A degree of truth

teledu

Quite right Daniel. The daft pillocks who protested in recent weeks should read this article. The point about paying for universities through taxes being unfair is especially worth making.

Ben

There are too many students going to university. The expansion under Labour has not achieved anything and many students are being cheated with inferior degrees that do not lead anywhere. We now find that we cannot afford all these students and we are
making big charges to students for their courses.

We should cut back on the student numbers, eliminate the degree courses that do not give value, and with these savings we should reduce or eliminate the student fees.

les

I am sick and tired of all this fees business - it is free at the point of entry, you do not have to pay back a penny if you don't earn above £21,000. dear God what more do they want?
I am fed up of listening to wining students moaning about "all this debt I will have when I graduate" - They seem to forget that even if there were no fees they would still have debt for all their living costs, but no this is all lumped into "fees"
Do these students really think they can go through life without any "debt" because that is the way it is being portrayed - if I stopped to think about my mortgage, I would have heart failure, but you don't because it is something that we do, isn't it?

AF

A most welcome and balanced view of whats on offer,there should be more like it.
It seems that the distructive left have been given the running on this subject,aided and abetted by the media.

kinglear

The other point is , you value what you pay for. So at the moment some 25% give up on their degree ( usually the useless degrees anyway but still). If they HAD to pay, fewer might well apply, but those that did would stay as students. Universities should stop trying to offer everything, as they have had to do to get their numbers, and instead specialise so the individual courses are sought after and worthwhile. At the same time, the vocational training institutions as were should go back to their roots - call it a degree if you must, but for goodness sake turn out young people who actually have relevant and saleable skills.

Rhoda Klapp

I don't see a problem with fees, but I do have a slight reservation about quality. I'd like to see a mechanism whereby a student getting lousy value can complain and get it fixed, or at least assessed. Saying market forces will fix it doesn't really cut it, the victims will have already been cheated. And yes, somehow I do think that the less scrupulous of higher education establishments are quite capable of giving a lecture a week and a tutorial session followed by a degree based on attendance, milking the mickey mouse courss to fund the ones they build their rep on. So, fees, but with a 'sale of goods' act.

Andy Leeds

Quite so. Students should have to pay for their degrees, and loans are the fair way to do it. Why should it be the taxpayer who is always expected to cough up so these useless idiots can study 'Politics' (so they can go work for the Labour Party), or Media Studies (so they can work for the Fascist BBC) ?

And lets hope the owners of Millbank sue the NUS for criminal damage. They can afford to pay for the damage their members on their demo.

Rhoda Klapp

Oh, and in an ideal world, this would be nothing to do with government but an agreement freely entered into between an adult and an institution in a free market, finances provided by whoever wants to support it. Maybe with a voucher, if the govt thinks higher ed is a good thing in general.

It doesn't add up...

Yet another article attempting to justify a poor policy on higher education. It starts with the assumption that all degrees are created equal and are a "good thing". It goes on to assume that the economic incentives of the UK's proposed tuition fee scheme are inconsistent with the design of the scheme.

As a reminder, the scheme does nothing to stop people taking useless degrees for which they will never pay because they earn too little. Indeed, it encourages institutions to offer such degrees to earn an income for little or no effort. The result of this is 3 years on the student dole paid by taxpayers, and "lecturers" getting money for rope also at taxpayer expense. Now consider the position of people of ability. It is in their best interests to emigrate and give other societies the benefit of their skills, so that they avoid having to repay fees which once again will fall on taxpayers' backs. However, because of the increasing devaluation of UK degrees, and in particular the huge increase in cardboard degrees (only worth the cardboard they are printed on), people of ability need to distinguish themselves from the rest. They will be best served by attending foreign institutions that insist on academic standards to maintain their reputations, rather than having to spend extra years on second and third degrees in a bid to differentiate themselves.

The real problem with our education system is that its productivity has been allowed to deteriorate at every level, so that we now spend on average an extra two years to achieve the same standards as former generations. Restoring standards and reducing the waste in higher education, concentrating on educating people in accordance with their ability productively, would do far more to improve the attainment levels of our youth and reduce the burden of education on taxpayers.

Fergus Pickering

Ah those wining students. My daughter wined all the time and still does. I was never a wining student, couldn't afford the wine - an aleing student then.

Chris

The writer states that "students are more likely to choose degrees that are more likely to get them jobs after studying - not a bad thing for them and the country".

But what will happen to arts in the UK? It would be a sad thing if our admired cultural sector was diminished, because those with the talent to be ballerinas, concert pianists or novelists had all been coralled into City jobs and law firms and other lucrative professions.
Gifted young artists from working class and wealthy backgrounds will come through, but what will happen to the majority whose struggling middle-class families are deemed too "wealthy" to qualify for assistance?

TomTom

"Paying for universities exclusively through taxes redistributes resources from the poor to the rich."

Why are the "poor" paying so much tax ? It seems outrageous that the banks have been given £300 billion which they cannot repay in 2011 as intended and that the "poor" pay so much tax.

How can the "poor" pay so much for rich farmers in the EU ? It is shameful that the "poor" pay so much tax. As one who thinks he will be "poor" if current trends continue, I wish an immediate stop to taxation of the "poor" and that means NO more Bail Outs; Abolition of Bonuses in banks receiving State Funding; Abolition of BBC Licence Fee; Ending subsidised meals in Parliament; and diversion of Overseas Aid to Depressed Regions of Britain

Verity

Chris, the arts thrive just fine in the United States, where students pay for their degrees through student loans ... unless they happen to be brilliant and get snapped up for a grant.

