Be Excellent To Each Other

The Browne Report has set out ideas that University courses could be charged under a free market system. This means that some courses will cost up to £12,000 a year. The crossbench Lord Brown also said that the government could underwrite up to £6,000 of fees, but universities charging what they want on top. There's further discussion at upping the threshold of when one begins paying the student loan back to £21,000 from £15,000 and charging it at the government's rate of interest (currently 2.2%).

So, looks like, to me, Medicine, Law and other popular subjects with high earning potential could cost someone £36,000 to do at undergraduate level. Or people will end up doing less useful, cheaper courses, like (SNIP! -Ed), to 'go to University'.

Changing times for the underfunded higher education system.

As a grown man with a Degree who works in a university, I very much welcome this news.

As a soon to be parent with a very new savings account, I'm horrified

So, the American system, then.

As someone with two degrees and who is already in the workplace, I welcome the stifling of competition for my job that will come from reducing the pool of younger qualified candidates.

Isn't this just going to mean that the top universities are full of rich kids to an even greater extent than they are now?

It depends. The Government will fund up to a maximum level per annum through the loan system, so it is anticipated that most courses won't go over that threshold, although its fairly likely that popular courses at popular universities with a good conversion to high salary ratio will charge over that threshold. So Oxford and Cambridge basically.

Assuming that most courses stay at the top funding threshold, the main factor in determining who takes them up will be attitudes to debt after leaving, which isn't the same as available finance to go to university. Unless however this also impacts on the availability of student loans generally - if your loan is wholly swallowed up by fees then you still have issues being able to go if you are poor. So for the likes of me, it would have made no difference, I couldnt afford to go before, and I wouldn't have been able to afford it under this system.

Edit: The article I read wasn't all that clear but then I saw this. "All students will be able to borrow £3,750 per year - and young people from families earning less than £25,000 will receive a further £3,250."

So ignore all that above. Yes, poorer students are potentially fucked. And a family earning £26,000 is not a wealthy family. Using my own experience as an example, the course I would have taken was extremely popular and I would anticipate that it would have charged quite a bit. When I applied (no fees then of course) then I wouldnt have been able to afford residential costs, or even commuting, on the available loan. This makes it much, much worse.

Not if it keeps oiks like you away from the upper echelons of society!

I am the upper echelon of society.

One degree less, this is my exact position on the issue. Especiallt as they're cutting the science budgets (I heard this second hand yesterday).

The problem is, 40% of the employees of the company I work for are from abroad. So with the stupid visa changes that have happened recently, and the lack of the young people knowing wtf theyr'e doing, I suspect our company will die in a 5 years time or so.

A shame -- we just hit the £1 Billion mark on FTSE

You will have competition, just that it will come from migrants rather than British people.

This all rather horrifies me, to be honest. Now I know some will argue that the higher prices will act as an disincentive for lazy students who see university just as a drinking holiday, but in my experience from a Russell Group university, the worst deadbeat students were all from wealthier, very often privately-educated, backgrounds, because they didn't need a social ladder upwards. I did on the other hand, went without any social life during term time in order to give it a good shot, and it seems that social climbers in future will be deterred from higher education, whilst the complacent pampered posh kids will get off scot free. It's like Victorian England all over again...

I keep reading the title as 'unlimited fines', which is ok by me.

I didn't realise you were a Doctor Doctor.

Tell us a joke.

As a person who already has a degree technically two degrees, I welcome this news.

*runs, selfishly pushing and shoving people out of the way*

edit: Or what Richard "Free Market Economy" Gaywood already said.

Of course, what we need as a nation* is fewer people going to a smaller number of larger and better run universities, and more people leaving school to take on well rewarded jobs that are useful to society, which do not require a degree as an entry requirement, such as plumbers, manufacturing and entrepreneurs, rather than a whole new slew of useless fucking accountants and tax advisors, the leaches. This could be a positive side effect of these changes.

Also, while the proposals mean that failing universities will be able to go to the wall, pity the students who are 2.5 years into a course when that happens. Even if support is given to allow them to complete their course, it will be potentially discredited by poor reputation following a collapse.

In any event, my in depth review of the US higher education system** identifies that there are only 3 university style facilities in that whole country.




*According to me
** John Grisham books

Surely this will lead to an end of Micky mouse degrees then.

That would be two Ph.Ds, not two degrees.

That's not funny.

Also: oh yeah, shut up.

I don'[t wholly agree with the Victorian England comparison, because the clas structure is (mostly) removed. the rich universities will be able to provide funding to the people they want, irrelevant of social background.* This means that the better universities maintain the elite status. People will be disinclined to enter into that level of debt, but they need to be informed that there is an alternative,
This may back fire completely, and the degrees which disappear aren't the "Mickey Mouse" courses, Nickachu refers to, but the less popular, more expensive courses. Eg Chemical Engineering; it requires a lot more cost to maintain an CE department than it does a (for example) Drama department, therefore the CE degree is going to cost more. It is already underfunded, and under subscribed, why should the University continue with it?


