Mobilise and motivate - abolish Student Loans with Labour
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muddymouse wrote: »agarnett - What an intelligent, well informed post from someone who the Tories pretend to care for (a self made businessman). I bet your kids are very proud of you.
Yes, absolutely. A delight to read.0 -
unforeseen wrote: »I take the money to cover this will come from the pot that they keep at the end of the rainbow?
no labour will just saddle us with a few more billions in debt borrowed to sweeten the electorate0 -
The policies have been costed, if you take the time to read the manifesto you can check them out yourself.
Much of the financing will come from higher taxation on high earners and corporations. Corporation tax would still be the lowest of any G7 country, so not a disincentive to investment. I wouldn't object to increased tax on high earners for the simple fact that for the past seven years every cost cutting measure has hit those on low and middle incomes hardest, so it's time for others to shoulder some of the burden.
higher tax just sends higher earners away it happened last time labour overtaxed the wealthy. what we should be doing is getting firms like googlw/amazon etc to pay tax0 -
I am sorry I had not returned to this thread, because although I hoped I might strike a chord when I created it and when I last posted at length, I had not realised until tonight that maybe I did hit the spot for some readers.
I have returned because I am troubled by some new observations:- I attended a STEM course graduation ceremony at a Russell Group uni recently for a batch of around 300 new graduates and was frankly gobsmacked by the (dis)proportion of apparently Chinese graduates, and also by the number of apparently Chinese relatives who had secured best seats, and who were around the university long after the ceremony framing photographed keepsakes in front of the most impressive traditional buildings and other architectural pieces and institutional symbols.
- The large procession party of academics sat before us was entirely white Caucasian, many of whom either exhibited what I thought appeared as over pompous, down-their-noses type expressions, whilst nodding agreement to their superiors' every word about how excellent the institution was with liberal sprinklings of the various KPI/league table rankings, or at the other extreme, a "seen-it-all-before/do-I-really-have-to-sit-through-all this" disinterest to the extent that I was at one point very, very tempted to take an easy photograph of a column of three faces one behind the other, two with eyes closed and the other looking bored stiff.
- I noticed a great deal of new construction and major refurbishment had started in the summer break and because cladding had been removed I could see what looked like pretty appalling corrosion of existing buildings.
- Whilst at the event, I was told that if a recent English graduate who already borrowed for their first degree from SFE, immediately takes a UK post graduate course starting the very next semester after graduating with a Bachelors e.g. starts a Masters, and takes an SFE loan to pay for it, then that will mean that upon starting work, the loan payment isn't 9% of gross salary above £21K, but nearer 15%. I couldn't believe that. I'm horrified if it is true.
- I also think that I have seen suggestion recently that if graduates take up teaching, they can in some cases/some subjects get their Student Loan written off?
Frankly the first observation led to a lightbulb moment; the second suggested rightly or wrongly to me that in some institutions, neither the staff demographic nor the student demographic are at all properly reflective of our country's taxpayers' needs or best interests, and may even suggest some people are getting complacent in their university staffer jobs. Instead the staffer demographic on display might more closely have reflected the country's demographic of at least one generation or maybe two ago - how could that have happened - has it stood still?; the third suggested a lot of money is being spent quickly with some lucky preferred construction and refurbishment firms - I somewhat cynically expect they have been led to know who they are - whilst conversely, those responsible for mismanagement of maintenance budgets in the past probably still don't know who they are as they have never been challenged; one also wonders who will actually derive most benefit from the new building? Will prices to overseas students rise once the buildings are sparkling again?; the fourth horrified me as I have already said; and the fifth observation if true, reflects a policy which I think is plain wrong - although I do wonder if muddymouse might disagree as teachers have been mentioned up front by muddymouse as a special group whom we need to grow by providing free university tuition.
The lightbulb moment was the realisation that we must surely be under-pricing our university courses to overseas students, else why would there be such a ridiculously high proportion of Chinese students on what most people agree are our strongest courses? And where were the Chinese rocket scientists amongst the staffers? If our universities are truly international globally leading institutions, then shouldn't they also be learning from and engaging senior Chinese academics rather than possibly contenting themselves with the level of interaction that results from say, a two-generations-old unchanged staffer demographic who make smalltalk with undergraduate Chinese (one per family) children of China's local and national government officials who don't seem short of a bob or two, about what it's like at school in China pre-university?
