KoihimeNakamura
Creativity Murderer
If you want the state determining what is viable maybe? All I'm thinking is: welcome to college education in America. :|
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Student fees to hit £7000
- Thread starter Undesired Walrus
- Start date
Says she who claimed erroneously I got the £21k threshold wrong.
ETA: Feel free to have a look at these figures.
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Yup, that's my concern too. The financial disincentive will be particularly hard for those who are poorest and who harbour misplaced dreams about being able to study courses such as (say) medicine at our best performing (read "expensive") universities.
The Scottish Government has given an initial "sod off" to the Westminster proposals but I think all of us on this side of the border recognise that some form of change is inevitable. I just can't see how this is the best solution, unless one is harking back to a cosy, if mythical, Tory past where only the wealthy tend to go to university.
Francesca R
Girl
The poorest graduates will pay less with the £21K threshold than they do today, with a £15K threshold.
Please hold, caller. Read this while you're waiting.
Francesca R
Girl
A trade union doesn't like the plans? Colour me shocked. Hey, I bet the NUS isn't raving about it either. I can just about remember them saying in the 1980s that the removal of grants would "totally knacker higher education". Golly were they right!
Francesca R
Girl
OK here's an elaboration: The UCU is a special interest group. They represent their members. They do not have an encompassing interest in education that comes anywhere close to democratically, ethically or economically representing students, taxpayers, academic institutions, employers or anyone except their members. They respond to their incentives. They want "someone over there" to foot the bill for education, namely by increasing corporation tax. They don't care a hoot for any adverse consequences of that solution. They ignore that the graduate is the primary beneficiary of HE, so they don't care for matching contribution to benefit either.
What else do you want to know? They are correct that UK universities are expensive compared to public ones in other countries, but they are not correct to call UK degrees "public degrees" because UK universities are state-dependent but private institutions.
They are partly correct to call say that this policy recommendation is in the direction of privatis[ing] the cost of education from state to family (except it is transferred to the student post graduation and families plainly don't have to front-up the cost). Shifting the burden from taxpayer to graduate is what it is intended to do. That has been happening for decades already.
They call this a savage attack on what a university is and what it can offer. They say it will be the final nail in the coffin for an affordable university degree for the vast majority of ordinary families. These statements are offered with no evidence (and there is--see above--plenty of evidence to the contrary of their dire warnings).
So, alarmist, special-interest-serving and unsupported empirically. As in post 24, paragraph 2. Like your warblings on the matter. Not that you've done any analysis yo'self.
Hope this is of benefit to you
What else do you want to know? They are correct that UK universities are expensive compared to public ones in other countries, but they are not correct to call UK degrees "public degrees" because UK universities are state-dependent but private institutions.
They are partly correct to call say that this policy recommendation is in the direction of privatis[ing] the cost of education from state to family (except it is transferred to the student post graduation and families plainly don't have to front-up the cost). Shifting the burden from taxpayer to graduate is what it is intended to do. That has been happening for decades already.
They call this a savage attack on what a university is and what it can offer. They say it will be the final nail in the coffin for an affordable university degree for the vast majority of ordinary families. These statements are offered with no evidence (and there is--see above--plenty of evidence to the contrary of their dire warnings).
So, alarmist, special-interest-serving and unsupported empirically. As in post 24, paragraph 2. Like your warblings on the matter. Not that you've done any analysis yo'self.
Hope this is of benefit to you
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It's part of the rebalancing of opportunity which also has the state paying for the rest of someone's education.
Or perhaps state sponsored scholarships to encourage the best students from the poorest families to attend the most prestigious establishments....
Lothian
should be banned
Just to clarify one point on the cost of degrees. The current fees (and grant) more than cover the cost of education.
The truth is universities are research driven. The lecturers would rather be in lab or on a study trip well away from the pesky students. Trouble is research is underfunded. To fund the research you need a load of undergrads to overcharge on their course fees so you can use the excess for your trip to the Caribbean to study the mating rituals of the lesser spotted tree frog.
