Tuition fee protest

olly300

Kohoutek wrote: »

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.

Probably because the gap between the have and the have-nots in the older group is as big as the gap between the have and have-nots in the younger generation.

I don't know any pensioners who are degree educated on pension credit.

And the winter fuel payment is a joke - but then there are more pensioners who vote than young people.

One issue which has been brought up time and time again is the requirement of lots of courses for people to have degrees i.e. nursing, social work when most of the training should be on the job.

olly300

N1AK wrote: »

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.

Do you only employ young people?

pqrdef

tomerke wrote: »

Unis were structurally underfunded and in decline AND the UK simply cannot keep borrowing with no credible plan to repay.

But there's no actual reduction in spending here. If money is being poured down the drain by mass university education, it'll continue to be poured down the drain. The only change is the details of the mechanism for taking the money out of people's pockets.

Blobby8_2

And hands up please, does anyone think that all of these loans will be repaid ? A substantial number of the successes will go abroad, the failures will, of course, remain in the benefit rich UK.

StevieJ

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.

Don't talk about, just go, you won't be missed.

StevieJ

Kohoutek wrote: »

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.

I don't think the the majority of the 5% who attended university in those days will have been too much of a burden on society.

jimjames

In relation to the latest protests I can fully understand the frustration of the peaceful demonstrators being held for many many hours (10?) without being allowed to leave and how that frustration could turn into something worse.

The students had the right to peaceful protest, imagine how you would feel if you had attending a protest, behaved perfectly and then not been allowed to leave. The whole handling of these demos seems to be designed to intimidate and prevent those peaceful protestors from attending in future. The whole media focus has been on the protestors not the police kettling tactics which seem disproportionate to the majority present.

Kohoutek

StevieJ wrote: »

I don't think the the majority of the 5% who attended university in those days will have been too much of a burden on society.

Fair enough, perhaps making the hypothetical pension credit recipient a graduate was unnecessary, but I still think there's a huge discrepancy between the government's policy towards pensioners and virtually every other group in society – e.g. the cuts to benefits to the disabled and the unemployed, not just asking students to fork out £9,000/year.

I'd hope not even pensioners (specifically 75+ year olds) would argue that spending £500 million on giving them free TV licences would be preferable to giving more support to the disabled or the unemployed.

Sapphire

Free medical care is a fairly new thing too.

What does that have to do with the subject under discussion? Free medical care is available to all in this country.

Until the last ten years, a much smaller proportion of teenagers went to university than aspire to do so now. Taxpayers – and I repeat, especially those who have not themselves been to university – should not be expected to pay for some 50% of teenagers who want to go to 'uni', often to obtain Mickey Mouse degrees.


By proportion of teenagers do you happen to mean those whose parents are unable to finance further education?

It would be faster just to type the words working class.......

Nonsense. That's just your conveniently skewed perception.

We actually need more good electricians and plumbers. (It recently took me a month to find both a decent electrician and plumber.) They also earn very good money. And what's wrong with starting at the bottom in a company (without a degree) and moving up to the top, while learning valuable information about how things work in the working world? That's how many people used to attain good careers, and you shouldn't sneer at it.

Sapphire

N1AK wrote: »

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.

Get your facts right: before the eighties, far fewer people went to university. Many would instead go straight into companies and start right at the bottom and work their way to the top.

We can't afford to pay for the further education of so many people. If people want to get degrees and can't do so before they are working, they can achieve them while they are working. I recently did a rigorous 4-year academic diploma in my 'spare' time. If I can do it, anyone can.