Are degrees in the UK value for money?

GreatApe

Windofchange wrote: »

I'm replying to cakeguts who overheard Maureen and Dawn in the local newsagents relating a story about how there is this terrible university where no nurses are employed, and it is all a frightful waste of money. Can't remember where she heard that, just take my word for it ok. Oh, and the world is flat too. They definitely said that. It's true because I remember it.

As for the rest of it, I think we can agree that there are some degrees that are completely pointless. How much money have we wasted funding things that are completely pointless? Billions. That is capitalism for you. Where there is a demand, someone will fill it. If people will pay to go on Mickey mouse studies 101, someone will provide it. The UK government was in the news recently for giving £5 million to the Ethiopian spice girls. Reckon that is money well spent? Reckon bailing out the UK financial system to the tune of billions was money well spent? £1.5 billion to the DUP to keep the PM in her job? You could go on couldn't you. !!!!! degrees are hardly the hole that is sinking the UK economy. What about the lecturers that are employed to teach them? The cleaners keeping the lecture theatre clean? If I am to jump to assumptions as you love to do, I reckon the taxes paid by all the support staff on <pointless degree> more than covers the £50k per head or whatever we 'waste' on it.

You're one step away from communism - give 18 year olds 3 choices with life - university, stocks, house. How about a £30 grand loan to start up the next Virgin? The next Microsoft? Nope, sorry mate, got to be stocks or houses if you aren't going to university as they are the only things that will ever get you anywhere in life.

I'll check in again tomorrow to see how many likes (barring economic) your posts have collected. I foresee a whole lot of head scratching from anyone reading your last two pages of effort.

The kids aren't paying for the degrees themselves if they were they wouldn't be going. It's the socialist state not capitalism

And NI the taxes paid by the university industry doesn't cover the students fees and government loan losses. Only about 1/3rd would be covered. However if the university sector contracted then those poepoe would be employed elsewhere paying taxes in their new roles and industries so you can't allocate taxes paid by university staff to lower the real burden if higher education

The cost of higher education is fairly well known. About 400k students a year x £10k (roughly) tuition x 3.5 years + annual lost tax of 5k pa x 3.5 years on students not working = about £35 B annually. The kids themselves also lose about £25 B in lost income.

That's about £60 billion cost to society. If it was cut by 80% that is a £48 billion saving or roughly £14B a year.

That's the real saving. Giving kids £30k at age 18 or whatever isn't a loss or a gain its a transfer. So whatever the costs the overall savings are in the region of £14B annually. A huge sum you could do a lot of socialism with that.

SingleSue

I'm trying to work out why Henrietta has to be the one to stay at home with the kids...

Re giving the money to our youngsters and letting them decide, youngest would have taken the university route still. He knows what he wants to do, he knows what he has to do to get there and he has spent the last 3 years making sure he meets all the targets to hopefully succeed in getting into his dream career.

Middle son would probably have just spent it on a kick a$se drum kit.

adindas

economic wrote: »

if they dont have a job, they wont be able to get a mortgage in the first place so buying a home of out of the question. they can buy stocks however.

Windofchange wrote: »

So you're genius idea is giving a jobless 18 year old 30 grand to buy a 200k house, so he / she can pay the 170k mortgage how? You're also going to extend help to buy to dish out billions of pounds of taxpayer money in servicing the mortgage? I can't even be bothered trying to debate this one! I'm broken.

LOL :rotfl:

But this idea is coming from two people in this thread who self proclaiming themselves to be smart people. :D:D

Giving the 18yo teenagers 30k school leavers coming from two people in this thread is the most interesting idea I have ever heard. They even propose the taxpayers money from student loan they supposed to get for study to be given to this teenagers to make it 30k+30k=60k. Extremely interesting ....

But I wonder how many people, how many taxpayers who are using their common sense will agree to give 60k to the teenagers who even do not know how hard it is to earn that money !!!!

30k to be given as deposit to buy a house is not going to work as they will not get a mortgage if they do not have income.

Yes, 30k to be invested whether in the stock market or other business venture might work.....
But Keep in mind they have not got much knowledge how to earn money. So Just make sure that they are not falling into the pump & dump scheme, involve in day trading, binary trading option, spread betting, currency trading. Worse they do not use it to party, to buy booze getting drunk, gambling, buying drugs.