What is the evidence for this? If you are really interested use google and search for TRAC (Transparent Approach to Costing) research, underfunding, universities or a combination.
If you can't be bothered a quick summary.
In the 90's Universities claimed that their research was under funded. When asked to prove it TRAC was developed. TRAC allocates every single cost in a university to either Teaching, Research or Other. And what did it show? You guessed. Research is underfunded. There was a small surplus in Other (retail and the like) but most of the subsidisation for research came from teaching.
Put simply any hike in fees is not just to cover the cost of the education it is partly to reduce the state funding but also to keep the research staff happy by transferring even more money from teaching to research.
The truth is universities are research driven. The lecturers would rather be in lab or on a study trip well away from the pesky students. Trouble is research is underfunded. To fund the research you need a load of undergrads to overcharge on their course fees so you can use the excess for your trip to the Caribbean to study the mating rituals of the lesser spotted tree frog.
What is the evidence for this? If you are really interested use google and search for TRAC (Transparent Approach to Costing) research, underfunding, universities or a combination.
If you can't be bothered a quick summary.
In the 90's Universities claimed that their research was under funded. When asked to prove it TRAC was developed. TRAC allocates every single cost in a university to either Teaching, Research or Other. And what did it show? You guessed. Research is underfunded. There was a small surplus in Other (retail and the like) but most of the subsidisation for research came from teaching.
Put simply any hike in fees is not just to cover the cost of the education it is partly to reduce the state funding but also to keep the research staff happy by transferring even more money from teaching to research.
Francesca R
Girl
Rebalancing in what direction? Away from people who are not academically strong enough to get degrees to those who are? Away from those who will earn on average two thirds of what graduates do (or less) to future graduates? That seems to be a wrong-headed form of rebalancing to me.
That's right - giving the poor but bright the opportunity to study at out best institutions. Otherwise it'll just be the usual suspects at Oxbridge
Access to education has to be a key element of social mobility. A well educated work force is also a key ingredient to a successful post-industrial economy.
View it as everyone investing in their future. After all today's graduates are paying for tomorrow's state pension
Francesca R
Girl
The poor but bright do have that opportunity, and would have it to a greater extent under the Browne recommendations. What does that have to do with funding their places with tax from people who will never study at tertiary level? You do not appear to understand this issue.
See above--access to tertiary education is made easier for low-income-background students. (Please outline why you somehow think the opposite is the case)
But by funding student costs from the entire tax base, you impair the economic freedom and therefore the social mobility of everyone not in a position to study for a degree. That's socially regressive.
While that is true, it is also true that graduates capture the bulk of the reward themselves. To be honest, your comment is similar to the often-heard right-wing refrain: "Today's self-made millionaire business owners are creating jobs for the masses, go easy on their cap-gains and inheritance tax".
Do you support a graduate tax instead?
What a patronising person you are.
Perhaps I have a different perspective than other people. Maybe I am just too debt adverse. If I had needed to take out a £60,000 loan to go to university then there's no way I would have been able to do so and my parents would not have been able to afford to pay for me to do so.
If I hadn't been to university then I wouldn't have had the generously rewarded career I have had. Instead it's 99% certain I'd have gone to work on the line at the local Glaxo factory.
The government would have missed out on the tens of thousands of pounds of tax revenue.
Do I think poor people should have paid for it, hell yes, I'm paying for their pensions and child tax credits.
Evidence ?
By the same degree you may as well have primary school students paying for their own primary education on the grounds that studies show that students who have a primary education earn more than those that do not.
I support an everybody tax. You know, where everyone invests in the future of the country by enabling the best and brightest to achieve their full potential without worrying about how they're going to pay for it.
andyandy
anthropomorphic ape
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2006
- Messages
- 8,377
It's hard to argue that the state has no interest in the education of its citizens. Why should the state pay for 6th form education? Or for secondary education?
