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Are degrees in the UK value for money?

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Comments

  • Cakeguts
    Cakeguts Posts: 7,627 Forumite
    Sixth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    GreatApe wrote: »
    We have dysfunctional people and families we do not have poverty.
    Obviously if you can not afford heating and eating you eat. There is no one on earth who is hungry who would put the heating on over eating

    And I do not believe there are very many people who actually have to make that choice. For a start if you are on say benefits its quite likely you live in a flat which costs a good deal less to heat than a house.



    Yes divorce is hard
    Still not the same as true poverty though true poverty is bathing once a week its the army knocking on your door you bribe them or they beat you silly its the courts that are not fair that jail you because someone powerful dislikes you its actual food shortages so that you are sub 5ft in height or sub 4ft for a woman its having to prostitue yourself because you are truly destitute. We do not suffer true poverty in the uk if you are functional you can live a decent life without even working one day of your life.



    I am sorry to heat you found it hard but from what you said it was your husbands fault abandoning his responsibility in a particularly bad way. I would be happy to support people in your situation with some sort of emergency funding to tide you over etc



    If you look at a benefits website and put in details for anyone with children the benefits/tax-credits/support they get allows them to live a decent life.

    So while it might be a husband working a minimium wage job 35 hours a week that is not their only income. For instance a couple aged 35 with two kids aged 5 years old renting a flat for £1,000 in London would get

    On top of the husbands £262.50 weekly wage they recieve
    £152/pw in tax credits, £165/pw in HB, £35/pw in child benefits, and if they switch to universal credit they would get an additional £20/pw

    That example family income is £559/pw
    Their rent is £230/pw

    They have £330/pw to feed/cloth themselves that seems quite reasonable to me

    Dysfunctional in a way that means they can't budget. The kind of person who will spend a lot of money on Christmas giving their children the latest in toys but not pay the rent. So the children have lots of things and nowhere to put them in the council emergency accommodation.

    The benefits system is set up so that if they rent the right property it is very difficult for someone to be evicted for rent arrears. Yet some parents still manage to get themselves and their children evicted for using their housing benefit to buy things that they don't need and not pay for things they do need like somewhere to live. It wouldn't matter how much money you gave to someone like this. They would just buy more things.
  • economic
    economic Posts: 3,002 Forumite
    Arklight wrote: »
    Go to a poor part of the UK and meet some poor people and tell me we don't.

    And you really don't want to get into a "Who's the most well travelled" willy waving competition than me. My airmiles statement is much longer than yours.

    why cant we tax your airmiles to help the poor? is that ok with you?
  • GreatApe
    GreatApe Posts: 4,452 Forumite
    Cakeguts wrote: »
    Dysfunctional in a way that means they can't budget. The kind of person who will spend a lot of money on Christmas giving their children the latest in toys but not pay the rent. So the children have lots of things and nowhere to put them in the council emergency accommodation.

    The benefits system is set up so that if they rent the right property it is very difficult for someone to be evicted for rent arrears. Yet some parents still manage to get themselves and their children evicted for using their housing benefit to buy things that they don't need and not pay for things they do need like somewhere to live. It wouldn't matter how much money you gave to someone like this. They would just buy more things.


    there is that I would consider that a lite form of dysfunction.
    Once it happens the council will probably pay the landlord directly
    Before the lefties have a hissy fit the landlord can be and more often is a social landlord

    The bigger dysfunctions are addictions.
    Eg I know a proper alcoholic he would probably be dead if not for his wife
    They are not that poor in that they even have 2 homes but they are poor in that they live a !!!! life. He goes out gets blind drunk and whats worse he picks fights with people twice his size and comes home bloody black and blue and I assume takes a lot of it out on her too. She is an angle for putting up with it I definitely couldn't. If she kicks him out he would be homeless and in the gutter within weeks. His dysfunctional addiction is what has made him poor and could make him horrifically poorer.

    But for momentum and corbyn cheerleaders poverty is a 120kg single mother working as a self employed part time nail artists with zero customers and with two big dogs shouting out on TV that she has to go to bed hungry so her kids can eat thanks to the evil tory tax cuts.
  • GreatApe
    GreatApe Posts: 4,452 Forumite
    zagubov wrote: »
    I'm not denying that. London Uni's expanding from a massive base number.
    However the new university boom has probably boosted student populations and local economies in countless other towns and cities like Plymouth, Portsmouth, Bournemouth, Luton, Bedford, Buckingham and points north. A map of university locations would show them to be much more widely dispersed than back in the 70s/80s. I can remember when the only universities in Lancashire were Manchester Victoria, UMIST, Salford and Liverpool.