*Obviously, these people need to apply, and may not do so.

Funnily enough, I was just looking up a few things a few weeks ago at work. Checking my own student record (they've even still got my monumentally awful photograph from almost a decade ago, the fiends, and I was only here for about 20 minutes. Indeed, they still have details on a friend who only interviewed here the same year, and turned them down. Um), the tuition fees for my course that year were just over £1,000. A student doing the same course now would pay just short of £3,500.

Almost a decade later, I'm still earning more than all but one of my graduate friends. By working at a university, somewhat ironically.

Give it another few years, and it'll basically come down to "rich? Try education! Poor? You can't read this anyway, so who cares?"

Plus, y'know, degrees have never held less value than they do now. Making them prohibitively expensive for poor people now won't change that, especially as the HR industry's impressive levels of incompetence will prevent them from adapting to this change for at least 450 years. Will they stop demanding that every applicant have a degree and two years' experience for the demanding role of "office assistant (fixed term contract for 25 minutes)"? Will they bollocks.

Good.

If, (say) 50 universities are running an underfunded, under subscribed course, and competition and fees structure means some of them remove themselves from the market, then this could lead to a smaller number of universities running a well funded course, each with the right number of students, and will mean that only the decent lecturers remain teaching that stream. As a consequence, a better batch of chemical engineers should evolve.

Oh, of course, I was simply pointing out that this may not affect the courses you might expect.

Ouch. Poor future British university students.

I had to leave my engineering school because I couldn't afford the skyrocketing tuition. I ended up at a mediocre state school for about 19000 USD a year. That's, what, about 12000 GBP? 19000 dollars a year minus whatever scholarships and grants I could get my hands on, times four years, times two people (my husband is my age and we went to the same universities) equals... carry the one, multiply by sadness, divide by crushing debt... A fuckton of money.

Going back to this, if people are going to be deterred from going to university due to the cost, they sure as buggery aren't going to train as, for example, a plumber, which costs a huge amount of cash and doesn't have the luxury of the student loan system to assist financially.


Blessed be the market that provides for us all. Amen.

Pie does make an excellent point. When I look at my university, it had a top-flight business school, a reasonable engineering and computing school, and a significant number of run-of-the-mill other departments tacked on the side. What's the point of those? The teaching there isn't as good as elsewhere, it seems to be that they're just capitalising on the massive amount of oversubscription of university places.

"If you build it (badly) they will come (and not learn much)" shouldn't be our approach to higher education.

Well, I think it's short sighted, do we want knowledgable, young people in this country or don't we? Everyone should get the chance of a further education, no matter their upbringing, the only factor should be their ability and willingness to learn.

I have no idea if this would work or not, but how about have the tax be on the business that employs the person, if they want to employ graduates then they have to pay (add it to the NI contribution that employers already have to pay). It might then also stop some jobs needlessly stipulating degree qualified when all they are actually doing is answering the phone or whatever...

Malc

You can't have competition without competitors. And surely you don't believe that we should have only a single, or couple of, institutions in England and Wales teaching specific subjects?

Of course not. But there are currently hundreds of institutions offering all the mainstream courses. Those that aren't doing a good job of it shouldn't just be supported by the fact that there are ridiculous numbers of people wanting to be students.

That's plain goofy.

I've just finished my Masters (which cost £3,600 for the year). Before that I did a Bachelors (£1,300/yr for three years)

I am unfathomably lucky. I definitely wouldn't be able to start university if I were 18 now.

This could put a serious dampner on my nephews and nieces going to university. Which sucks for them. And my friends who work for the (Smaller - Legal Ed) ones. Omlette, eggs and all, but I can't think of a way to fund higher education terribly well.

Increase taxes. We've a head start & it's the previous generations that fucked things up anyway. Why should the next lot be any more disadvantaged than they already have to be & why is an idiot with money more deserving of a place at university than a bright kid with fuck all?


It's not very likely though. All the short sighted self centred gits will moan "It's my money & I've worked hard to get where I am. Why should it be handed to them on a plate? etc. etc." even though the obvious response should be "Who's going to pay for your care when you're lying there festering in a pool of your own filth, you fucking mong?"

Exactly. Never mind the fact that these 'Mickey Mouse' degree courses* might actually be currently subsidising courses in the physical sciences and electronic engineering.

* a rather nebulous concept, yes, but these were the sorts of courses that have flourished since fees were introduced. Correlation or causation? That's for someone with a decent research budget to look into.


