A University Education is still free (plus grants) in EU - How can we fix it in UK?

Gers

If you think education is expensive you should try ignorance!

The Wolf Report is worth a read. All about vocational education. We need both types of people to sustain the economy - those who prefer and can usefully use a higher education qualification and those who are excellent at doing stuff.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/review-of-vocational-education-the-wolf-report

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

Thank you Gers but having clicked on the link and found I am invited to pay for something to inform myself I am not entirely sure of your angle of approach !

I take it you have read the report. To we moneysavers then, could you save us the cost of an expensive download and give us a few snippets which might put some of the notions in this thread into better context?

Oh hang on - I have now seen the link to a 2.9MB document which I am now reading ... would that be a summary or the whole thing one wonders ... thanks again

jamesmorgan

TurnUpForTheBooks wrote: »

Could you education experts remind us how much we need to completely fund UK higher education please?

I'm not an education expert, but a quick look at university funding shows that they receive about £5.7b in fees from UK/EU students. If we were to make universities completely free (including living costs) I suspect we would need around £10b/annum. The total cost of £10b equates to around £300 for every tax payer in the UK. This is how much that would need to be raised.

For comparison purposes we raise about £150b in income taxes and £100b in VAT. So if we wanted to spread the cost of university education across all UK citizens one option could be to raise VAT by 10% (ie from the current 20% to 22%).

For further information we sell about 2m cars/annum in the UK. If we wanted to fund universities from car taxes we would need to charge each buyer of a new car £5000 additional tax. If we wanted to limit this to just luxury cars the figures would be much higher (eg if just applied to the 10% most expensive cars then each car would be charged an additional £50K in tax). The figures clearly wouldn't add up.

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

jamesmorgan many many thanks for providing the numbers.

I had guessed without research that the UK car population was 30M (it was about 20M when I was a student - so now the sharper amongst you know I am not a fresher!) My guesstimate was that we in the UK replaced 2% of the total cars with brand new cars each year i.e just 600,000; so seeing your 2M figure is a bonus although I do think maybe 60% of your 2M number are corporate fleet purchases. I know where the tax applies in Europe there is some kind of exemption for cars which are solely (and I mean solely) used for business purposes, and if so, they have a different colour number plate so police can easily stop a car loaded up with a young family or skis on top or some such! They take no prisoners if they catch you too!

I am otherwise suggesting that like in the European example, the tax applies to all new cars - not just what might be thought of as luxury cars. That's why we might need a very clear title for the tax that gets the point across. Maybe it should most simply be known as "Car Purchase Tax" which I think we may have tried some decades ago in UK but at much lower percentages of manufacturer's pretax sales prices.

I don't blink at £5000 per new car. I planned £15,000 per new car on average and my loose proposal assumed that the manufacturer's pre-mytax but including VAT price was around £15,000. So I am unashamedly talking about a new car price-doubling effect.

Can we agree that it is looking like my numbers would stack up to cover the higher education budget?

If so, then we can then focus more on tackling the politics of implementing such a big cuddly monster that I'm Alright Jacks love to hate but might not have the necessary rebellious attitude nor gall sufficient to actually riot against paying their fair whack

jamesmorgan

TurnUpForTheBooks wrote: »

If so, then we can then focus more on tackling the politics of implementing such a big cuddly monster that I'm Alright Jacks love to hate but might not have the necessary rebellious attitude nor gall sufficient to actually riot against paying their fair whack

Virtually every tax paying household has a car. If we assume an average car lasts 10 years then you proposal simply increases their taxes by around £500/annum. Exactly the same could be achieved by increasing income taxes or VAT. However you dress it up your proposal is essentially one of getting everyone to pay for uni education by increased taxes rather than targeting those who directly benefit. Whilst I understand the arguments for this type of approach it is not one that I support.

[Deleted User]

Having just paid £4,000 in VAT on my car (after having paid 40% tax on my income first), followed by 60% of the cost of petrol being taxed.. I'm pretty sure that's paying my way. It wasn't even that 'luxury' a car.

