University Fees (UK)

[Gooble]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7946912.stm

Basically universities want to increase tuition fees to ranging between £4,000 and £20,000 a year (£20,000 is just fucking ridiculous!!!). The current cap is £3,500 a year, with most courses around the £3,000 mark. And there is no apparent reason for the change!

The only reason I can think of is the recession, but that's probably going to affect the students and their families worse than it's going to affect an entire university.

Students live in effective poverty as it is (my sister has a £50/week budget for everything minus accomodation) and in the vast majority of cases leave university in large debt anyway, and this is just going to make it even worse! Admittedly you only pay back a relatively small amount a month (about £35 maximum) but this will either increase with the proposed new rise or take most of your life to pay off!

 

[Volucer]

It's ridiculous. The £3500 is bad enough. I can't see how they can justify charging so much for it. If they charge £20k per year, it will stop people from going to Uni, so more people will need jobs after college, which don't currently exist in the current job market, making more people unemployed. Those who do go will come out with debts of £60-80k, then with interest will become even more, these won't be payed off until they are in their 50's/60's and will be having to pay for morgages and kids and whatever else. It's getting to be beyond a joke to live in this country.

 

[Satki]

If it doesn't come until 2012 I'm sorted, if it's not I'm so badly screwed, where I'm at uni they already charge the maximum, so I can see that going up . Overseas students are already charged stupid amounts of money anyway, I wonder how much it would go up for them?

 

[gh0ti]

Tuition fees are exorbitant. I went to a good university to study history (graduating last year) and in my final year I had just three hours of contact time a week. It honestly felt that I was paying for a really expensive library membership.

I'm just concerned where does it end? When I went to Uni, my fees were around £1200 a year. Now it's £3500. Students will be emerging with so much debt that they'll be choking on it for years before they're in a position to benefit from their further education.

 

[Brotherofwill]

I think it's too high, too. UK universities have high standards but the raise isn't justified. Luckily Europe has a pretty good student loan systems. 50 pounds a week is actually pretty high I think.

 

[TwistedEllipses]

It's bound to discriminate and make some universities elitist, what's to stop the top universities charging whatever they want? Already I know at least 3 people who don't qualify for aid because of their parents' jobs, but since they don't get any help money from them either they end juggling 1 or more jobs and/or trying to exist on the bare minimum. I know Universities need funding, but the current system works well enough without raising the costs during a recession...

 

[Filtertip]

The dumest thing ive ever herd on the news from our oh so great gov. I din't go to uni my self because i was worryed about the money, sure i could get a loan but being in the middle class ill be entitle to the raw basics.

Rasing it will only give us more reasons to not go to uni that are tbh prity silly. They only said there looking to rise fees nothing has been said about funding support.

 

[space_oddity]

In Australia we have a government scheme called HECS where we dont pay a dollar, the federal government pays.
When i start earning about $60,000 a year it starts coming into my taxes though.

 

[electric discordian]

Already my wife who is a maths teacher is seeing a lowering in the numbers of pupils looking at university. Lets not forget the small fact that for 20,000 you can now buy a modest house, a compact car, many plasma screen TV's and they are for real physical items not like the vagueries of a University education. Especially as we are now in a situation where a degree is not worth the paper its printed on!

Oh and doctors, teachers etc are being more highly taxed than any other profession so you take a job to benefit society and pay for the rest of your life.

 

[IactoSophos]

This is the reason why I'm going on a protest march on April 2nd. We're going to march to the G20 summit, it's ridiculous how they keep screwing with us students

 

[scarbunny]

I dont really agree with the raising of fees as they are pretty bad as it is.

However I have to disagree with the govenments insistance that everyone should be able to do A-levels and a degree. They really shouldn't, where I live a small island with around 70,000 people nearly everyone has a degree, youd think this would be great for job prospects and employers but all it does is flatten the work force. A the more people with degrees the less value they have.

We need people with lower eduction standards to do the shit jobs, the supermarket needs its shelves filling, McDonalds needs burger flippers, bins need collecting.

Really university should be for people who are actually intelligent, get rid of crap degrees like media studies and fine art (really if you like art read a book). Focus more money into proper subjects like science, maths, history.

Just my 2 cents any way.

 

[Dele]

Already my wife who is a maths teacher is seeing a lowering in the numbers of pupils looking at university. Lets not forget the small fact that for 20,000 you can now buy a modest house, a compact car, many plasma screen TV's and they are for real physical items not like the vagueries of a University education. Especially as we are now in a situation where a degree is not worth the paper its printed on!

Oh and doctors, teachers etc are being more highly taxed than any other profession so you take a job to benefit society and pay for the rest of your life.

A modest house? A compact car? Darn, do you guys have the price levels of Africa or something?

 

[beddo]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7946912.stm

Basically universities want to increase tuition fees to ranging between £4,000 and £20,000 a year (£20,000 is just fucking ridiculous!!!). The current cap is £3,500 a year, with most courses around the £3,000 mark. And there is no apparent reason for the change!

The only reason I can think of is the recession, but that's probably going to affect the students and their families worse than it's going to affect an entire university.

