This is disgusting untill a few years ago no-one paid tuition fee’s and now everyone has to pay a basic level but if you don’t go into a decent paid job the debt will hang round you like a bad smell for years. Now they want to raise them? I’m on a science based degree and if the fee’s are going to be raised to £6000 a year I probably wouldn’t have done my course. My little sisters coming to uni this year and I don’t think she’d go if the costs were raised. Why can we pay bail out big buisness and not educate the next generation?
wait, is this per class or per year?
it its per year… hell, i have friends who are in their mid 30s that are still paying off their loans, especially those with higher then bachelors degrees.
i mean it sucks… but its the name of the game.
Education costs, if you are doing a science or engineering based degree that means anything your school needs a fantastic amount of equipment, all of which costs shit loads.
Does your government provide a loan system for students?
We pay fee’s, which are about half the actual cost, the gov subsidises the rest, and we get a interest free loan for living costs and course costs.
Yet still people bitch because our parents all got free uni education…
I’m sure they’ll do what they’ve done here in the USA. Tuition raises every year by a few percentage points. Once they’ve started to charge, it’ll keep going up. The only time that doesn’t happen is when tuition is free because %2 increase on $0 is still $0.
the thing that makes me angry is when 30 years ago it was $3000 for 4 years of college (tuition, books, room and board) and now $3000 barely pays for books.
You can’t compare it like that, since the value of the money has changed dramatically over the years. Checked it with few calculators, that $3000 from 1977 would be $10200 in 2007. Meaning things priced $3000 in 1977 would be equally cheap/expensive if you could get them for $10200 couple years back.
But I guess that $10200 doesn’t cover the 4 years of college either, eh? I’m lucky to have free education. And government gives you support + backs up for small loan for basic living. Not much, but you can live with it.
Free education for the masses i say - education shouldnt be only for those that have money. The more educated people are, the more money they make, the more money they make, the more tax they pay - so the government is gonna get the money back for paying for peoples education either way.
The problem is the more educated people are the harder they are to control :\
More of the point that bugs me is that it didn’t cost anything for university a decade ago, now we have to pay for it and the summer before i started they doubled the interest we pay from day 0 from 2.2% to 4% thats now 8 times the base rate! It’s awful anyway we’ve got a protest at uni after my lecture so better go and get my moneys worth.
my tuppence-worth - and I’m inspired to reply mostly because I notice that MistakenTourist you list your location as Manchester and I spent some very happy years at the University of Manchester (91 - 95) and then a couple of years at Sprit Studios on the sound engineering course) - the problem that will become more and more apparant is that prospective students from less-well-to-do backgrounds will be put off from going at all in the first place - and if they do then they’ll be looking for courses that have a better chance of a faster payback in career terms (more students for technical courses? more specialist courses for finance? hmm).
In my day (cue “new world symphony” - or the good old Hovis ad as us Brits like to call it ) the uni course (not the sound engineering one) was free and I got a grant (not huge but meant you didn’t have to max out on student loans) so made my choice of arts degree viable while I worked out what on earth I was going to do later. Because I didn’t have to spend fifty hours a week in a lab/on a course that demanded full time and more attention I was able to devote a large amount of time to music - cue the mixing/creating addiction that I hold and love to this day.
So net result - furthering knowledge for knowledge’s sake and opportunity to develop ourselves into people that may choose to pursue interests that by and large won’t ever pay the bills and spend time - god forbid - enjoying ourselves - during the formative years which is the first real opportunity where we can meet all types of different people from around the UK/world and realise that we are in fact mostly the same - will be greatly diminished.
The universities claim that the increase is needed to maintain high standards. May well be the case. Additional government funding is certainly going to be key but with the benefit of some oversight to make sure that the institutions are being run efficiently so that the money isn’t wasted.
Utopia - the above government commitment/oversight combined with some - rigorous - means testing to keep the courses free for students who need it. Sliding scale for families better off.
And a graduate tax that will apply to students who go to work for the corporations who will benefit most from the highly skilled candidates that the system can offer - paid for mostly by the corporations themselves, not the students concerned.
the problem is that 20-30 years ago it was a rarity that you went to university and only the most intelligent, academic people went. Nowadays everyone is encouraged to go and do any old bollocks course. So education grants for all just isnt possible.
It does set a concerning precedent though of making further education something beyond the reach of those from lower socio-economic backgrounds. And I’m talking people who are from low to middling income families. Those who wont get a grant but family is not well off enough to pay them through and the prospect of accruing that amount of debt totally puts them off.
I’m certainly very pleased that I am just about to finish my degree having paid under the old system (still got a lot of debt to pay off though!)
Almost everyone I know from high school went to college. MOst of them couldn’t finish it, but it was where we were supposed to go.
The problem is, as daveq said, that everyone is going to college. Fewer and fewer people are going to trade and vocational schools, and this is putting a strain on the financial aid system. I have to pay for my entire college education (thankfully my mother split it with me). That’s around $35,000 for four years, which is really inexpensive, but thank god I got some sort of scholarship for being all smart-like.
I don’t think higher education is a right, I think it’s a privelege. You guys are really really lucky to have a system that thinks the opposite. Even if it is costing money, it’s a helluva lot less than what some people have to pay out here.
I agree its a privelege, however, I have a friend who’s studying a biology degree at oxford university and her parents are just above the threshold of not getting grants, if she had to apply under the proposed systems she wouldn’t have chosen the course she did as it would most certainly have been one of the more expensive courses and she wouldn’t have wanted that level of debt round her for life. I accept a lot of people are going to uni for the fact its “what you do” post college however this means testing is in my eyes another social boundary being imposed on those who’s parents can’t afford to help/support them through uni.
I am going to be paying off my loans for another decade, and god forbid I decide to go get a Masters or a law degree. I’ll be in debt forever.
So what? Why are people so petrified of loans? Maybe it’s different in the UK, I don’t know. Student loans are so flexible to pay back. You can defer if you don’t get a job in time, and can keep deferring if you can’t pay them back.
So it sucks. Same thing happened to my sister. My mom made a lot less when I went to college than her. So she has to loan more. She has a specialized degree that not everyone has that should, theoretically, lead to a better paying job to be able to pay her loans back.
If you believe it’s a privelege then I’m not sure what you’re complaint is
My complaint is it’s a priveledge but the repricing is going to make at a priveledge only the rich can or would be willing to afford as otherwise your still going to be paying your loan back after you’ve finished paying your mortgage back!
I’m lucky to have free education. And government gives you support + backs up for small loan for basic living. Not much, but you can live with it.