Swap out the grants for loans, you're not preventing poor people from going to university you're just deferring when they pay it back. Which shouldn't be a problem when they start their professional careers.
Besides the majority of students blow their grants on nights out anyway. Realising they'd have to eventually pay it back might make them think twice about blowing it on unnecessary things. If you want money for drinking then get a part time job.
I completely agree but the loan repayment terms also need to be changed going forwards as well. There's no point switching all these grants to loans if only a low percentage of the loan is going to be paid back. Otherwise you may as well just stick to the grant system.
As for the students blowing it all on nights out I think that is relatively true. I think I mixed with a fairly diverse bunch at uni with many people having a family wealthy enough to cater for all their needs and others receiving the maximum grants, loans and bursary available. The thing we all had in common was that we all went out and blew loads of our money drinking and doing random stuff.
Which subjects are useless, and why?
I think there's certain subject which people will go to uni to study just because they want to go to uni for the experience. And I won't hold that against them. But I don't think that should be at the taxpayers expense.
For instance some (not all!) will go and do a drama degree just because they can and have no intention of becoming an actor or teacher or something. Then there's those who do things like American studies, anthropology, film or war studies. Some of which sound like a bit of a doss and more akin to a hobby than something they actually think will be useful to them in their future careers.
Somebody else mentioned above maybe give the grants still to people who want to study certain subjects which will help them people enter professions that the country needs more people qualifying into. For instance nurses, doctors and engineers. I would fully support that but I think the government would need to be a bit savvy about it and put clauses into their loan agreements that they're to work in these sectors for a set number of minimum years within a set period of time following qualification otherwise the grant converts to a loan.
Or perhaps for instance say someone studies English, not knowing what they want to do, but then they go on to study the PGCE with an intention of becoming a teacher. It may then in those scenarios be a good incentive to wipe off some of their student loan as if it was a grant because that person has shown an intention to enter into a profession which is beneficial to the country.