Given that the total bill for university teaching is less than £4billion it's hardly an unsustainable burden on the state. We're more than happy to spend £34billion p/a on the likes of giant aircraft carriers that we don't really seem to need - god forbid we should spend a fraction of that on higher education...
Francesca R
Girl
Then maybe you are irrational. Since you agree you have enjoyed a generously rewarded career it seems rather equitable that you should have been paying down the cost of your tuition that enabled it.
Incorrect, and flatly in ignorance of the detail of the Browne recommendation, linked above.
. . . Thus you agree that you have been a substantial beneficiary individually of tertiary tuition.
Irrelevant. Your individual "share" of income tax that has funded higher education is not/will not be sufficient to match your tuition costs as long as you remain anywhere in the bottom 99 percentiles of income.
Internally inconsistent with your prior statements. It appears here that you favour a regressive transfer system where those who benefit least from higher education have to contribute to funding those who benefit most.
You really want evidence that reducing people’s income in the bottom half of the income distribution reduces social mobility? Or do you need it mathematically written out for you that individual funding of higher education results in lower resulting distributional inequality than public funding of the same?
I am not inclined to bother with the latter, which should be readily apparent to anyone who has actually read the report--you can compare the Browne scheme with the existing arrangements for tuition funding in the chart (figure 2) here (link is to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, which is an independent policy think-tank).
For the former the best source is the Equality Trust. Go look for yourself.
Non-sequitur, reductio ad absurdum, and incorrect. Universal primary and secondary education is not in question, and is extremely unlikely to be.
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Francesca R
Girl
Nobody has argued that. What can be argued is that the student’s interest is much higher (in financially measurable terms) than the average of the rest of society.
Straw point as previous reply, nobody (anywhere) is challenging universal public funding of (compulsory) secondary education.
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Francesca R
Girl
Your numbers there do not contradict statement you quoted; rather--they help confirm it. What you say is that as of now, your teaching bill was 3% of your total tax paid to date. But the total cost of higher education to the state, even under the generous pre-Thatcher governments, has never been 3% of total tax revenue.
Therefore if you gained the value of the teaching "free" (funded out of tax), you'd be a net financial winner even though you've paid more than the average in income tax.
ETA--Relevant data sources for 2010-11:
Public funding for England higher ed teaching: £4.7 bn (HEFCE)
Net tax/NI revenue for UK: £516 bn (HMT public finances databank: tab C1 of xls). Take 15% off for Scotland, Wales and N Ireland, so £438 bn
Therefore if you gained the value of the teaching "free" (funded out of tax), you'd be a net financial winner even though you've paid more than the average in income tax.
ETA--Relevant data sources for 2010-11:
Public funding for England higher ed teaching: £4.7 bn (HEFCE)
Net tax/NI revenue for UK: £516 bn (HMT public finances databank: tab C1 of xls). Take 15% off for Scotland, Wales and N Ireland, so £438 bn
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andyandy
anthropomorphic ape
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2006
- Messages
- 8,377
Sure, then let's have a higher income tax rate. We should also provide greater funding for all sorts of post-18 education and training so that there is an even playing field - and then those that gain better paid jobs as a result will pay a higher income tax to fund it. That has basically been the premise for the past few decades. Why the sudden change? And it's got nothing to do with the spending cuts - the wheels have been in motion for this long before the financial crisis, Browne factors in an 80% reduction in state spending in university teaching which is incomparable to the 10%-20% elsewhere.
Not really a straw point - 6th form isn't compulsory, you can make exactly the same argument about greater financial interest as a result of A-level grades, and yet we accept that 6th form education is the responsibility of the state to provide, and don't burden children with debts to pay for it. I'm interested to know why the dividing line should be redrawn at 18 rather than 21. After all it seems somewhat backwards to have a populace not educated beyond 18 - and if we accept that such a thing has an impact on society and on the nation's capabilities (which surely it does), then it should remain the governments responsibility to provide.