance between the vested interests of HE grandees and a left-leaning BBC hell-bent on toppling the coalition. what else could it possibly be.......

priced out of housing for yrs and now it would seem about to be priced out of higher education. what a future we're holding out to our offspring.

drc

Will Scottish students still get free university education? If so, why? Surely if we are "all in it together" then there shouldn't be an "apartheid" system whereby Scottish students get free education and English students have to, not only pay for their education but subsidise the Scottish students through their taxes as well?

chewmylegoff

the announcement was that the cap was £6,000, but that in "exceptional circumstances" they would be allowed to charge up to £9,000. so i suppose you could call the £6,000 a soft cap and that it will all depend on how "exceptional circumstances" this is defined and applied. if you take the dictionary definition of the word it would suggest that only a handful of courses nationwide would be more than £6,000. I expect that what will actually happen is that initially most will be £6,000 or below, but within a couple of years more and more will be making the "exceptional" argument, until there are more that are "exceptional" than not.