So, lets just raise the cost of cars. Maybe ensuring that some are kept on the road longer, that the second hand value raises - that less new ones are sold (so what if a few car garages go bust). It's a rather silly idea to think that changing the cost of one group of things, within a set, will not have an influence on all the others. I don't think people will be too chuffed paying £30k for a Ford focus

or.. we look at a degree in a different light. It use to be a gold standard of educations. Once Labour put the aim of 50% of children going to uni, the costs went up and your saw the start of student fee's rising. So, make university education more exclusive. Cut the number of courses and universities. Push the money into cutting fees. The alternative to university will be more apprenticeships in useful stuff, maybe augmented with some college courses.

TurnUpForTheBooks_2

Thanks again jamesmorgan - yes we seem to have a good level of agreement that my proposed car purchase tax is of the right order of magnitude and that it is therefore an alternative way to that of raisng more traditional taxes across the board by the amount you suggest.

However I disagree that it puts an extra tax burden of £500 pa on every household. Far from it, I would suggest that it puts maybe £500 on the value of the cheapest car that has a valid 12 month MOT and that car can then be cashed in for effectively its original pre-mytax value plus a £500 tax credit.

Those who wish to flaunt their wealth like ringo will unfortunately be unable to go about it in quite the same way but I somehow don't think ringo is the rioting kind so I sympathise with him but he'll get over it and he can vote the tax away again at the next general election if he so wishes.

Ringo clearly doesn't think buying a £24,000 car is flaunting wealth. All views are valid, but I say come off it ringo. What proportion of UK households can afford to spend more than the entire average UK annual wage (when you consider that it is post income tax spending) on a shiney new intermediate range car.

I agree, ringo, it is not generally a "luxury" car but it is nevertheless an item that only the minority can afford whether via savings or via loan finance.

I drive a car just as "good" as yours ringo - probably better, but it is older and if I were a canny trader I could probably buy 24 of mine for the price of yours. Mine is a good make, well maintained and costs less to maintain and insure than one like yours I would think.

But it is old and you know it and my neighbours know it. That does not stop them taking a lift in it sometimes and it does not stop me taking it on journeys to other countries sometimes. It is a reliable A to B machine. It is not a demonstration of my wealth or otherwise. I have had many new cars, but I have never myself paid for a new one!

I fully accept that there are a lot of people in the UK that might be horrified to learn that their love affair with petrolhead stuff might soon mean they will have to tone down their ardour and find some other way to demonstrate their ego if they don't want to pay a fair wealth tax.

It is a cultural thing. UK culture is a mess. It is not tidied up by sticking shiney new cars for all on our rabbit hutch driveways. Put a proper level of tax on them and then we shall see who really is capable of keeping up with the Jones'. I suspect for a while we shall not actually see much difference. Ringo will begrudgingly cough up and keep his. I wasn't tempted to sell mine when the government £2K subsidy for scrapping an old one was available. I don't suppose I'll cash it in now for the chance of a £1000 tax credit either. I don't really need a car but I want to keep my old trusty. It costs me nothing to do so. Ringo will pay more than me until I decide I want to buy one like his - which I could by writing a cheque this afternoon but I doubt I ever will.

I like my idea - I am not surprised others in UK might not, but it is a runner, isn't it? So why not debate it ?

Personally I cannot stand the argument that higher education is the luxury not the shiney intermediate level car straight from the factory. In a supposedly well developed world leading society, that kind of suggestion sounds so backward to me that I find myself ashamed to tell educated people I meet from other countries that it is a widely held view in the UK. I guess that is what happens when non-educated people find they have by default and a little persistence or even hard work risen to the middle of the heap and wish to play king of the castle, or like ringo, their perception of where the top middle and bottom of the heap actually lies is worlds apart from where other people/nationalities think they are.

