'Getting boos from 16,000 people about student loans…' blog discussion

Lokolo

oakhouse13 wrote: »

This campaign should be headed by someone independent with no commercial interests, an academic may be but someone certainly independent of the financial services industry.

And how does Martin Lewis have a commercial interest in student loans exactly?

jamesd

Spot on with the message, perfect opening sentences for the audience and the audience having the social background where the message most needs to be heard. To me that looks like a success story. Thanks.

Gut_Reaction

For the coming academic year we will have three children at Uni. There doesn't appear to be any consideration given in the Grant Funding of students as to the number of children from a family at college at the same time.

Is this right? If so it surely cannot be right.

To say that you don't need money to go to university is completely wrong, it is a very expensive exercise.

oakhouse13

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0125v5k

From 30 minutes in, a different perspective on our universities that are a leading export industry bringing in an estimated £5 billion a year according to this documentary from the BBC.

This is what Martin Lewis should be promoting not selling debt and a consumer lifestyle in my view. His message to young people to take on debt happens to be the commercial model he makes money from as an OFT licensed credit broker and sales referral business. His weekly email selling iphones, credit cards, cosmetics, restaurant chains - if you went to university, when you were there, did you need an email selling you a credit card, sending you to the shops?

setmefree2

MSE_Martin wrote: »

So yes I am trying to sell the concept of the attainability of higher education but not the 2012 changes - but I don't particulalry want 11 year olds thinking because they are from a low income family they cannot aspire to more. And if I have to take accusations of bias to do that job - its worth it!

Whilst I understand where you are coming from, I don't think you are examing the unintended consequences of your stance.

You are encouraging a whole generation to take on a whole heap of debt and for what exactly? Is a degree even worth this sort of money these days?

You are also endorsing the government lending money to people who will never earn enough to pay it back, potentially creating huge problems in the future. Future Britains need that like a hole in the head.

2sides2everystory

Martin you know that large numbers of us are worried that you have been tempted to use the enormous clout that this beast of a website with its millions of followers now gives you in order to dabble in mainstream politics as a means to an end.

Are you sure you are ready for it? Here you risk making assumptions about students perhaps without fully understanding that there are real families involved and who are very much affected.

In parts of Europe where general tax levels are as high as ours they do not discriminate against average families with students in the house. They do not create very unhelpful pressures within families such that students feel that they are immediately on their own at age 18 if they aspire to a university education. They do not teach their young people that there is good debt and bad debt and nor should you. The only debt that can be condoned is cleverly managed debt and the route to that is not to blindly take it on and punch your way out later.

If you are in higher education at age 18 across the North Sea you might not need to apply for support and you just start receiving £150 a month into your bank account - more if you are living away from home.

And your education up to age 23 or maybe even age 25 is completely free of tuition fees.


I think you are very wrong to use selling phrases like "paying less" in your privileged position addressing our young people. These are people who haven't "paid more". They haven't paid anything and nor should they. These are impressionable minds and for whatever reason you are grooming them from a start point which is very wrong indeed.


As Loughton Monkey said on the MSE News: Warning over charges that 'wipe millions off pension pots' thread the other day - "I wouldn't start from here ..." - neither I dare suggest should you because here we have an almighty mess too.


You are basically selling an inescapable new income tax to the next generation of ordinary workers. You might just as well tell them that this country has adopted a new national religion which believes in one thing, and that is that a sizeable fraction of excess income should be donated to the cause by all those who earn over 80% of the average national wage (which I understand is around £25K or £26K). Tell them you are the Defender of this New Faith. Tell them you have seen the Light by looking through the wrong end of the Telescope.


See where such a whacky message might get you if you tell a truth like that instead of using soundbites chosen by political spin merchants of your acquaintance.

Your Wikipedia page interestingly mentions nothing about this new government support role you have taken up. Is it an experiment?


You are an unusual citizen in many respects Martin. Are you sure you are the right person to lay out what is to pass as "normal" to our impressionable young people?

What you are doing in selling a new inescapable tax is certainly not normal.

Selling a backstop message of long term (30 year) expectation of bumping along at below average salary without a care is a rotten message to lay on a bright student.

Selling a new discriminatory intermediate level of additional income tax for those who aspire to do a bit better than bumping along (it is intermediate because the rich can escape it and commercial rates of interest any time they like) is also a rotten message.


You might as well give them free cigarettes from age 16 (for that is who you are really trying to influence isn't it?) without asking their parents and for as long as they remain in "free" higher education.

The benefit to their health and that of their families of this experiment would be very much the same as the new "Student Loan Tax" and the increased long term tax revenue would be comparable perhaps. You could tell the young people that many more people are surviving cancer now, and by the time they on average might get lung cancer through smoking it surely won't be a problem as the banks have promised they have heard there is likely to be a complete cure with no ill effects on mortgage paying ability - a cure which some among today's aspiring youngsters will of course have discovered through those very same benefits of higher education.

Yes your message really is as mixed up and falsely founded as that.


Of course, those families with the wherewithal to brush off such indelicacies by writing a cheque to their darling Gideon's, Benedicts, Florence's and Antonios can save them from the remotest suggestion of a beagle pup's future.

jamesd

oakhouse13 wrote: »

His message to young people to take on debt happens to be the commercial model he makes money from as an OFT licensed credit broker and sales referral business.

That's rather unfair. Neither Martin nor any other credit broker is authorised or able to broker student loans.

There would be some conflict of interest and reputation risk potential to consider if he was pitching loans for students that were not the best in the market or not also pitching the various non-loan options. But he's not doing that and I suspect that he's well aware of the risk and deliberately avoiding it. Take a look at the Student article today and the one for the changes.

He still has reputation risk at stake but the "you can go to university" message is worthwhile and I think that it's laudable for him to take that risk.

oakhouse13

He is reaching young people through this campaign and he is switching that audience to moneysavingexpert, a licensed credit broker selling millions of credit cards over the years at a fair guess although as he had never published financial information for his website, he keeps it secret which is his choice but for a person influencing public policy that is wrong in my view. He should talk to young people as just Martin Lewis. I accept he is taking part for genuine reasons and he is a brilliant communicator. He obviously cares.

Having siad that, it is not for me or you or him to tell young people claiming to be factual what their future debt scenario will be. It is all hypothetical and if you take the example of young people taking out credit cards for freebies - say a credit card for a £30 flight voucher - my view is that has not turned out well. They would have been better advised to keep finances simple and if they wanted a £30 flight to just buy the flight. However, that takes out the sale of a credit card for which Lewis earns around £10.00. His products - cashback, stoozing, super balance transfer - in the BBC documentary I linked to, these are in my view what the former banker turned academic guy was talking about when discussing complex financial products and the dangers.

It's about the lifestyle moneysavingexpert advertises which is a consumer lifestyle requiring credit cards and shopping. Neither of these is necessary for students in my view. Think about when you were at uni if you went. It does not need to be a commercial time in your life, that's not what university should be about in my view.

His message I have no objection to when it is aired on commercial TV as the audience is watching, knowing it has chosen to watch a commercial media.

WISHIWASRICH_2

I find the fact that ML went to a Rock Concert and encouraged the kids there to get into debt as totally repugnant.

Ban me if you want.

oakhouse13

"Neither Martin nor any other credit broker is authorised or able to broker student loans."

Will that always be the case? I think I have read that loans will be run on a commercial basis in the future.

"pitching loans for students that were not the best in the market"

I think you put too much faith in what referral business on commission such as consumer websites can do. If anything, commission has a history of leading to the wrong products being sold, is my understanding.