'Universities must educate students about the new loans' blog discussion

Further to my earlier post calling for an improvement in basic eduacational skills in numeracy (and literacy) there's an interesting report out today.

According to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) which has compared the standards of 65 different countries/regions educational systems, the UK is classified as only 28th best in mathematics and 25th in reading skills.

This compared with only 7 of the 65 countries that spend more per student on education than we do in the UK.

http://www.edexec.co.uk/news/1421/uk-falls-down-education-table/

Shadow education secretary Andy Burnham said: "...People forget how bad things were: in 1997, half of all schools failed to reach the basic benchmark of 30% of students getting 5 GCSEs graded A*-C, including English and maths - that number is now fewer than one in 12."

But as is often claimed when each year's results on paper show an increasing number of students attaining the best grades, there are two ways this result can be obtained.
Surely this report suggests how perhaps it actually was?

sjanuary wrote: »

Of course students should be educated about how the loans will work ...

Surely all they need is the same sort of introductory literature that accompanies any loan agreement. If they need more than suffices for any other adult, then surely they are not of university calibre?

... but I think many who do fully understand the system will still be put off by the total size of the loan and the length of time it will take to repay.

And will thereby got rid of a lot of nonsense cornflake-packet degrees that will never produce a living.

WhiteHorse wrote: »

Interesting to see students prepared to travel the length of the country to riot in London in defence of their perceived financial interest ... yet who are unwilling to assist the local community in clearing snow and ice, maintaining vital services, etcetera.
.

To be fair - I don't think they were all there to riot - the majority were simply expressing their views peacefully but again a small minority grabbed the headlines and handed the Coalition some wonderful headlines that have hidden the real story - the introduction of £9000 fees.

As regards the comment on 'their perceived interest' I think this is grossly unfair - every citizen of the UK who has a son/daughter/niece or nephew should thank those students who travelled down to London, paying from their own funds, to protest - the changes being proposed won't actually affect the majority of the students who were protesting as they'll get to remain on the current rate of £3,290 for their own student fees. The students present were simply there to try and prevent the changes going through for the current sixth formers (I didn't see many sixth formers in the crowd as I doubt many parents would let them be kettled by the police for several hours). Thus their journeys were fairly selfless - not selfish as you appear to have suggested.

I realise many taxpayers who haven't or won't go to university themselves think students or graduates should pay their way and the new £6-9K fees are a good idea. I don't necessarily disagree, but as a taxpayer I wonder where all the funding (which amounted to billions) the govt used to pay to universities has now disappeared to - I don't see any sign my income tax will decrease now the govt aren't funding universities directly.

I have to declare that I was once a student myself, and now work at a university that is carefully considering where we have to set our own fees. It's not a position we relish and we certainly didn't ask for, and I expect far fewer students to study at university as a result of the rise in fees, whilst you might argue this is a good thing ("too many Media graduates anyway") investing in education is of vital importance to the success of a nation.

Sadly, consistent UK govts have under-invested in education, currently as a % of GDP the UK govt is ranked 46th in terms of investment in education vs GDP, investing slight more than Belize and slightly less than Hungary, Ukraine and Fiji (!). It's a worrying indication of the lack of importance the govt places on education investment.

As regards Martin's comments - most universities already have an active outreach campaign that educates prospective students on the financial aspects of studying and living at university. We've had to pay for this as the Student Loans company no longer can provide the service. We try wherever possible to dispel the myths of Higher education funding (hence the length of this post - apologies!) but there is an awful lot of misinformation which is only going to get worse.

I still maintain investing in university education is the best investment you can make, even under this new fees regime, but these students who protested peacefully should be commended as they have made their voices heard and shook the coalition government to make them listen that they cannot get away with pressing the lower and middle classes further into debt without some protest and repercussions.

For the record I do condemn the attack on the royals - this was unnecessary and whilst they might lead a very privileged lifestyle they had no hand in making a decision on tuition fees so involving them was very wrong.