Where are all those "media studies" graduates of yore employed these days, I wonder?

Nicholas

Better article on this in Standpoint, setting out the issues and options (or more accurately non-options) much more clearly. What I don't understand is that having followed the Browne recommendations commissioned by the previous government the coalition are not fighting back against the critics but just letting the communists and the BBC misrepresent them. When they do try to explain they justify the policy on economic grounds without setting out the reasoning in the report's conclusions.

Rob

"What about the surveys that suggest that raising the cost of a degree would deter many of those from the most deprived backgrounds who would otherwise have gone on to higher education? Ask me if I want to pay more money for something than I am now and I too may claim that the price will deter my future choice. But the empirical record shows this not to be the case."

Absolutely. When the last Conservative government scrapped maintenance grants, the NUS said people wouldn't be able to afford to go to university. But the numbers rose steadily. When the last Labour Government introduced tuition fees, the NUS said people wouldn't be able to afford to go to the univeristy. But the numbers rose steadily. Now the Coalition proposes raising tuition fees, the NUS says people wouldn't be able to afford to go to university.

Baron

if people go for useless degrees it’s their fault, you cannot spit at the nanny state and demand simultaneously that ‘someone’ gives you a hand in choosing which degree o go for. Life involves taking risks, you pays your money (eventually), you makes your choice. les @ 1.09 is spot on.

Sagitta

Perhaps we should redesignate most (if not all) the newer universities as polytechs. Back in the day, any decent employer was capable of ferreting out from his polytech qualified employees those late-bloomers who were capable of making a success of university and sponsoring them as mature students (if they wanted it).

Occasional Ostrich

But what will happen to arts in the UK?

F--- arts.

The arts establishment has always been more than capable of taking care of itself (or us to the cleaners) by bumming off a (usually Labour) government with an inferiority complex that doesn't want to be seen as philistine.

Commentator

Mr Korski is as usual being his know-all self. Why is higher university participation per se a "progressive" ideal? This is just a fancy way of saying "never mind the quality, feel the width". Please do not hold out US education as any kind of beacon. The Ivy League strikes me as very expensive without necessarily offering quality higher education.....and I have plenty of experience of the products of the Ivy League. Oxbridge wants to follow in the footsteps of the Ivy League so that the producer interests which run Oxbridge have lots of other people's money to spend.

The current proposals, apart from their many other flaws, force some students to pay for the bad choices, bad decisions and sheer laziness of others. That is certainly not progressive and undermines any incentive to students to choose their courses well.

Stewart

Further to the fairness point, if we take higher education out of the (extremely complicated) taxation equation and taxes can eventually be lowered then families will be slightly better placed to save for university. Another argument for a low tax economy.
Those who want to go to university can save and pay. Those who don't can spend their money however they want. I predict fewer school leavers going on year long jaunts around the world and that money being saved for tuition and board. You can travel or you can go to school, not both on the taxpayers' pound.

Sir Graphus

Some chappie representing the universities gave 2 alternatives; 1) tuition fees, 2) reducing student numbers.

He thought 2) to be beneath contempt, but wouldn't it be kinder on everyone except the vastly enlarged higher education industry?

Once upon a time, there were many jobs where employers didn't look for graduates. Now, because there are so many graduates, employers demand a degree for the very same job, but they get the same calibre applicants they ever did. All that's happened is that the poor graduate has been financially ruined before he/she started his/her professional life, and the only benefit has been to employ a bunch of people in the higher education industry.

Why is this better than the old system, where a degree really meant something, and everyone started their professional lives with little more than a 3-figure debt. I don't suppose it cost the taxpayer any more, either.

I cannot believe that successive cabinets full of graduates, who all enjoyed their degrees at no cost, would foist this on their own children.

Sir Graphus

And another thing. No-one has explained this to me;

Imagine my son (currently aged 11) emerges from a proper university with an excellent degree (it's a stretch from where I'm sitting). He reviews his options in this globalised world. Hmmm, he thinks, I can take up this offer from Wall St, or I can go to Australia, perhaps even China won't be a shit-hole in a couple of years. OR, he thinks, I can stay in the UK and incur this student debt.

What stops a graduate emigrating to avoid the tax?

This ridiculous policy by committee is a 5-figure incentive for our brightest children to emigrate.

Ruby Duck

Verity : "Where are all those "media studies" graduates of yore employed these days, I wonder?

Where are all those "english literature" graduates employed ?
There are probably a lot more media studies graduates making websites than there are literature graduates writing books and a lot of them even get paid for it.

Nick

Why would paying for all university education through normal taxation be a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich ?

Surely the rich pay most of the taxes anyway. Top 10% of earners pay 50% of all income tax as Fraser Nelson is always telling us.

It won't be school dinner ladies' taxes paying for free tertiary education for all but the taxes of bankers and lawyers.

Dan Grover

I agree entirely with the article; The only problem being that the fees rising to potentially £9k will hardly bolster the coffers of the universities, it's merely replacing the government funding. So universities will scarcely be more capable of giving out bursarys to the poor than they are now.