Uni fees and devoloution

Soldato
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It will depend on the outcome of scot parliamentary elections but currently as it stands English students could have to pay up to 9k for a course, fees will vary uni to uni and course to course. Whereas unless it is over turned by Scottish parliament scottish students currently and will still pay not a penny in fees.

More surprised than anything else. Similar situation to free prescriptions north of the border. What, in the layout of the devoloutionary agreement, allows for this sort of unfair unbalance? Especially in a time of austerity I fail to understand how this can be justified.

If there is a specific within the agreement that allows this in the first place and can it be over ruled by Westminster?

I picked up the basics of this in the Economist but can't really dig up any further details.
 
I pay £3225 for 12 hours of teaching time a week, which often turns into 10 hours and is mainly useless. Its ridiculous. If it went up to 9k i'd consider not bothering.
 
The Scottish Governments funding will be cut in line with the rest of the funding cuts. How the Scottish Governement pays for it will be upto them, free uni places might be one of the things to go.
 
[TW]Fox;17796145 said:
The imbalance exists because they are different countries.

Yes and no. They are Scotland but they are part of the uk and draw taxation and funding benefits from this. They are not an independant and self sufficent country. No offence meant to the scots on the forum is intended in that statement, just pointing it out.

Yet there is no chance their own taxation system can support such a generous system. I know they get some form of "allowance" from the central tax pot to use how they want. So if the answer is as simple as you make it should the "allowance" be supplied to support such a thing.
 
Yes and no. They are Scotland but they are part of the uk and draw taxation and funding benefits from this. They are not an independant and self sufficent country. No offence meant to the scots on the forum is intended in that statement, just pointing it out.

Yet there is no chance their own taxation system can support such a generous system. I know they get some form of "allowance" from the central tax pot to use how they want. So if the answer is as simple as you make it should the "allowance" be supplied to support such a thing.
Oddly enough, an independent Scotland would be able to support the spending that the Scottish governement makes. As it is, Education is a devolved matter and as such the Scottish government can spend as much of it's funding as it sees fit on it or any other devolved are of public spending.
 
I pay £3225 for 12 hours of teaching time a week, which often turns into 10 hours and is mainly useless. Its ridiculous. If it went up to 9k i'd consider not bothering.

Just to be fair, you are paying for more than 'just' weekly lectures. Access to the faciltiies/resources of the uni and staff.

Although that being said, lectures can be pointless at times, especially if you're already knowledgeable in areas. £9k seems to be an insane amount of money though, i'm glad i finished this year.
 
We've got roughly the same amount of money per person, it's up to the Scottish parliament to decide what they want to spend it on. Some of our services suffer because of it, others prosper.
 
I pay £3225 for 12 hours of teaching time a week, which often turns into 10 hours and is mainly useless. Its ridiculous. If it went up to 9k i'd consider not bothering.

This. I truely believe that the majority of what I've learnt could have been taught within a year if things were inline with college. Instead it's just rubbish and the only real reason to get a degree is to stand out that little bit more, prooving you are willing to learn that bit more. Apart from that its a waste.
 
This. I truely believe that the majority of what I've learnt could have been taught within a year if things were inline with college. Instead it's just rubbish and the only real reason to get a degree is to stand out that little bit more, prooving you are willing to learn that bit more. Apart from that its a waste.

What do you study?
 
What do you study?

Bsc Software Engineering, 1st year was bringing everyone to a standard included learning java. Second year took this further but really weren't that much more. This year is a joke, 8 hours of uni a week sometimes less, only thing I seem to be learning is a deeper knowledge of the .net framework. I know the money is for facilities and such, but I seem to find quicker and more sunstantial answers off google.
 
I does feel unfair that English taxes could go to pay for free Scottish uni places, but that's just how they spend their money... I do wander what it is that gets cut back on instead though, as Scotland doesn't seem to be noticeably worse off in provision of other services than England (skin deep impression though, idk much about Scotland). Maybe their whole government is just much more efficient.
 
It will depend on the outcome of scot parliamentary elections but currently as it stands English students could have to pay up to 9k for a course, fees will vary uni to uni and course to course. Whereas unless it is over turned by Scottish parliament scottish students currently and will still pay not a penny in fees.

More surprised than anything else. Similar situation to free prescriptions north of the border. What, in the layout of the devoloutionary agreement, allows for this sort of unfair unbalance? Especially in a time of austerity I fail to understand how this can be justified.

If there is a specific within the agreement that allows this in the first place and can it be over ruled by Westminster?

I picked up the basics of this in the Economist but can't really dig up any further details.

So what you are saying is that you are in a huff and are jealous of us not paying any fees, and are now trying to find out how to force the scottish parliament into getting rid of SAAS. Haha.
 
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I does feel unfair that English taxes could go to pay for free Scottish uni places, but that's just how they spend their money... I do wander what it is that gets cut back on instead though, as Scotland doesn't seem to be noticeably worse off in provision of other services than England (skin deep impression though, idk much about Scotland).

It may seem unfair, hell it may even be unfair but Scotland gets a certain amount of money that it can spend as it wishes - the choice was to subsidise university education and prescriptions (amongst other things), England could at least theoretically choose to do the same. If the debate continues there'll be mention of the Barnett formula, some complaints about that and then we'll probably get a large debate about oil revenues.

Maybe their whole government is just much more efficient.

I've got to credit you with an impressive amount of optimism there - this being an executive that managed to overspend on their Parliament building by a factor of 10 before they even set foot in the place...

They're not the worst in the World by a long stretch but I'm not convinced they couldn't be made a whole lot more efficient.
 
I've got to credit you with an impressive amount of optimism there - this being an executive that managed to overspend on their Parliament building by a factor of 10 before they even set foot in the place...

Care to elaborate?

Ah, I see 'building' in there.

Well no, you can't blame 'us'. The contract was set by the Scottish Office, that was WESTMINSTER POLITICIANS. To be clear on that.

The contract laid out and handed to the Scots parliament also meant we couldn't really do much when it started to go wrong. Only send them notes that we were displeased. We couldn't terminate, even the oversight committee was powerless. Run away train comes to mind.

Kinda like the CEC and the trams now. (labour-snp) (except we'd be lucking to see a tram, let alone one moving or 'running away')
 
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