FIFTEEN HUNDRED QUID A MONTH FOR TUITION (think about it)

dizzie

Ha ha, Turnupforthebooks...you are a cynic after my own heart! Aren't we a fickle lot in Britain? When this huge leap in tuition fee was announced, there were riots! Now, it seems that most people want to condone the charges....and worse!!! Judging from this post, if you think that today's students are being ripped off, it seems that you are fair game for having your mental health being brought into question (Huh!?)

The government told us that "the average person with a degree earns around £100,000 more over a lifetime than the person who does not have such a qualification". The problem with this is that the statistics were "cooked" a little. That is to say, they used historic data (from a time when far fewer people went to university...and graduates were more in demand) and then they tried to extrapolate earnings to provide current day values. Those statistics do not take into account the Blair ambition to get 50% of young people into higher education (Stupid idea in my opinion...all this has done (along with the school league tables) has made schools encourage kids to go on to HE so it looks good for the school stats! when it is not really in their best interests to do so!) We are now awash with graduates - and clearly whilst some may get excellent jobs, the market forces of supply and demand mean that many will not earn vastly more than non-graduates. Furthermore nowadays, employers are demanding a degree for jobs that never required a degree. I still recall reading an advert for a graduate programme at a wine retailers where duties included doing delivery rounds and serving customers in the shop (.....and a degree is required exactly because??????). Why are they doing it?.....well it's just because they can....there are plenty of people who have degrees nowadays. Maybe they think that graduate status is some safeguard against getting the equivalent of "Little Britain's" Vicky Pollard!! But just because they are now looking for graduates, rather than anyone sensible and with reasonable "nouse", doesn't mean they'll pay any greater salary!

In addition, among my own social sphere, I am aware of at least two young people who, having obtained degrees, are now retraining in non-graduate jobs (one in plumbing and another in the fire service) because they could not find suitable employment after university. Both of these young people are of course likely to go on to earn a reasonable living. However, both will have to repay student loans once they reach the threshold amount. On the other hand, their work colleagues who went straight into a plumbing apprenticeship or into the fire service will earn identical amounts,....but they will receive almost 10% more than the graduate for every penny earned over the threshold amount (due to graduate having to repay back student loan). And, of course the non-graduate is also likely to have been earning for the previous three years, so will have a financial head start on the graduate.

For me, this is a little like the "!!!!!! Whittington" story. University appears to promise so much (and that is the idea which is hammered home in order to justify today's costs). Yet many will find that career prospects afterwards are not the metaphorical streets paved with gold! I am of the belief that we need to find a way forward to make university education more cost efficient - possibly moving towards condensing many courses into two years duration. I'd like to see a serious debate about how savings could be made in the provision of HE courses. And I'd like to see a common sense debate centred about workforce planning which asks what percentage of young people do we really need to go on to do a degree.

And before anyone questions my mental health status, I'll pre-empt you by saying it is absolutely fine. And on the math's front? Mathematics was not my degree subject, but I did gain A levels in Maths and Further Maths, so I trust that this will be good enough for anyone looking to try to denigrate my arithmetic ability.

And sadly....the statisticians have now proved that the new charging structure is not likely to save the British taxpayer any money at all, and could cost them a fair bit more in the long term. Oh dear, I wonder whether the initial policymakers had anything more than CSE maths!

mrex

i go to a RG Uni and study law, i've just come to the end of the first year.

i had 8 hours of lectures a week and 2 classes which were an hour each. that tallies up at £45 per hour of tuition / lectures, we have around 20 teaching weeks. given there are roughly 450 students in each lecture, collectively we pay over £20,000 per hour of lectures.

out of the 4 subjects i took, 2 were by qualified lecturers, 2 were by PHD students.

its a three year course, but could easily be compressed into a two year course (in fact the graduate diploma in law does exactly that, but you need to be a graduate and obviously thats not an option for people straight out of school!). i know that a fair amount of self study is required, but an average of 2 hours of contact hours a day is laughably low. i'm supposedly one of the lucky ones on the welsh government reduced fee of £3500, but even at that price its difficult to see where the money goes.

Indie_Kid

The money for the university facilities has to come from somewhere...

mrex

i know that facilities are needed.

the cheap subjects like humanities, subsidise the expensive ones like engineering and medicine.

truth is that those that do those sort of subjects are still getting an excellent deal, even at £9000. in fact those who paid £9k a year for their medicine degree, over the course of the 5 years, end up getting charged £45,000 (plus interest) for a degree that costs more like £200,000.

grapesicle

I would have thought art-based degrees would have become less popular in the last couple of years, but the arts university I've just left now has far more students in 1st year than ever before. And with the poor quality of teaching I received, it's laughable how some such courses can now demand such a price for the experience the students receive. At least student loans don't need to be paid back right away - I can see myself (though recently diagnosed with a disability) without work for some time.

I definitely wouldn't consider university now unless I suddenly developed an interest in Medicine or Engineering.