tuition fees - cap raised to £9k

Brallaqueen

I'll be the first to hold my hand up and say my degree has not helped my working life (English and French, emphasis on medieval literature) but before I went to University I was a completely different person, being shy, socially awkward and quite frankly a spoilt little brat. Along with Chaucer and Icelandic sagas I learned to get along with people, manage money, motivate myself, work a washing machine without flooding the house and for one memorable year deal with a suicidal housemate.

While a lot of emphasis is, rightly, put on the academic side of things, there is a strong personal development aspect to University life that people may now miss out on.

Loughton_Monkey

I still think student loans should start at infant's school (age 5), and that interest should be added at RPI + BOE Base Rate + 4.3766%. This would (a) ensure that our children learn mathematics properly (sadly lacking these days), and (b) ensure that people 'fully appreciate the value' of education.

OK. Joking apart.

More seriously, if we have high loans, then I would like to see them partially written off, slowly, according to certain criteria - dependant, perhaps, on working in UK (or abroad for a UK company) - and dependant upon amount of tax being paid. The principle being you don't get hit hard if you are now 'putting your education back' into the UK economy.

ruggedtoast

Cleaver wrote: »

A couple of my thoughts, and apologies if others have said something similar.

Like a lot of issues, I sit on the fence on this one. If nearly half of our youngsters want to go to uni, often to do 7-hour a week courses for three years then why should the taxpayer pay for it? On the other hand, it sucks because Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, LSE and a whole host of other good unis could charge £15,000 a year for every course and still happily fill every single place with rich students. Seems that there should be some sort of happy medium somwehere in all this.

This leads me to think that won't a logical conclusion of this be enterprising universities starting to radically change the way in which degrees are delivered. Even at £3,000 a year it appears that students are happy with 8 hours of lectures and coming out with a 2:2 in Media Studies. It strikes me that they won't put up with that for £9,000 a year. So surely some enterprising university will come up with an intensive, 40 hour a week degree course, which fully expects you to do 15 hours a week in your own time too, and you could maybe achieve the degree in a year or so. Maybe charge £5,000 or something. An Engineering Degree at Cambridge probably needs to be three years as it's really hard. A degree in Media Relations from Sunderland could probably be done in a third of the time if someone put their mind to it. Maybe this introduction of fees will start bringing about some very different types of degrees?

40 contact hours a week would require the student to do 120 hours a week of self guided study to comply with current learning models.

The British university system does not measure university education based on the number of hours they've been sitting in a classroom.

Students are assessed on the level of their ability, and despite the stereotypes that are chucked around with gay abandon British graduates stack up extremely well against their international peers.

Its also incidentally the reason we have more international students coming here to study than any other country apart from the US. Not to mention more universities in the top 50 in the world than anywhere apart from the States.

SingleSue

drc wrote: »

It's kind of ironic that in the past people went to university to improve their long term economic situation (get a degree and a good job was easier to get). Now it's going to be the opposite - go to unviversity and your economic prospects are basically down the drain as you start your working life with huge debts. I can't imagine that many people will really see the benefit of getting a degree as how many jobs are likely to pay, in the longrun, enough to make up for the cost of university? Better to just get some vocational qualification or go to university abroad. I think the coalition have really shot themselves in the foot with this one.

This is exactly what my eldest son said this evening.

He is now thinking of not bothering with University as the debt ratio at the end of it with the new cap is just not worth it.

In fact, it has made him question why he is continuing in education at all as he has begger all chance of being able to afford to go to Uni so why try hard to get the A levels (I did point out the possibility of better employment with A levels compared to GCSE's).

melancholly

you used to 'read' for a degree (hence contact hours should not be a measure of required working)...... now there is a spoon feeding expectation by some......

jonnyd281

tomterm8 wrote: »

By advanced mathematics, I am talking about a lot of the stuff that isn't very practical in the real world. I am sure you can make a living doing practical maths, much less so if you are doing mathematical research into prime number theory.

I'd be careful making sweeping statements like that, a lot of the "impractical" maths leads on to other developments.

Anyway subjects like maths, engineering, the sciences, law and medicine should be funded by grants (i.e. free to the student no matter what their background) and the "modern" degrees like media studies funded by loans.

Davesnave

jonnyd281 wrote: »

I'd be careful making sweeping statements ....
Anyway subjects like maths, engineering, the sciences, law and medicine should be funded by grants (i.e. free to the student no matter what their background) and the "modern" degrees like media studies funded by loans.

That was pretty sweeping too, wasn't it?

When your scientists and engineers have created this new product, I suppose it will be so self-evidently good that they won't need anyone to give it an aesthetically pleasing shape, or to market it effectively? No, it will probably sell itself, especially in a world with so little external competition.

vaporate

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Non STEM courses (Science etc) will now receive no funding at all from the government. There is no university out there that can afford to only charge £6000, let alone less than that.

Shorn of funding, course fees across the board willl have to be at least £7000 or we cant run the courses. And that is pushing it.

The criteria for charging over £6000 are not even quarter baked, they are basically a meaningless sop to try and make Russell Group universities appear to care about widening participation (which they do not and never will) so they can charge £9000.

Its a fcking disgrace and the shower of sh|t that the Lib Dems are for backing this cluster fck has pretty much ensured they will not be getting my vote again.

Spot on.

This u-turn just proves that any party will do anything for personal gain.

Why even vote/ I questioned this at first but now I know why the public don't bother...pick your poison.

vaporate

jonnyd281 wrote: »

I'd be careful making sweeping statements like that, a lot of the "impractical" maths leads on to other developments.

Anyway subjects like maths, engineering, the sciences, law and medicine should be funded by grants (i.e. free to the student no matter what their background) and the "modern" degrees like media studies funded by loans.[/QUOTE]

Discrimination of the highest order.

Politicians should be booted out of their job then too seeing as politics is 'easier'.

quantic

Leaving University with up to 40k in debt and having to save a 10-25% deposit for a house... hmm, I think we are going to see a lot less people going to University.

EDIT: I can also see a big reduction of Masters students, I know my employer would have had second thoughts about paying for mine if it had of been 9k at the time.