I was disappointed to read about the student tuition fees proposals – I understand the necessity if we’re to maintain 45% of kids going to university. If we’re going to have 45% going to uni when only 20% of jobs actually need graduates then the system proposed makes sense with:
- All students repaying less per month under this Government’s policy than they currently pay.
- Lowest earning 25% of graduates will repay less under this Government’s policy than they do now.
- The top earning 30% of graduates will pay back more than they borrow and are likely to pay more than double the bottom 20% of earners.
- Over half a million students will be eligible for more non-repayable grants for living costs than they get now.
- Almost one million students will be eligible for more overall maintenance support than they get now.
- Part time students will no longer have to pay up front fees benefiting up to 200,000 students per year.
- There will be an extra £150m for a new National Scholarship Programme for students from poorer backgrounds and we will introduce tough new sanctions of universities who fail to improve their access to students from backgrounds.
I wish we could have been braver and had zero tuition fees, as we promised, for the brightest 20% and whatever universities wanted to charge for others. Where is the sense in subsidising people the country doesn’t need to be at university?
I think you forgot one:
8. 70-75% of graduates will pay more under this Government’s policy than they currently pay.
Yours,
A Disillusioned Lib Dem Member (but probably not for much longer)
Hi Andrew,
What alternative would you propose?
I’m clear too many kids are going to university – about double the number UK plc needs – solving that would have allowed zero tuition fees but dashed many studetns and parental, grandparent dreams.
Students being taught to cook roadkill for dinner to stave off debts
I found your entry interesting thus I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog 🙂
You want to go back to the situation where just people like you (presumably) get to go to university. Perhaps you and fellow Liberals can go around to the millions of kids you’d like to stop getting a higher education and tell them why.
The UK needs a well-educated workforce to compete internationally. We need as many people as possible to get HE experience, not fewer.
What you said is disgraceful.
Hi Rick,
People like me? Yes, people brought up in a council house, with a single parent who worked in the National Health Service, attending a failing infant and primary school (still is last time I looked) and attending an average comprehensive school for 2,000 kids with the lucky few not including me having been skimmed of to attend grammar school.
Yes, people like me.
I was lucky. So few university places, about 5% then, that the state could afford to provide means tested grant and free tuition.
I want to return to free tuition and a maintenance grant but how do you afford it when 43% going to uni and the nation only needs 20% at a stretch to go?
Agree the UK needs a well educated population but not 50%. Denmark has highest per capita in Europe and lowest proportion of graduates. Its a high skilled high technology economy.
What we need is step increase in people doing apparenticeships. Not the current dogma of degrees.
Most graduates will be recruited into non graduate jobs – having lost 3 years pensions contributions and gained debt to boot.
How do you think the nation can afford for 43%+ of kids to attend uni?
You want to go back to a time when it was a lot more difficult for people from poorer backgrounds to go to university. Plain and simple. Now, that’s no justification on its own to expand university places, but along side that aspect, we also need to change our way of thinking. People like you think it’s all about competition between graduates for jobs. It isn’t It’s about moving the country’s overall knowledge base so that we can be among the very leading countries, especially in the STEM areas of research.
So personally you are in favour of a vastly-reduced, but free HE system, and concurrently you and your party are also supporting a crippling, debt-laden HE funding system having promised to do the exact opposite. It’s difficult for me to think about how you could wrong in more ways if you tried.
By the way, do you think you shouldn’t have gone, or been able to go, to university? Why didn’t you go and do an apprenticeship?