Giving 30k or even 60k to teenagers to be invested or even start a business is not a bad idea, IF YOU SEE EVIDENCE that they are as talented as Sir Richard Branson, Sir Alan Sugar, Steve Job, Bill Gates,Marc Zuckerberg. Good luck then comparing your teenagers with these people.

If your teenagers are so talented you could even just let them to find their own way raising their own capital from the money they earn by themselves. Many of successful enterpreneurs are not even get a penny from their parents. Marc Zuckerberg started the Facebook using very little resources from his dormitory room. Hopefully your teenagers will become the next Marc Zuckerberg and not depending on the dole in the future.

Also for this you will need to have a crystal ball to make sure that your teenagers are lucky enough that any business venture that they are doing will make profit not ending up to be chased by the debt collectors like we have read from some people in this MSE forum.

If passively invested, the purchasing power of 30k money passively invested in the stock market growing in average of 5% for 50 years is not much considering the inflation factor, the RPI which is currently 3.5%. In 50 years time if the share is cashed to be used as a source of income for living it will just enough to live for 2-5 years for average spending.

People who are using their common sense could easily see that these successful people are in the extreme side of the equation who are the exception rather than the rule. They were born with talent, entrepreneurship and lucky as well.

The problem in this society is that many people are self proclaiming, valuing themselves, their kids smarter than they should. be (or even genius). This is the reason why you should not let the people to subjectively assess themselves.

GreatApe

adindas wrote: »

LOL :rotfl:

But this idea is coming from two people in this thread who self proclaiming themselves to be smart people. :D:D

Giving the 18yo teenagers 30k school leavers coming from two people in this thread is the most interesting idea I have ever heard. They even propose the taxpayers money from student loan they supposed to get for study to be given to this teenagers to make it 30k+30k=60k. Extremely interesting ....

But I wonder how many people, how many taxpayers who are using their common sense will agree to give 60k to the teenagers who even do not know how hard it is to earn that money !!!!

30k to be given as deposit to buy a house is not going to work as they will not get a mortgage if they do not have income.

Yes, 30k to be invested whether in the stock market or other business venture might work.....
But Keep in mind they have not got much knowledge how to earn money. So Just make sure that they are not falling into the pump & dump scheme, involve in day trading, binary trading option, spread betting, currency trading. Worse they do not use it to party, to buy booze getting drunk, gambling, buying drugs.

Giving 30k or even 60k to teenagers to be invested or even start a business is not a bad idea, IF YOU SEE EVIDENCE that they are as talented as Sir Richard Branson, Sir Alan Sugar, Steve Job, Bill Gates,Marc Zuckerberg. Good luck then comparing your teenagers with these people.

If your teenagers are so talented you could even just let them to find their own way raising their own capital from the money they earn by themselves. Many of successful enterpreneurs are not even get a penny from their parents. Marc Zuckerberg started the Facebook using very little resources from his dormitory room. Hopefully your teenagers will become the next Marc Zuckerberg and not depending on the dole in the future.

Also for this you will need to have a crystal ball to make sure that your teenagers are lucky enough that any business venture that they are doing will make profit not ending up to be chased by the debt collectors like we have read from some people in this MSE forum.

If passively invested, the purchasing power of 30k money passively invested in the stock market growing in average of 5% for 50 years is not much considering the inflation factor, the RPI which is currently 3.5%. In 50 years time if the share is cashed to be used as a source of income for living it will just enough to live for 2-5 years for average spending.

People who are using their common sense could easily see that these successful people are in the extreme side of the equation who are the exception rather than the rule. They were born with talent, entrepreneurship and lucky as well.

The problem in this society is that many people are self proclaiming, valuing themselves, their kids smarter than they should. be (or even genius). This is the reason why you should not let the people to subjectively assess themselves.

The stock market is likely to return a real 5% or more in the longer term that means 5% above inflation. Likewise houses are likely to return 5% + inflation on the saved rental side

I wouldn't imagine giving the kids a share dealing account I would see it as a government run scheme which is just a passive world tracker with no fees. The kids can then cash it out at retirement or cash it out when they are buying their first home whichever comes first.

The marginal student costs us £60k a degree in tutiin and maintiance. Better to just give them that £30-£60k they will be much better off for it.


