Tuition fee protest

tomerke

Frankly..I have tremendous new respect for this govt for pushing through a politically damaging and difficult legislation on fees. The scheme is not rocket science, the fact is universities in this country are one of its only exports left in terms of its economy. Unis were structurally underfunded and in decline AND the UK simply cannot keep borrowing with no credible plan to repay.

So TOUGH!..fees have to go up or taxes have to go up or both..

This scheme is progressive..there is no doubt. Students will actually pay less upfront! and will repay progresively inline with earnings. As for social mobility, maybe its less clear but who wouldn't take the chance of high earning career and paying back your fees in the future when you can more than afford it.

The protests were a joke and perhaps should teach people about the gutter riff-raff that is the so called future of this country. Rubber bullets should have been used..and more arrests made.

Degenerate

Cleaver wrote: »

There's actually not many jobs out there that 'require' a university education, as in the university teaches you something that you have to have to do the job. Medicine I guess? Law? Egineering?

I guess most degrees are (were?) seen as a benchmark type of qualification that a lot of employers ask for just because they can.

My day job is a highly specialized technical role that "requires" an engineering degree or minimum HNC. I don't have one. Neither do most of my colleagues.

Cleaver

Degenerate wrote: »

My day job is a highly specialized technical role that "requires" an engineering degree or minimum HNC. I don't have one. Neither do most of my colleagues.

Fair enough. I guess that proves what I was saying, that there are a lot of employers who will ask for a degree as part of the job spec as it is a benchmark qualification. Whether it's actually essential for the role is another thing.

You obviously have the experience to do your job, hence you doing it without a degree.

Wookster

tomterm8 wrote: »

There are a lot of jobs out there that do not 'require' a university education, but where a university education makes it very much easier to get your foot in the door.

And the reason for that is every tom (no pun intended) !!!!!! & harry has a degree.

tomterm8

Wookster wrote: »

And the reason for that is every tom (no pun intended) !!!!!! & harry has a degree.

Maybe. On the other hand, it could be that degree means a different thing than it did 20 years ago. These days, a lot of degrees are in subjects that would have had a different name before the conservative party abolished polytechnics. People would still have needed good further education courses, the different name is not that important.

StevieJ

tomterm8 wrote: »

Maybe. On the other hand, it could be that degree means a different thing than it did 20 years ago. These days, a lot of degrees are in subjects that would have had a different name before the conservative party abolished polytechnics. People would still have needed good further education courses, the different name is not that important.

I don't actually think much has changed, the equivalent of the 5% who went to university in the 60's (Russell group) will still be sought out for fast tracking , the rest will be treated as 'A' 'O' level entry if they are lucky. Oh apart from that unnecessary debt of course.

codger

I can understand the frustration of some, but not the vapid juvenilia witnessed at the recent televised University of London "news conference", where these pompous Fascists (by virtue of seeking to deny the validity of my electoral vote) harped on about "the movement", "the cause", and every other iota of drivel that the rest of adult society thought had been buried in the rubble of the fallen Berlin Wall.

I, too, would like to have the world the way I want it, but it ain't going to happen. I too would like to quote historical precedent, but if I lead an attack on Whitehall in the cause of BRING BACK MIRAS!!! (on the basis that other folks benefited from something which today's folks do not) I'm going to look as embarrassingly stupid as these so-called "student leaders".

Fact is, this current bunch of half-wit "protest" organisers subscribe to a political philosophy that caused all this mess in the first place, viz: New Labour's obsession with creating a Client State in which everyone came first in a race (and no-one ever lost), everyone went to university, and all places of further education were suddenly institutes of higher education.

Of course, between the time I took my 'A' Levels in the 1960s (at a grammar school) and went to uni, and today's era when infinitely more students pass their 'A' Levels than my generation ever did, the UK as a whole must surely have become a brighter, more intellectual, more articulate Society -- and my lot were really, really dumb.

In which case, I'm still as dumb as ever, and the fact that I could see a major financial problem arising in sustaining so many "universities", and so many degree courses on the back of so many suddenly, and inexplicably, attainable A Level qualifications -- whereas student protestors do not / New Labour did not -- just shows what an ignorant old bloke I truly am.

Yup, I was once a student 'leader' (small 'l'). Were I holding a meeting nowadays, I'd likely be asking for most of the room to get back to primary school because, all too clearly, they know sod all about anything -- except their own pathetic self-interest.

N1AK

Sapphire wrote: »

Previous generations have not, in the main, had free university education, as you state with such certainty. Only a very small proportion of the population went to university in the past.

It is unfair to ask hard-pressed taxpayers, especially those who have not themselves been to university, to pay the fees of 50% or more teenagers who want to go to 'uni', often as a default option, and often to study a subject that is of no practical value to society (or them).

Those in previous generations who attended university did receive free education, that is exactly what I was comparing to those who do today. If you want to debate the quantity of people going to university, that's all well and good, it isn't what was being discussed.

The level of university attendance all over the western world has been rising rapidly (and so to in the developing world). America exceeded 30% attendance in 2005 and is rapidly heading towards ~40%, which is the level we see. America's education system has remained, until now, more costly to students so the high attendance shows they think it has value.

Increasing university costs will simply motivate the most capable/ wealthiest of our next generation to go somewhere else. There are a lot of 40-60 year olds at the moment who are relying on them to make up for the gap in pensions etc they've left. I, for one, won't have any qualms in leaving the UK if I'm taxed too heavily to fund the excess of my elders.

N1AK

Cleaver wrote: »

There's actually not many jobs out there that 'require' a university education, as in the university teaches you something that you have to have to do the job. Medicine I guess? Law? Egineering?

I guess most degrees are (were?) seen as a benchmark type of qualification that a lot of employers ask for just because they can.

Any argument that relies on the base assumption that a massive number of people are doing something for no logical reason tends to require extremely robust proof to be taken seriously.

Employers 'require' degrees because they set a reliable (admittedly not overly high) bar. When I'm cutting down CVs to decide candidates for interviews I always try and give non-graduates a fair chance. I haven't stopped doing it, because it would make me feel uncomfortable morally, but to be honest the exceptions are vanishingly rare.

Kohoutek

N1AK wrote: »

Increasing university costs will simply motivate the most capable/ wealthiest of our next generation to go somewhere else. There are a lot of 40-60 year olds at the moment who are relying on them to make up for the gap in pensions etc they've left. I, for one, won't have any qualms in leaving the UK if I'm taxed too heavily to fund the excess of my elders.

It's a bit of an irony that the government is asking the next generation to fork out £9,000/year in tuition fees, when it will happily bail out someone who might have had the benefit of free university education but didn't save anything for their retirement, through pension credit and give them a heap of other benefits (free bus passes, TV licences, prescriptions, winter fuel allowance etc).

I'm surprised there isn't more of an intra-generation backlash as you say, I suspect there isn't largely through ignorance.