Hey, me neither, particularly if stuff like support for students with disabilities is axed.

My gf has just started a Masters last week, and she was surprised that her university there seems to be no British postgraduate students on her course or generally. Guess they are all priced out of postgraduate study, after three years of some of the most expensive average university fees in the world. That is not a good thing, in terms of social justice issues like social mobility, but also means we won't be able to develop young people with the higher levels of skills needed for a decent economy. So we as a nation will have to 'import' more people with postgraduate qualifications, which is not ideal.

Mm. Overseas students are very much cha-ching, paying as they do about three times as much in tuituion fees as home students. I can well imagine that all this will simply mean more foreign people come over here instead. Maybe that's the angle we should use when objecting about this to the Tories. "More foreigns, you say? I - I - Corwumph!"


Clearing is going to be hilarious for the next few years, with another 80,000 places suddenly opening up. Didn't get on your course? Not to worry - a decent education is first come first served for the next three hours! Get on those phones, kids.

I will have, fool.

I honestly don't see the problem with the amount needed changing, as long as the loans cover it.
Student loans are a fucking bargain, and anyone moaning about a loan they only have to pay when they earn more than £x is being a bit silly.

According to the Private Eye that I was reading last week, the first target on immigration quotas has been declining student visas. No more cha-ching!

That's mental. Student visas present no rights to claim any kind of benefit, no rights to work, etc - purely the right to study in this country for enormous fees. They are a complete cash cow!

My main issue with this is that my degree was absolutely shit. BSc Computer Studies (Hons) involved barely anything useful and ended up being an awkward mix of 'Hello World' programming, half-arsed project management theory and some 1970s computing concepts about how computers process things. The lecturers were a bunch (sorry, Dimz) of useless, lazy cunts who you practically had to stalk if you wanted any help and the resources available to us were mediocre at best.

That cost me over 3k in total. If I had to pay any more than that I'd be massively pissed off and would probably shit in my lecturer's hair.

I think the issue is people overstaying after their course/visa expires. The Daily Mail apparently has been beating the drum about it (no surprise there) despite the fact that their group owns a company which brings students in from overseas. D'oh.

That's the idea, but I'm not sure it works like that in practice. Does it not work that we're paying for the current batch of oldies & when our lot are their age the next lot will be paying for us?

Hence George's new plan that he's about to unveil to make a Soylent Green factory, enabling Big G to get rid of the costs involved in caring for an ageing population & creating jobs in in the process

I blame Gamu.

That's even more bizarre though. You're still not able to claim anything, and who's going to pay whacking great amounts of tuition fees to finish their course and then work as an illegal for a cleaning company?

Plus the conditions attached to them are now far less lax. I have to check every month for any overseas students who haven't enrolled, come back after time off, or who aren't adequately engaging with their studies. If any of the above apply, the UKBA throws them to the floor and shoots them six times takes their passport.

Although that only applies to students who started from May, it'll include anyone who applies for or renews a Visa since, and until the Daily Mail pressurises some spineless minister into changing everything again the end of time.

Not that there won't be ways round it. But yeah, foreign students are pretty much our lifeblood. I dunno about other institutions, but I've no reason to suspect it's much different for them.

I think I saw on Newsnight that it was, as usual, a very small percentage of students, from particular ethnic backgrounds, being funded to stay in the country and work as agitprops in certain university campuses amongst their ethnic but indigenous equivalents. Or something.

As usual they attacked all student visas.

I've no doubt there are students who stay on, deliberately or not, and some of them probably do cause some kind of trouble. But I doubt it's really very many (for £10,000 a year, it's a pretty terrible way to blag your way in), and n any case, the last gubmint did all they realistically did about that earlier this year by changing things so that anyone coming in will be under a different system that turfs them out if they don't play ball.

I agree with the fact that it may be happening, but it is going to be a tiny number of perps. Apart from this new more rigid system, have they, as I understand it, actually cut the number of visas for overseas students or is it that they've made it so bloody hard to get one that it will put a lot of potential students off from applying.

Of course, those who are intending to come here to agitprop won't be put off if they are sufficiently motivated.

There's also the massive number of bogus colleges through which people get student visas. According to the Daily Mail, or something. Or maybe the government.

I thought student visas also give you the right to work (limited, perhaps), and can be extended after the end of your education?

I understand you can convert it to a working visa - but then that's the place to focus, right? Not the initial issuing of the visa.

btu TEH BOGUS COLLIJIS!

So how many years until we're back into stone age level technological progression?


7 years, tops?

That much is certainly true - you see them all over the place. Again though, the solution is to require that any institution permitted on the application for a student visa provide its results anually. It should be pretty easy to spot the ones that never graduate anyone.

And again, they wouldn't give you the right to work or claim benefits - so you might as well just come in on a tourist visa.