Students live in effective poverty as it is (my sister has a £50/week budget for everything minus accomodation) and in the vast majority of cases leave university in large debt anyway, and this is just going to make it even worse! Admittedly you only pay back a relatively small amount a month (about £35 maximum) but this will either increase with the proposed new rise or take most of your life to pay off!

They used to give grants, the student population doubled, did they halve the grants? No. They started charging. So the question is, what happened to all that money?

All that increasing fees will do is reduce the number of students from poorer families. This education should be free. Now, with unemployment rising, especially in the youngest age range and a nearly destroyed financial industry it's really not worth going to university unless it's a prestigious one where you are bound to get a first class masters degree.

What universities are failing to realise is that further education is now essentially a commodity and must operate with basic supply and demand. Price goes up demand goes down. As the service is largely income elastic, the overall revenue drops when put to such ridiculous levels.

Furthermore, by doing this the universities risk breaking the law for discriminating against people from poorer backgrounds. Well, at least we don't have as far to fall as the rich do so lets hope the universities see the effect of the recession on the so called wealthy elite, I don't think your large donations are going to remain a constant in the current climate.

EDIT: It seems as though all vice chancellors are so out of touch with the students they serve. The government clearly never studied basic economics; you need education for both social and economic growth and development.

 

[Clemenstation]

Sounds pretty consistent with undergrad tuition here in Canada, maybe a bit pricier. Of course, the cost of living in the UK is much higher I understand. Welcome to the 21st century, where everyone has access to education (and the giant debt that stalks you through your best years).

 

[Rezfon]

wow...I'm glad I study in Scotland

 

[Ryuzaki]

wow...I'm glad I study in Scotland

Scotland gets so many free concessions from the UK. It's so annoying. Free higher education for Scottish people, while the rest of us in England have to pay an extortionate amount each year.

Any tuition fee increases will hit the middle class the hardest. You can be sure that the government will fund anyone who doesn't earn enough. I don't even qualify for the full loan. Any increase should not affect me, I doubt they can increase the prices for existing students, but I worried about my brother & sister. If this increase goes ahead it will be bad for them.

 

[Rascarin]

This is ridiculous. What could possibly justify charging that amount of money?

I agree with the poster above saying about getting rid of stupid degrees. Film Studies? Worse, "David Beckham Studies"? Fuck off and die. What a load of worthless twattery; its no wonder degrees are practically useless these days; nobody takes one thats actually worth taking.

 

[Rezfon]

wow...I'm glad I study in Scotland

Scotland gets so many free concessions from the UK. It's so annoying. Free higher education for Scottish people, while the rest of us in England have to pay an extortionate amount each year.

Any tuition fee increases will hit the middle class the hardest. You can be sure that the government will fund anyone who doesn't earn enough. I don't even qualify for the full loan. Any increase should not affect me, I doubt they can increase the prices for existing students, but I worried about my brother & sister. If this increase goes ahead it will be bad for them.

It would be nice to see England get the same as us, but with a population 10 times the size of Scotland and a University count close to that aswell, it could prove to be a problem. I have noticed a lot of people moving up here for a few years (you need to be living in Scotland for at least 3 years I think to be eligable) then going to University.

 

[Hellion25]

Its not only the Middle Class that gets a raw deal, though I can definitly see where you're coming from and agree. My personal situation is that I'm from a working class family, single parent home. My mom made the mistake of allowing her ex on our mortgage, and then they broke up due to him being a raging alcoholic and he doesn't pay a penny anymore, yet is now firts name on the mortgage because of the banks. This left me to foot a Uni bill, with £13000 a year coming into our house and no way of rectifying the situation or get support seeing as we were supposed to be pulling more into the house. Luckily I got a job and managed to pay my own way for the most part, yet I still owe £2500.

Obviously this is an isolated incident, but its not only the middle classes that would get screwed with this. Uni is useless anyway. As one of the other posters pointed out, you could learn what I learnt in my IT degree on your own with just a fraction of effort. Put it like this, I graduated with a 2:1, and I recently got turned down for a TRAINEE IT Tech position that payed little over £11000. I can't get a job in my field for love nor money, and I would be mega pissed if I had payed £20000+ for the privilege.

 

[fix-the-spade]

Oh dear, a price increase.


Unfortunately tuition fees are a necessary evil. I looked at going to Uni in the US or Canada and the cost compared to the UK (not factoring in immigration, visas, housing blahblahblah) is astounding. After 3-4 years I would have been leaving with close to £30'000 debt, just from the course fees. Versus £12-15k from the UK Student Loan+tuition fees. Even if you're paying the full fees your place at University is heavily subsidised by the Government. We actually get quite a good deal, even if the Scots get a better one (using English money while they're at it).

The problem stems from this idea that everyone in the UK should be going to University, it's fine in theory but a lot of places (and money) are taken up by courses that are basically shit. You 'study' three years, get a worthless degree and help the Government look good.

It's a huge waste of resources, if the frivolous courses were all binned, there would be a lot more money floating about to fund the ones that are actually worth something.
It's not a popular stance as a lot of (probably most) people would suddenly not be good enough to get into University. But for the people able to make something of their degree the costs would be a lot lower.