    I'd be interested if any county town with a new uni was undergoing a long-term decline in local student population.

    What would once have been polytechnics or specialist HE colleges available to potential students via the GTTR or PCAS are now able to recruit nationally via the massive central HE clearing house UCAS.

    I think the new unis have have a regionally redistributive role to play by shifting educational money, staff and students around the country into almost every county. That's a side-effect of HE expansion that I think is very positive.


    but it did not dispearse the kids out it concentrated them

    If the kids just got a job age 16 they probably just stayed local so their demand for goods and services stayed local

    now the kids are going to universities in large numbers, everywhere which does not have a university suffered a population drain to the areas which did have universities.

    The population of inner London has gone up more than outter London over the last 20 years partly because of the student boom. Kids like me from north London went to live in Zone 1. Kids from far and wide came to live in Zone 1.
  • economic
    economic Posts: 3,002 Forumite
    GreatApe wrote: »
    but it did not dispearse the kids out it concentrated them

    If the kids just got a job age 16 they probably just stayed local so their demand for goods and services stayed local

    now the kids are going to universities in large numbers, everywhere which does not have a university suffered a population drain to the areas which did have universities.

    The population of inner London has gone up more than outter London over the last 20 years partly because of the student boom. Kids like me from north London went to live in Zone 1. Kids from far and wide came to live in Zone 1.

    plus all you are doing is distributing tax payer money (via student loans) to the university towns. theres no net wealth being created (at least in the useless universities). i can see wealth created from the useful universities doing things like tech research etc. innovation often happens at these places or is at least a springboard for people to innovate from later on.
  • gfplux
    gfplux Posts: 4,985 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Photogenic Hung up my suit!
    GreatApe wrote: »
    A 10000 sqm office in zone 1 might have a rates bill of £1 million a year the same size office in Telford would have a rates bill of £10,000 and after small business relief £0

    So the government already has in place a huge advantage to leave London.

    We should not further make business unproductive with location specific taxes or policies

    Like I say to our lefties we live in a great country where 95%+ of things are really good. Let's not fix what ain't broken

    There are advantages but not enough. I am responding to the criticism of Britain that not enough is being done in the regions to stop the continued drift to the South East.
    If successive Governments really wanted to do something they would. However a London centric Government is just that, London Centric.
    I am not against London as I have benefited in my life from a move from the midlands to London before moving to one of the EU27
    There will be no Brexit dividend for Britain.
  • economic
    economic Posts: 3,002 Forumite
    A step in the right direction but still a lot more to do:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-42268310

    I would still like to see all useless degrees scrapped (by reducing funding), apprenticeships forced by the government, force companies to employ a % of non grads each year, educate kids pre university about the pros and cons of different degrees, universities and stats on wages and employ-ability per degree.
  • GreatApe
    GreatApe Posts: 4,452 Forumite
    The only way you can deflate the sector is if you give the kids choice and the kids choose the other alternatives.
  • economic
    economic Posts: 3,002 Forumite
    GreatApe wrote: »
    The only way you can deflate the sector is if you give the kids choice and the kids choose the other alternatives.

    you give them choice by:
    - empowering them with unbiased knowledge of the usefulness of different degrees
    - providing more options in the job market as you now have employers having to hire non grads and more apprenticeship programs
  • economic
    economic Posts: 3,002 Forumite
    edited 10 December 2017 at 2:24PM
    Also by giving the option to a kid to spend £50k on either:
    - degree
    - pension
    -house

    I think by far most will still choose the degree. They wont care about a pension (they need to earn to spend now), they wont bother with a house as their first priority is to get a salary (which with a degree makes it much more likely - they cant even get a mortgage until they get a salary), so they will just choose the degree option.

    Even if your idea will have more of an impact then mine, how much more would it be? Your costs will be much higher then mine, in fact from day 1 my idea will have an impact on reducing the deficit (which will gradually over time have a bigger impact as funding for degrees gradually reduce).

    my idea you can spin it politically easily. you would say yes we are reducing funding for education, but we are making more jobs and apprenticeship programs available which means your kids don't end up in 50k debt, and can start earning at the age of 18.
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