We should scrap tuition loans and have a graduate tax

If you do actually ask an employer, many will tell you that this is not true

edit: http://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2962619&highlight=a+degree+doesnt+train+you+for+a+job it's a long read but this thread discusses my point a bit further.

Trouble with replacing tuition fees with a tax - who pays for the student's living costs?

Plus I'm still of the opinion that if I was facing university these days I would go abroad. Plenty of EU countries that offer free university education.

That what isn't true? I don't need to read a thread about real world struggles mate. I know people want someone with experience and it's ******** because how can I build experience if no one hires you for not having it? That's the excuse. If that's not the excuse I'm gonna have to lean with discrimination and not giving certain ppl chances on sight. So because of that I and many people have decided to waste time at Uni to get a degree so they'd have all the "credentials" and no excuse to be turned away while looking for employment but now I'm squandering that opportunity away. So yea I don't really need a thread to disprove the reality, which is that if you bring nothing to the table you get nothing.

It's kinda like countries with free schooling. They get the affordability but not the good living conditions.

Actually, when the fees went up, less people were able to afford them. The end result was that the amount of money coming in from tuition fees when they were £9k was exactly the same as the amount coming in when they were £3k. They tripled tuition fees and made no money from it. A great testament to the shocking incompetence of our current government.

This is the terrible cycle graduates face.

Depends on the country, Sweden has free schooling and better living conditions than we do. Granted, I imagine the average British student's drinks tab would probably end up being over 45k due to the alcohol prices out there, so that'd negate a lot of the benefit.

That what isn't true? I don't need to read a thread about real world struggles mate. I know people want someone with experience and it's ******** because how can I build experience if no one hires you for not having it?That's the excuse. If that's not the excuse I'm gonna have to lean with discrimination and not giving certain ppl chances on sight. So because of that I and many people have decided to waste time at Uni to get a degree so they'd have all the "credentials" and no excuse to be turned away while looking for employment but now I'm squandering that opportunity away. So yea I don't really need a thread to disprove the reality, which is that if you bring nothing to the table you get nothing.

Internships, job shadowing, getting involved with stuff at uni, part time job, freelancing, etc.. Not really an excuse tbh

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What? I'm not asking about where to look for work...so Idk why you're listing. But I'm sure someone in the near future who also hasn't been keeping up with the conversation will upvote you. I'm obviously talking about trying to do that stuff and no one hires you. You can't just say you want to do it, you have to be chosen to do it. My discussion with hez is about those who aren't chosen and he said graduates face the issue all the time of looking for work and not getting it. And they do face this issue. It's pretty elementary of you to resort to "no excuse." It's not like we're discussing those people who are sat around not trying. We're discussing those who are trying, did you notice that? And the reason they struggle is because apparently being over or underqualified with what I think he might be saying useless degrees.

My understanding is people that go abroad now still have to pay the SLC. The same would apply under this system, you just send it HMRC



Well my figures are purely back of a fag packet - the rates could start anywhere. It's more the concept I'm interested in.

It was more a quip at the fact people say 'I need a job to get experience, but I need experience to get a job'. Which, imo, isn't really an 'excuse' as you put it.

I'm well aware of the difficulties but there are certainly many ways to find a solution to unemployment, and getting creative is absolutely necessary.

Given how open the graduate market is, there are no such thing as 'useless' degrees.. Blame the wielder of the tool, not the tool itself

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Trouble with replacing tuition fees with a tax - who pays for the student's living costs?

Plus I'm still of the opinion that if I was facing university these days I would go abroad. Plenty of EU countries that offer free university education.

Could you expand on this?

Would you pay road tax on a car that didn't work? Would you pay council tax at an address where you didn't live? Would you pay for a faulty £30K product without complaining?

Since most people will have useless degrees, why should they pay a tax on them? The current system works well since grads with non-grad jobs (and there are a lot of them) don't pay a penny back (until they earn above the threshold) and grads with grad jobs are paying back at a minuscule rate which allows them to get their foot on the ladder and become financially independent. You should only have to pay back once your degree has actually shown to be useful (which will be evident by your wages) - otherwise you're buying a very expensive faulty product (most people DO go to university on the premise that they believe it will improve their job prospects).

Here's a radical idea if you're into money saving for the country (and would like to prevent the higher education system from destroying young people's lives) : stop encouraging everyone at age 17 to make university applications because:

1) Very few 17 years old have any idea whatsoever about the reality of working life and what they want to spend the next 50+ years doing - you cannot make that kind of decision when all you've ever known is classrooms.Very few people know what they really want to do for the rest of their entire lives at 17 years old.