Student exchange is one thing at a modest level, as I believe does exist to an extent, but surely we should by now have an almost Star Trek type demographic amongst the teaching staff at our best universities ? I think we do at a few, but the one I attended recently looked very skewed in the other direction.
That realisation is, in my view of the world, both reflective of likely further evidence of incompetent marketing and pricing of English university courses to overseas students, and of inability or cultural staleness in promoting to, and recruiting from a wider pool of the best academics available - a pool which surely should by now include expert academics from countries like China, not just smart undergrads?
It perhaps also implies a pervasive lazy reliance at some universities on the guaranteed flow now of income derived from minimum tuition fees to our own national students, which in large part resulted from universities crying to our last few consecutive incompetent governments that English universities were grossly underfunded. Grossly mismanaged , I shouldn't wonder, with little clue these days on how to sell themselves and the institutions they claim to be so proud to represent. Sure they can roll out a bit of quaint British pageantry of the type tourists mop up without quite knowing why, and they can laud their own positions in selected league tables to imply what the punters want to hear. However, if their promotion doesn't extend much beyond the above, and if they don't have the gumption to sell themselves at a price befitting the purported greatness, it doesn't sound to me quite like the sort of well-oiled unstoppable first class machine that people like Universities and Science Minister Jo Johnson would have us believe it still is. Who do you think you are kidding Mr Johnson?
In short, the Student Loan Scheme looks to be a very short-sighted sticking plaster solution to long term university business mismanagement which favours the families of exceptionally privileged overseas students way above our own normal students and their families, and, just like the City, it is a heavily lobbied gravy train to most that hold down jobs in the sector.
Or am I being too cynical?0 -
I am sorry I had not returned to this thread, because although I hoped I might strike a chord when I created it and when I last posted at length, I had not realised until tonight that maybe I did hit the spot for some readers.
I have returned because I am troubled by some new observations:- I attended a STEM course graduation ceremony at a Russell Group uni recently for a batch of around 300 new graduates and was frankly gobsmacked by the (dis)proportion of apparently Chinese graduates, and also by the number of apparently Chinese relatives who had secured best seats, and who were around the university long after the ceremony framing photographed keepsakes in front of the most impressive traditional buildings and other architectural pieces and institutional symbols.
- The large procession party of academics sat before us was entirely white Caucasian, many of whom either exhibited what I thought appeared as over pompous, down-their-noses type expressions, whilst nodding agreement to their superiors' every word about how excellent the institution was with liberal sprinklings of the various KPI/league table rankings, or at the other extreme, a "seen-it-all-before/do-I-really-have-to-sit-through-all this" disinterest to the extent that I was at one point very, very tempted to take an easy photograph of a column of three faces one behind the other, two with eyes closed and the other looking bored stiff.
- I noticed a great deal of new construction and major refurbishment had started in the summer break and because cladding had been removed I could see what looked like pretty appalling corrosion of existing buildings.
- Whilst at the event, I was told that if a recent English graduate who already borrowed for their first degree from SFE, immediately takes a UK post graduate course starting the very next semester after graduating with a Bachelors e.g. starts a Masters, and takes an SFE loan to pay for it, then that will mean that upon starting work, the loan payment isn't 9% of gross salary above £21K, but nearer 15%. I couldn't believe that. I'm horrified if it is true.
- I also think that I have seen suggestion recently that if graduates take up teaching, they can in some cases/some subjects get their Student Loan written off?
The manifesto pledged to forgive student loan repayments of new teachers:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/conservatives-pledge-forgiveness-teacher-student-loans%3Famp
Whether it gets taken forward and implemented or not is another question:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/40371953
I'm not sure whether Labour are proposing abolishing all student loans or not.
You're right that postgraduate loans involve a 6% repayment on top of the 9% undergraduate repayment.
I'm not sure whether Labour are planning to abolish all student loans or not. They're certainly abolishing tuition fee loans but whether there'll still be some maintenance loan or not is unclear.
Fine - reintroduce maintenance grants but it's no good if the overall maintenance available is less generous then at present. I'd rather there be some tuition fee/maintenance loan element if that's what's needed for a generous maintenance package.
