Are UK Universities a drag on our economy?

borntobefree

Debt, debt and more debt. Have we learned nothing :eek:

We should refuse to listen to the academics that want to get our kids into debt, they are little better than the bankers who got us into this mess.

Take the axe to these institutions and let's have something we can afford without hijacking our children's future.

borntobefree

vivalagloria wrote: »

I strongly disagree with cutting funding from any subject over another. There seems to be a divide between humanities and science subjects, as science is seen as more valuable. And while yes, it contributes more directly to the way our society lives in the modern world, cutting funding for humanities subjects isn't the answer. I've heard people saying things about subjects like History and English, among other humanities and arts subjects, being useless as degrees because they don't directly lead to a profession, but what's wrong with that? What's wrong with people learning about something they're interested it? Surely that's what makes for a well rounded and knowledgeable society?

Nothing at all - except we are bankrupt and we only have limited resources and we have to ration. So it's surely better to cut in the least "useful" areas? What would you rather have less doctors?

gauly

posh*spice wrote: »

Maybe we need less of this "researching" now? Students, parents and the government don't won't to pay for it!

The reason I say that, is that there were two polls done over the weekend and the figures were pretty much unchanged on previous polls. There doesn't seem to be much sympathy out there for Unis. I have no idea whether this is justified or not.

Universities don't work the way you seem to think they do. In theory, teaching and research are separately funded. In reality, for most subjects, research funding subsidises teaching rather than the other way around.

For example, PhDs and research assistants are paid from grants from research councils, but almost all will be asked to do some teaching duties: tutorials, individual supervision of student projects, even interviewing prospective students and lecturing. For some professors 90% or even 100% of their time will be funded by research funding and outside consultancy work rather than teaching money but they may still spend a good proportion of their time on teaching.

Along with the cuts to teaching there has been a large (but not so large) cut to research funding. Many post-docs have been/are going to be losing their jobs and it will not be good for students. I have often found post-docs to be more helpful and more willing to help than lecturers, particularly for those who are struggling, since they are less detached from the student experience having been through it fairly recently themselves.

borntobefree

jennikitten wrote: »

Yeah..you're right. And we can't afford old or disabled people any more either, so we should get rid of those too :eek:

So you would rather old people and disabled people suffer than we had less research into Jane Austen and the Brontes?

borntobefree

You know that something is wrong with a sector when after 13 years of boom it refuses to admit it has got flabby...... of course cuts can and must be made!

borntobefree

Some might find this interesting

The Great Student Loan Con Trick – On Us All…

We should be very clear that students won’t be funding Universities for some time to come, as they don’t have the money. What the Government is doing is to switch funding from the national budget (and National Debt), to an ‘off balance sheet’ vehicle called the Student Loan Company. Imagine that in 2012, 450,000 students borrow £10k (£7k tuition, £3k accommodation). That amounts to £4.5 billion in university funding that will no longer be provided through the budget, but will be funded elsewhere. I imagine that the SLC will have to borrow that money from somewhere, creating a) a repayment obligation and b) an interest liability. Neither of these will appear in the Nation’s finances, although the Government will retain ‘last resort’ accountability for the debt and its interest costs, because of the pledge to repay any outstanding debt after 30 years. At a stroke, Osborne has shaved £4.5 billion of costs, which of course helps him to show he is meeting the deficit reduction plan, and of course keeping the rate of growth of the National Debt down – but we, the taxpayers, still have the liability to whoever lent the money to the SLC in the first place.

In year 2, the £4.5 billion for the first intake is repeated for their second year, and a further £4.5 billion (let’s not assume inflation at the moment) is added for the 2013 intake – an annual charge of £9 billion which is shaved off current expenditure. Neat, eh? The debt overhang is now three lots of £4.5 billion, plus interest charged on the first year’s borrowing, which at, say, 3.5%, equates to £160 million. Now the country has a hidden debt liability of £13.66 billion. In year 3, the annual addition to the debt pile is £13.5 billion, and stays at that level for each year afterwards. £13.5 billion per annum shaved from current spending, which is a good thing, right?
Er…no. That’s because we are still spending that money and the state is assuming, off balance sheet, an ever-rising mountain of debt. The interest charged each year just keeps on rising.
But, of course, this is not our debt, but the students’, so that’s okay…right?