The easiest example is to consider two cade studies. A pair of 18 year olds buying their own hone outright for £120k vs their twins going to university and probably renting until they are 35. Which group is better off at age 25-30-35-40-45-50-55-60-65? Probably the kids that bought the house rather than the kids that decided to buy the education. Buying a house age 35 is going to cost £140k in rent plus the house has gone up £80,000 in value. So by the time the twins are 35 years old the educated couple are down £140k in rent and down £80k in HPI and have close to £100k in student debts.

economic

GreatApe wrote: »

The stock market is likely to return a real 5% or more in the longer term that means 5% above inflation. Likewise houses are likely to return 5% + inflation on the saved rental side

I wouldn't imagine giving the kids a share dealing account I would see it as a government run scheme which is just a passive world tracker with no fees. The kids can then cash it out at retirement or cash it out when they are buying their first home whichever comes first.

The marginal student costs us £60k a degree in tutiin and maintiance. Better to just give them that £30-£60k they will be much better off for it.


The easiest example is to consider two cade studies. A pair of 18 year olds buying their own hone outright for £120k vs their twins going to university and probably renting until they are 35. Which group is better off at age 25-30-35-40-45-50-55-60-65? Probably the kids that bought the house rather than the kids that decided to buy the education. Buying a house age 35 is going to cost £140k in rent plus the house has gone up £80,000 in value. So by the time the twins are 35 years old the educated couple are down £140k in rent and down £80k in HPI and have close to £100k in student debts.

it would also be a good way to rise house prices even further possibly above 5% real terms!!

GreatApe

economic wrote: »

it would also be a good way to rise house prices even further possibly above 5% real terms!!

I don't think giving the kids money to buy houses would increase house prices because it doesn't increase the overall level of housing demand

Its either the kids buy a house to live in
Or they go to university and a landlord buys a house for the kids to rent.

economic

GreatApe wrote: »

I don't think giving the kids money to buy houses would increase house prices because it doesn't increase the overall level of housing demand

Its either the kids buy a house to live in
Or they go to university and a landlord buys a house for the kids to rent.

but you would have an increase in capital (from the government) for housing. whereas if that capital was only going towards student loans (current system), the availability of capital for housing remains the same. hence higher house prices in the former case.

Windofchange

GreatApe wrote: »

I don't think giving the kids money to buy houses would increase house prices because it doesn't increase the overall level of housing demand

Its either the kids buy a house to live in
Or they go to university and a landlord buys a house for the kids to rent.

Of course it would. You would have five students in ONE rented house at uni, or you would have five students each buying a house / flat each with their free £30 grand. In other words, five times the demand.

Given the current housing shortage, even if only half the 18 year olds each year decide to buy a house, where are you finding nearly 400,000 houses a year just for 18 year olds to buy, let alone the rest of the population!?

GreatApe

economic wrote: »

but you would have an increase in capital (from the government) for housing. whereas if that capital was only going towards student loans (current system), the availability of capital for housing remains the same. hence higher house prices in the former case.

The increased capital from students would be met by decreased capital from landlords as they have fewer tenants now.

Likewise I don't think it would impact the stock market either. The increased capital from students would be met by capital flows out by other investors. The total amount out in by UK students would be trivial compared to the market caps of the top companies

Also higher prices isn't necessarily all bad. If prices go up so will construction starts who CH further adds to jobs taxes and GDP

GreatApe

Windofchange wrote: »

Of course it would. You would have five students in ONE rented house at uni, or you would have five students each buying a house / flat each with their free £30 grand. In other words, five times the demand.

Given the current housing shortage, even if only half the 18 year olds each year decide to buy a house, where are you finding nearly 400,000 houses a year just for 18 year olds to buy, let alone the rest of the population!?

Half the students wouldn't buy a house straight away I suspect most would keep it in the stock market until they are older.

I'm not convinced the kids would buy a house and live in it all by themselves. They would couple up as most people do. Or they could buy a house and rent a room or two to lodgers.

Plus this isn't additional demand the majority of those kids would buy their own home at some stage so even if there is more demand today there will be less demand in five years time

And 5 students per property isn't the norm. The most I ever lived was 3 students a property and more often it was 2 students per property. Some of my school friends were also renting a whole property for themselves of course they were the better off ones.