Alternatively, target more support at subjects that have a state benefit if the state are paying in full, or if loans are used at subjects that lead to higher earnings.
The current universal loan approach with higher earners in subjects that have a great social benefit paying substantial amounts to fund a free higher education for those doing subjects that have little social benefit and lower earnings is not right and needs to change.0 -
I think there needs to be a re-evaluation of the whole university and jobs market here in the UK.
Too many jobs say a degree is required when, day to day, it isn't. Graduates expect an interesting job and end up doing a boring job because the advert claimed it would be interesting and varied.
There should be a difference in the way students are funded between degrees that lead to careers society values and which genuinely require that level of study (doctors, vets & lawyers etc), and degrees that are interesting from a personal cultural or scientific enrichment point of view, but contribute less to society and just equip someone for most jobs that at the moment say they require a graduate.
There shouldn't be a boring job in the 21st Century. We should have mechanised all the boring stuff so that every employee, whatever their ability, should be able to have a job that is interesting and fulfilling for them - and that is well-paid.
But of course that would lead to a four- or three-day working week, and - gasp! - the masses would have more time on their hands to get into mischief or start plotting the revolution, so better to keep them all chained to their desks, bored out of their skulls from nine to five on the minimum wage...0 -
I have just dipped into the Twitter Storm that has raged over the weekend (ok maybe I exaggerate the storm and rage parts - I am not a Tweeter so can't judge!) with Martin Lewis putting his oar in again to argue that Student Loans are nothing to worry about no matter what the loan balances reach.
I have never even thought it previously, but I actually do believe that Martin is now writing naively about the whole subject, and (horror of horrors) is not presenting a neutral political view.
Can we please stop blinding ourselves with numbers and hypotheses and look at this as responsible citizens within a leading developed civilisation in a land of opportunity?
Let's stop self congratulating ourselves at being successful pay our own way ultra responsible members of the burdened tax-paying fraternity who regularly make all the right choices and have to suffer the hangers on who waste opportunity (unlike us of course).
How on earth did we become successful at paying our own way and becoming the superior citizens we obviously think we are? We had opportunity and we took it. Boy did we take it
Did we go to university? No -- lots of us didn't, we learned a trade, we started our own business, we slaved day and night until it succeeded.
Oh but wait -- sorry. lots of us DID go to university. Some even borrowed money to do so (I didn't). But of course we did more "useful" degrees in those days, didn't we? Balderdash. I did a STEM degree at a top university, and then started selling motor and car insurance as a fast track graduate career with a global company.
Ehm - useful degree? In what? Numeracy? I already had that well before university. What then? Would it have been useful had I got a first in PPE at Oxford? If I had pretensions of becoming Prime Minister, maybe, and then only because it was always a well trodden path - not because I might have learned anything on how to properly run a country as can easily be seen :rotfl:
The subject of the degree means damn all to most graduates job prospects 40 years ago, and damn all now. Yes yes if you are a rocket scientist genius type with a double first and a PhD from a "top" university you can go and play at cheating the systems for an investment bank and get showered with money, but for most graduates, even with a good maths or science degree or engineering degree, its going to be a while before you even reach the UK average wage unless your Mum or Dad knows people in the City and can get you an in, and even then you'll be lucky if you find a job you really enjoy apart from the loadsamoney.
You'll be renting like as not for many years, unlike us ordinary graduates who bought their first places within a year or so of starting our first proper jobs (on 100% mortgages). We had the opportunity you see.
Those of us who built plumbing businesses or construction companies or software businesses or whatever we did over the last 40 decades, we found opportunity, and like as not we did not volunteer to pay tax until we had to. There was even opportunity in that... still is of course. The government didn't know our business until we thought it was time to tell them. Certain types of business still remain a closed book to HMRC, don't they?
If I am a builder - how much work do I put through my books? Just enough. The opportunity is there in the UK.
If I am a gem specialist, do I pay duty for crossing borders with gems in my pocket or under my hat or wherever one keeps them? How do I pay for them? Do I use a bank or what? Do I keep a book? What's the value anyway? Nicely arguable at every stage. The opportunity to cook books this way or that with arguable asset values is there in the UK.