Fascinating stuff methinks

[Deleted User]

Mine has a 360 camera, plays MP3s and has a built in GPS/map thingy. It rocks. I don't actually give a flying carp about what car other people have. As long as my family are comfy, I don't have to worry about servicing/MOT and breakdowns (and I don't.. it's new). I haven't paid for it in full, since I don't have £24k in my sky-rocket. I realise it is more economically sensible to buy a 4 year old model for £9k. I don't have £9k to spend on a car either - and the interest rate on loans is 11-14%. Rather than 4% on a new car. Ironically, this means there's not actually much difference in paying for a new car, Vs an older car (over 3 years), especially when you consider the new car doesn't need MOTs and includes servicing.

Do you want to stop all the people like me (i.e. middle-class high wage earners) from buying new cars? Because that's what we'd do if they were suddenly more expensive. Then you could wave buy buy to any British car manufacturing (my car was built in Sunderland).

You've obviously not been studying Economics, or you'd realise I'm a 'rational' person. I will not pay more for a product if I can't'/don't want to. If a Nissan Qashqai suddenly cost £35k I would not suddenly have more money to pay for it. Your idea that 'keeping up with the Jones' would 'shame' me in to paying a boat-load more tax is laughable.

Funny lefty ideas though. You need to keep more an 'economists' head on when thinking about it though

Dunroamin

ringo_24601 wrote: »

Mine has a 360 camera, plays MP3s and has a built in GPS/map thingy. It rocks. I don't actually give a flying carp about what car other people have. As long as my family are comfy, I don't have to worry about servicing/MOT and breakdowns (and I don't.. it's new). I haven't paid for it in full, since I don't have £24k in my sky-rocket. I realise it is more economically sensible to buy a 4 year old model for £9k. I don't have £9k to spend on a car either - and the interest rate on loans is 11-14%. Rather than 4% on a new car. Ironically, this means there's not actually much difference in paying for a new car, Vs an older car (over 3 years), especially when you consider the new car doesn't need MOTs and includes servicing.

Do you want to stop all the people like me (i.e. middle-class high wage earners) from buying new cars? Because that's what we'd do if they were suddenly more expensive. Then you could wave buy buy to any British car manufacturing (my car was built in Sunderland).

You've obviously not been studying Economics, or you'd realise I'm a 'rational' person. I will not pay more for a product if I can't'/don't want to. If a Nissan Qashqai suddenly cost £35k I would not suddenly have more money to pay for it. Your idea that 'keeping up with the Jones' would 'shame' me in to paying a boat-load more tax is laughable.

Funny lefty ideas though. You need to keep more an 'economists' head on when thinking about it though

Not my idea of a "lefty"!

[Deleted User]

Dunroamin wrote: »

Not my idea of a "lefty"!

It is a very strange view that forgets people only earn £X. They will change their spending habits. Someone who buys a £25k car will not go out and buy a £35k car because it's taxed higher. My millionaire brother-in-law who runs a porsche and lexus still has to consider how much they cost. Otherwise he'd be driving a DB9, and I know he's love that.

Don't get too upset OP, but my car is also a 63 plate too, only picked it up last week. Both my wife and I are not 'time rich' so it is invaluable that our car is very reliable and hassle free. New cars do that. We do only run one car though, and that's fairly unusual round our way. I love that 360 camera now. I'd much rather run a 5 year old, cheaper car. I'm not a petrol head at all. But i don't fancy maintaining it.

It's funny how people perceive others. I don't see myself as rich, and I know I actually earn just above the average salary for my town. My wife's friends in Bristol see us as quite wealthy, since they're not. I don't think my BIL sees himself as rich (since he's got an uncle who is practically an oligarch). I see my BIL as mega-minted..

Ho hum, back to work

PS. if you think student fees are bad, wait until you pay stamp duty - and you have to pay it all upfront, without being allowed to take a loan for it. If you ever live in the South East, you'll find it is rather crippling.