Er…no. As mentioned above, the pledge to forgive any outstanding debt at the end of 30 years means that the state effectively guarantees this debt. Okay, some students pay it all off, some part of it, and some not at all. Taking some conservative assumptions about inflation, and some aggressive assumptions about salaries and the proportion of people paying off their debt, I reckon that, in 2042, the state will probably have to write off around £25 billion – that’s the effect of interest charges over that period. So, for the privilege of shaving £4.5 billion from 2012’s budget, the Government of 2042 will have to find the money to repay £25 billion – or simply add it to the National Debt (where it will continue to incur interest charges). This continues every year from then on. My model (which I know could be challenged by someone else’s view), shows that the write off climbs every year after that, such that, by 2057, the state is writing off £50bn p.a. How will they cope with that expense, especially when the cumulative write-off by then will have been a cool £500 billion?
That’s how I believe we are executing a massive con trick on our kids and their kids. I believe the Government knows it, but are hoping that people don’t spot what they are doing.

jennikitten

dopester wrote: »

Is your English degree seing you contribute a lot at the cutting edge of IT? I doubt it.

Thanks for your interest :rotfl:I interviewed for a technical author job at a reasonably well-known company which invents and develops certain types of conferencing hardware & software, but it was too far from home for me to move there. Not quite cutting-edge but more technical than a job in PC World

I taught myself HTML, Javascript & PHP at age 14. During university I worked for an e-learning software company, and since leaving uni I've developed my own scripts, worked in digital marketing & I'm currently doing moderately technical work for a company with people who developed some of the core features & properties within the web hosting industry. So whilst I'm not Bill Gates, Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerburg, I'm not doing too badly for someone who went to a local comp and has no IT qualifications beyond a Key Skills certificate.

dopester wrote: »

Does that make the fees of upto £9K a year for you to study English or History worth it?

I did it because I enjoyed it, although I'm the first to admit that not everyone goes to university or chooses their course with that in mind.

borntobefree wrote: »

So you would rather old people and disabled people suffer than we had less research into Jane Austen and the Brontes?

Most research in English is science-based stuff in the area of linguistics. The literature tends to be paper-based that goes around in circles of opinion depending on the era and popular thought. I would cut any 'research' for literature, but the linguistics side is quite valuable, particularly for understanding and helping people in areas like forensics and autism.

borntobefree

On average, many students can reckon on owing £30k or more when they leave; a debt that will probably rise to £37k before they reach the £21k threshold of salary. Because of the interest rates involved, relative to the repayment programme based on their salary, many can count on almost 2 decades before the debt gets below £30k. Some won’t pay any off, and the cumulative effect of interest will more than double that initial £30k debt over its lifetime (probably 1.5 times). So, before they even think of providing these people with a mortgage, banks will have to look at the SLC liability and ask themselves whether the applicant can really afford the loan – especially because 9% of their salary is already accounted for – and, if that’s 9% of their gross, then the % of their net take-home is probably something like 12 or 13%. These people won’t be able to buy their own place, and will find that out much sooner than the politicians think. What a tragedy.
And what a tragedy for the economy as a whole. Many of these people are the type that fuel consumer spending, and with such a big proportion of their income already being siphoned off what does the Government really think will happen to the economy? Some 9-12% of income diverted to paying off student debt must amount to a sizeable brake on the economy as a whole, asnone of this can be spent on goods and services. But of course, this is unlikely to start to bite until around 2018/19, when I reckon many of the intake of 2012 will hit the repayment threshold – which is another interesting point.

And all for what! So we can have some more research into Chaucer?

Enough!

Get out the axe

borntobefree

jennikitten wrote: »

Most research in English is science-based stuff in the area of linguistics. The literature tends to be paper-based that goes around in circles of opinion depending on the era and popular thought. I would cut any 'research' for literature, but the linguistics side is quite valuable, particularly for understanding and helping people in areas like forensics and autism.

Oh really. When I googled English Literature research I can up with lots like this

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/research/englishliterature/index.html

The main periods of research in the English Literature Group are:

• Medieval Literature
• Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature
• Eighteenth-Century Literature
• Romanticism
• Late Nineteenth-Century Literature
• Early Twentieth-Century Literature

The main fields of research include:

• Austen and Book History
• Chaucer
• Crime Fiction
• Gothic and Gender
• Illustration Studies
• Literature and the Law
• Modern Medievalism
• Modernism
• Modern Drama
• Old Norse
• Postcolonial Studies
• Robin Hood Studies
• Shakespeare and Theory
• Wales-Ireland
• War and Literature
• Women's Writing

borntobefree

Much as I like Robin Hood - I must say !!!!!!!? And this is supposed to be one of our better Universities. LOL.