If I get a job with a bank, what can I get away with as I climb the greasy pole stepping on heads until I reach the top ? Can I retire early? How long can I expect to be retired before SFO comes knocking on my door? The opportunity is there in the UK to make a reasoned judgement that no-one will come knocking and besides, I haven't done anything illegal have I? Debateable.
We like debateable in UK. It creates opportunity.
Cost of educating English students who want to go to university? High. Not very debateable. Cost of not educating them? Debateable. Opportunity for government who want votes from narrow minded voters as well as educated voters and successful self made voters of both types. So let's keep tax low to satisfy narrow-minded gullible voters who pervade all the other types not to educate students, but let's tell the people including all those who do not normally vote for us (no matter which party is in government) that we CARE very much that they should be educated. Opportunity. Yes. As a political message it flies. It's called getting away with it, which is what so much modern day "success" borne out of opportunity is largely about.
We should not let our government get away with it reducing opportunity to our young people as far as successive governments have reduced it since I went to university.
Opportunity to earn a proper wage as a teenager in a part-time job - doesn't exist in England
Opportunity to go to a good university without finding a part-time job or relying on Mum and Dad who are also being paid a ridiculously low wage anyway in the majority of cases. £27,000 a year as an average UK wage is a sick joke. Opportunity to go to a good university does not exist in England without struggling financially if you have no income other than what the state and university system provides - doesn't exist in UK and Martin Lewis needs to wake up to that fact pronto. His own child isn't old enough for him to know anymore, and even his valuable links and experiences as a student 25 years ago at a top university are not good enough for him to know.
Opportunity. How dare the government monetise opportunity against the interests of those to whom the opportunity belongs?
Government doesn't monetise opportunity exploited by black market tradesmen.
Government doesn't monetise opportunity exploited by pan-global gemologists who base their lives and families in England
Government doesn't monetise opportunity exploited by Google and Starbucks and all the usual names who pay miniscule tax for exploiting opportunity with all UK citizens.
So why is it monetising the hopes and opportunities of those least able to fight back but like millions of dumb inexperienced incompletely educated cigarette smokers, are best caught when young?
Our respective governments and especially the one that introduced the latest scheme and caused all universities to price their tuition at the maximum allowable, are sickos. They have lost the right to govern by their stupid connections with the City who have persuaded that everything that moves or threatens to move (hedging) can and should be monetised.
Our PM is married to a flippin' hedge fund something or other. Get rid of her. Get rid of a government that cannot see that stealing opportunity and monetising it and then handing it back monetised, is still criminal in intent. Defrauding youngsters of a goodly amount of hope and freedom just at the point that they need to have completely uncluttered minds.
The Student Loans Scheme in England is a shameful con created by narrow-minded people, and I am surprised that Martin Lewis is still trying to sell it, after already being burnt once by Willetts and Co over the way the £21K threshold was supposed to develop.
But from the outset the scheme should never have seen the light of day.
How dare the government saddle a whole generation of hopefuls with a 9% additional income tax? It is a unlawful indirect age discrimination save for the exemptions that government gives itself, and that is in more than one way. There is a secondary indirect age discrimination favouring old wrinklies like me who if we pay higher rate tax will never pay that extra 9% surcharge. It doesn't matter whether I am one of the old 5% of the working populace who went to university or whether I am a rich plumber or gemologist - because of my age, I will never pay that extra 9% (or 15% if a youngster goes straight on from Bachelors to do a Masters or PhD).
So I say again to all young people and right thinkers of all ages, and I appeal to Martin Lewis to open his mind to the true breadth and meaning of Opportunity in the UK, not just the narrow monetised one which he seems so keen to try to continue to justify, to mobilise against the Student Loan Scheme and bring it crashing down. All of it. Retrospectively. Kill off erudio. Nationalise it and any other privatised ones and forgive the debt.
Double the minimum wage, lower Personal Allowance to bring most people including students themselves into tax so they know they truly belong as full citizens. Then encourage them to keep on voting for what is right to do with their tax. Stop the strivers and skivers talk, and the just about managing insulting reference. If you are just about managing you should bring down this government. Lets get UK moving again, not faffing around thinking if I never earn more than £21K will I be alright because I will never have to pay the loan if I can stay poor for 30 years. Idiotic opportunity that is ... has no-one told someone on a fulltime wage less than £21K that it is shameful that their employer even calls their business a business?
