Graduates 'could pay back double their student loans'

I think your problem out of all that, and I'm not saying I entirely disagreeing with you, is that you are leaning more towards putting the '18th Century Japanese welding techniques' and law, medicine, etc. together and saying they are as worthwhile as each other. This is simply not the case.

You might have evidence that Tesco are getting a better class of worker due to having a graduate of anything, but that doesn't necessarily reflect on society.
 
Gilly said:
I think your problem out of all that, and I'm not saying I entirely disagreeing with you, is that you are leaning more towards putting the '18th Century Japanese welding techniques' and law, medicine, etc. together and saying they are as worthwhile as each other. This is simply not the case.

You might have evidence that Tesco are getting a better class of worker due to having a graduate of anything, but that doesn't necessarily reflect on society.
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fair enough. We've both said our bits and it's been very interesting so thanks for the chat, I'm respectfully leaving this particular virtual pub table and going to the bar! :) Thanks for the debate ..
 
Graduate positions are nothing new, in fact there seems to be a hell of a lot less graduate positions than there once was. The number applying for each spot is now many times more than it used to be, the employers just have to weedle many more no hopers out.

I worked at one of the largest companies in the UK, in 6 years the most basic lowest level supervisory jobs suddenly started requesting degrees, up until then A levels had previously qualified you. First the O levels were devalued (GCSEs) then the A levels then finally degrees. There is a point where more people with the same level of education exist than the economy requires, we are at this point now.
Graduates come out of Uni expecting a £20k job when their genuine value to most businesses is well below that.
There has to be a ratio, ever heard the expression too many chiefs not enough indians? Lets imagine we suddenly make 25 the "school" leaving age, the vast majority now have a degree, woot that means the average person can expect a £30k salary within a coupel of years and a management position. Whos going to actually do the work?

Statistics on education improving the workforce relate to basic education such as being able to read and write and comprehension to general factors such as safety.

If labour had not basically over burdened our education system by trying to get everyone to do a degree we wouldnt even need to force people to pay anything. IMO we should be limiting uni places to say 3% of the A level leavers per year, specific exams for the places, with maybe a small amount of places up for the highest bidder if your family has lots of silver spoons. You may as well let a few pay to get in as they would only do so outside the UK.
This would be the greatest leveller to background as exams could be done completely anonomously just like professional etc exams. So everyone would have the opportunity to compete on genuine ability to get one of the places and the country wouldnt be footing the bill to get half the population a degree so they can go and work in a call centre.
If there was a genuine need for more places then more could be made available as demand dictated. I cry a little inside every time I see a basic medium/semi skilled job asking for a degree PURELY as a factor to reduce the number of people able to apply, from my experience at work the degree has almost zero correlation in basic common sense and ability to do a non technical job. Saying that its quite rare that a degree meets the criteria of the specific job and that continual training at a later date isn't required due to constant change in the real world.
10 years after uni leaving age work experience and achievements makes the degree pretty irrelevant in most cases.
 
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Yep I'd say that's one of the issues we have, Labour came in with EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION saying they wanted to get 50% of people going to uni, compared to about 5% from my father's generation. There is no need for one in every two people to go to uni, you just end up with a bunch of mediocre graduates expecting the moon on the stick rather than being prepared to graft and work their way up the ladder. Actually, it's more than that, some of them probably ARE prepared to graft but employers are naturally less impressed by a degree these days, especially anyone with below a 2:1.
 
Oxy said:
I think this will price my spawn out of uni, they will be relegated back to being fishermen and shop keepers.

What is the sense in getting into £80k debt for a job that will start at 20k and by the time u retire you could only be on 40k...

I assume this now means uni is only for the super rich again?
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The biggest issue conservatives have is rubbish public relations, EVERYTHING they wanted to do and are doing is better than Labour, but people just don't get it.

Its this simple, your kid lives off 20k a year, he'll NEVER pay back a dime, while rich people subsidise his education by paying back substantially more than borrowed.

If he makes 40k a year, I don't think you ever "catch up" and pay off your debt, it gets wiped out later in life, its not ideal to carry around debt with you, but most people will have it, its irrelevant to living. He won't have huge payments, nor will ever pay back the full amount.

Richy rich making 100k a year, will pay back what, 2-2.5x what he borrowed, because the debt grows as he's not on a great salary, then 5-10 years later he's paying it back fast, but its a huge sum at that point. Richy is subsidising your kid on a crap salary by paying his, your kids and half of someone elses share.

Uber rich who ends up on 200k a year ends up paying it back very fast and maybe even paying less than the 100k a year guy, but this guy will pay 100k a year in taxes, for 20 years, growing every year, this is the kind of guy who pays enough tax in a lifetime to build a school or fix loads of roads, etc, etc.

At no stage do poor people lose out. Rich people lose out more at the moment, poor people get tutition paid for them and non means tested loans. I went to uni and didn't want to sponge off my parents so got no extra loans, while living with London costs, and paying my tutition fee's, and having smeg all to live off, EVERYONE who was from a poorer family than me was better off.

Now you get tutition lump sum upfront, this doesn't come out of your student loans and loans are less, or not at all means tested meaning I'd get enough to live on, as would anyone else.


Uni is FAIRER now, and your decision to go should no longer be based on how much you make afterwards, which the system in the past used to do more.

Its a complex way of writing it up and its a pretty fair way to do it, its just been horrifically badly presented.
 
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