Tuition fees going up to £9000 a year

More like pay £9k a year then come out of uni and not being able to find a job.

I am glad I done all this and got a good 5 years experience in 2 companies before the crap hit the fan
 
AcidHell2 said:
Which is why I said there should be less people going to uni.

And no it does not need to be just for academics either. Anyone who goes to a top uni and gets a decent job, should get it for free.

The country needs decent graduates, it's good for the economy and it should be free to anyone capable.
But at the same time we do not need normal 3rd rate graduates, apprenticeships should be pushed harder and even before that there should be a move away from academic subjects much earlier if pupils do not want to study them.
The entire system needs a shake up.

Tax also goes into one giant pot and it is stupid to try and use emotional blackmail to further a point.
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Where to you draw the line? Who sets the required academic standard needed to get a state-funded university place? What counts as a 'top job'?

You end up as we are now, in a vicious cycle of more people going to university, which means the value of a degree drops, which means more employers require degrees, which means more people go to university etc.

I'm happy to pay back my loan that partially funded my degree, because it's enabled me to get a reasonable job and give me the quality of life I currently have. I'd be happy to pay 3x what I'm currently paying, assuming it's on the same terms (loan doesn't increase in real terms, payback rates being the same as they are now).

It moves us more towards the notion of people paying for services received, assuming they're able to. If I'd gone down a different path and become a research chemist, I wouldn't ever be expecting to pay it back, because I'd be earning a lot less.
 
growse said:
Where to you draw the line? Who sets the required academic standard needed to get a state-funded university place? What counts as a 'top job'?
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The state, depending on what the country needs and how well universitys do and what grades you receive.

growse said:
You end up as we are now, in a vicious cycle of more people going to university, which means the value of a degree drops, which means more employers require degrees, which means more people go to university etc.
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How will more go to uni. Less will, as they would have to pay full price if they wanted to go to a sub standard uni or receive a 3rd, or what ever the limits where set at.


At the end of the day education should be available to everyone and cost should not be an issue. But with that should come responsibility of doing and getting a decent degree.
 
I find these arguments intriguing as I would class myself as the epitome of the type of student nu labours plans were aimed at.

My parents and indeed whole family are what you would term lower middle class with strong working class roots, I am from the North of England and for reasons I don't wholly understand myself didn't excel at my A-Levels (GCSEs were all fine, hence everyone was so dismayed at my A-Level results).

The likes of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge and in fact the top 50% of the universities in the country were closed to me from an academic stand-point, certainly under a grant system I would have been entirely ineligible. Under a fairly priced displaced fee system, I fell under the category of "maximum personal loan, no further help, no help from parents expected". Now I used this money to attend a middling university (Staffordshire). For whatever reason the problems I had during my A-Levels didn't rear their heads and I achieved a first class in CS. This then allowed me to move to Manchester who gave me a scholarship to do my MSc and in turn that led to NERC giving my a studentship to do my PhD.

Quite literally *only* nu labours fee system in its original incarnation (I was close to being one of the first years to go through the loan system properly), would have realistically allowed me to get to this stage.

I now fully intend to continue along the academic path to wherever it may take me and am exceptionally glad I was given the benefit of the doubt and quite frankly a second chance following from my A-Levels.

I suppose the question it all leaves me with is, before the original fee system began to spiral out of control into the monster that the ConDems have now created with their US level fees for home students (albeit still a displaced system compared to the Americans up front payments, ignoring scholarships), was it really such a bad thing, or is the fact it gave me an opportunity to become something that there is literally no chance I would have been able to become as little as a decade ago, not enough recompense for the system as a whole?

I guess many will say "you had your chance, you messed it up, you should have gone without a degree in the first place", but I hope that by excelling once given the chance, and through my future research, I am able to prove I was worth the second chance.

Also for those who are still under the illusion that the ancients only pump out the best students, you really are wrong. They are most certainly still the most interesting and distinguished places to attend, and if you are lucky enough to be involved in the right disciplines you will undoubtedly get some of the brightest and best teaching you, but to dismiss the likes of the red bricks as second rate is wholly unfair.

The industries that this country was (and still is to some extent) built on, engineering, the heavy sciences etc. are still entirely dominated in both talent and resource by the other fine institutions spread across the nation.
 
Law grads

Amp34 said:
Well I'm intrigued, where are these jobs? Other than a few grad schemes there don't seem to be may around at that amount that i've seen (in a normally well paid area, oil/gas and mining).
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The law Grads start on £35k at my firm, £42k in 2nd year and then £60k when they qualify, so I suppose this ups the average.
 
AtticusFinch said:
The law Grads start on £35k at my firm, £42k in 2nd year and then £60k when they qualify, so I suppose this ups the average.
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This is what I was wondering, a few (comparitively) jobs offering massive amounts of money.

However hopefully when I graduate next september I'll be on similar (with a life...)!:p
 
Sickening.
I can't afford to pay out a £35K + loan for university onto of a few hundred K mortgage for the rest of my life.
It's alright for you to be saying
"Oh, but you don't have to pay it until your earning £20K+, you'll barely notice it.."
Yeah, right, struggling to pay for bills in a tiny shared flat with 5 other people when I'm 25? That's certainly what it's seeming like in these excellent economic times.

What happened to this, evidently false Nick Clegg?
Nick saying how there will be no fees in 6 years.
 
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That's right I guess though that it's the return on investment that will make people (sensibly in my view) consider whether they should actually be going to uni at all. I paid around $10k nz dollars a year for my degrees starting in 1995. I am amazed at the fact that so many people seem to think that a free/heavily subsidized uni education is a right vs a lucky set of circumstances.
 
scorza said:
Yes I suspect that is the ideology behind the coalition government's education policies. There was me thinking that University should only be for those who are clever enough though...
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Agree with the second half of this strongly - it should only be for those clever enough, regardless of means. If this means swingeing cuts to the number of places to ensure that heavily discounted uni places remain available, then so be it. Number of places should be drastically reduced, so we don't have people studying pointless degrees in 4th rate institutions.
 
It is a joke. Pay people to skive off earning an honest wage and batter the people that want to better themselves and who are much more likely to be paying the most tax in years to come.
 
Dolph said:
Welcome to the world where there is a refusal to acknowledge that we are sending too many people to university, doing too many subjects that aren't needed/make no sense, to do jobs that shouldn't require a degree.

Fees are a direct result of this.
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This is GD, no place for common sense here my friend.
 
Not a joke

PapaLazaru said:
It is a joke. Pay people to skive off earning an honest wage and batter the people that want to better themselves and who are much more likely to be paying the most tax in years to come.
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It's just good economics. If you want to go to uni you pay. You lessen the burden on the tax payer and require a prospective student to seriously consider if uni is the right option. If you don't want to have lots of debt, work while at uni and in the holidays. Everyone I knew at uni worked part time during term to help, and worked over summer, still finding time to enjoy life.

If you want to achieve success you have to work hard.
 
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