A barista should have their wage increased to more than that to start, but also pay more tax so their kids can go to university for free.
If we all pay more tax, we all get Britain moving again, including free university education (ALL subjects - because the subject scarcely matters except for the geniuses who get firsts and want to build rockets or cure cancer or whatever). The rest will have demonstrated that they have brains, can respond to challenge, and that they are resilient. They can turn their hand to many new things if they are graduates.
Opportunity is more than this, and most of the wrinklies or even middle-aged arguing that they made their own, and so should the young, are deceiving themselves.0 -
I can't face reading War and Peace every time you post, but I suspect you have rather too much time on your hands, have you considered voluntary work?0
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I am sorry I had not returned to this thread, because although I hoped I might strike a chord when I created it and when I last posted at length, I had not realised until tonight that maybe I did hit the spot for some readers.
I have returned because I am troubled by some new observations:- I attended a STEM course graduation ceremony at a Russell Group uni recently for a batch of around 300 new graduates and was frankly gobsmacked by the (dis)proportion of apparently Chinese graduates, and also by the number of apparently Chinese relatives who had secured best seats, and who were around the university long after the ceremony framing photographed keepsakes in front of the most impressive traditional buildings and other architectural pieces and institutional symbols.Well regarded courses attract a lot of chinese students. Also students tend to follow their predecessors and go where they feel culturally comfortable. So what?
- The large procession party of academics sat before us was entirely white Caucasian, many of whom either exhibited what I thought appeared as over pompous, down-their-noses type expressions, whilst nodding agreement to their superiors' every word about how excellent the institution was with liberal sprinklings of the various KPI/league table rankings, or at the other extreme, a "seen-it-all-before/do-I-really-have-to-sit-through-all this" disinterest to the extent that I was at one point very, very tempted to take an easy photograph of a column of three faces one behind the other, two with eyes closed and the other looking bored stiff.So some were bored by the ceremony - It was possibly the 10th that week. Your observations on their expressions may be a reflection on you more than them. The fact that they were all white may depend on the part of the country you are in, or a reflection on how things were.
Something that is now changing - I noticed a great deal of new construction and major refurbishment had started in the summer break and because cladding had been removed I could see what looked like pretty appalling corrosion of existing buildings.
- Whilst at the event, I was told that if a recent English graduate who already borrowed for their first degree from SFE, immediately takes a UK post graduate course starting the very next semester after graduating with a Bachelors e.g. starts a Masters, and takes an SFE loan to pay for it, then that will mean that upon starting work, the loan payment isn't 9% of gross salary above £21K, but nearer 15%. I couldn't believe that. I'm horrified if it is true.
- I also think that I have seen suggestion recently that if graduates take up teaching, they can in some cases/some subjects get their Student Loan written off?
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So charge a price to non EU students that shows that you are in control of where your product ends up, not your customer. What good does it do the university to have a huge proportion of Chinese students on a course who generally do not mix or form study groups with other students except other Chinese students? What good does it do English students who are overcharged and saddled with huge loans purely because the university is coining it from SFE loan monies handed to them on a plate instead of acting in business-like fashion to actually correctly price and sell their product to the part of the world that can actually pay for it all to the true benefit of the university and the country? It is totally daft to let the Chinese have access to our universities so cheaply. Monied Chinese exploit our residential property market almost as easily, but in that case it does drive prices up for those of us with something to sell where Chinese want to buy. Looks to me like universities just roll over and let the monied overseas students just tickle the university's tum! I don't think universities could run a proper business for toffee!silvercar wrote:Well regarded courses attract a lot of chinese students. Also students tend to follow their predecessors and go where they feel culturally comfortable. So what?
Yes I do believe it was actually the 10th for the university, but these were department peeps and this was their department ceremony.So some were bored by the ceremony - It was possibly the 10th that week.
What on earth are you suggesting?Your observations on their expressions may be a reflection on you more than them.
Where have you been for the last 40 years? I am talking about England not Iceland.The fact that they were all white may depend on the part of the country you are in, or a reflection on how things were.
Something that is now changing0
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