2) Not everyone actually needs a degree for the career that they've chosen - there are apprenticeships and NVQs which offer far better employment prospects than your average BA Hons Fine Art or Eng Lit degree etc. Did you know that there is actually a 'Retail Management' degree now? Sorry but no - if you want to be a retail manager then get out of your classroom and get a job as Sales Assistant and get hands on experience and work your way up. In the 3 years that it would take to get the degree and rack up a stupid amount of debt you could work your way to that position the traditional way - by working. Employers are more interested in real life experience, not certificates.

3) If you're in team 'send them all to uni' then realize that once they've got a useless degree they'll be pushing up the welfare figures and you won't be able to retrain them due to government rules which don't allow graduates to get funded for NVQs of apprenticeships. So now you have a generation of over-educated burger flippers at best and degree-educated benefits claimants at worst.

But you can't reason with a system that is fundamentally idiotic - I've stopped trying.

PS. I'm a graduate.

That is such a poor argument. If you have willingly bought something knowing that it costs a certain price you have to pay for it, even if it is not as good as you hoped it would be. The fact is that people can find out how useful a degree is by looking at grad prospects and finding out what careers they can do and how to get there. This is all available for free online so no one has an excuse and no one can say that they didn't know uni degrees would be 'useless'. The fact is that if you bought something you need to pay for it.

Do you think a 17 year old is capable of making that decision?

You're not legally allowed to drink at 17 and you can't vote at 17. But you think it's fine and dandy to suggest to a 17 year old that they take out, on average, 26K to pay for a degree which in the vast majority of cases they don't actually know what they're going to do with? The information given to teenagers is obviously going to biased - schools are their main influence and they actively encourage kids to go to uni because it boosts their reputation.

Unpopular opinion since the demographic of this site is younger than me - but I joined TSR 9 years ago as an A-level student and used it throughout my degree. I've been through the system and come out the other side with clarity because of what I and my friends have experienced and I choose to share my opinions for the benefit of people who are 17 right now who might wish "if only I'd known" in 10 years time.

17 year old's should not be deemed adult enough to take out a ~£26K loan from a government owned organisation when that very same government deems them too immature to drink or vote at the same age. Are you really okay with that level of governmental hypocrisy? And no I'm not pointing fingers at the Tories - they're all as bad as each other since when I went to university Labour was in power ('Education, Education, Education' and 'We want 50% going to university' and when I was IN university the Lib Dems tripled the fees. When you make that application to university you have zero clue of what you're getting into.

Once you commit to that degree you commit to debt and a one way ticket - you cannot retrain in another degree level discipline unless you have a rich family or as my university career's adviser suggested to me ''win the lottery" (or work like a dog, save and secure NHS funding like I actually did). Nor can you retrain in anything lower than level 6 since you're not eligible for funding. Quite the commitment for a 17 year old.

I'm telling people something for their own benefit - makes no difference to me as to whether they take it on board or not because I've already experienced the negative side of it (graduate unemployment and underemployment) and have come out the other side. But I'm a minority in that sense - you hit your mid-20's and look around and you and see that your fellow arts grads are still working in Asda or claiming JSA/having babies before they've got a steady job. Very few are doing anything 15K+ or grad related.

As for your last sentence - we do pay for it under the current system when we start earning enough to justify re-payments - I've no objection with that. I disagree with a grad tax as proposed in the OP because it's not income-contingent.

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As a side point, it would be good to have a link to attendance in some way, even if only a change to the current system, to discourage people who don't bother to turn up (obviously not if there's some reason for you not being there). Particularly in first year, or in modules which people didn't like or found hard, the attendance tends to be really poor, in some of my lectures the vast majority of students would regularly not attend. Crazily people spend 9k/yr, rent a flat on campus, and then still can't be bothered to walk from the flat we can all see from the lecture room and come to class. They are wasting funding and places that other students would be very grateful for.

Not sure how this would work with a gradate tax. One big motivator (at least for me!) is that you're paying to go to uni, so you want to get the most out of it. Ok, so you'd still be paying back money forever, but would you see it in the same way as directly paying to go to uni? Would people just kind of recognise and accept that they're paying in some indirect way, and not have the same motivation to work hard? How would it work if you quit after 1 year/failed/dropped out? Fine details of the scheme (or others) may well sort this, but need good thought, and would make for an interesting discussion. Not that the current scheme seems to deal with this issue. Free tuition would certainly have this issue, it would be interesting to think about how poor attendance/lack of effort could be discouraged in this case too.

With the recent furore over tuition loans, I've spent almost 5 minutes thinking about this and the answer: some form of progressive graduate tax.

The current system is better than no fees, the evidence coming out of Scotland makes that obvious, but there are still major problems.

1. Over the long term it's still going to cost the government about the same as having no fees, they've just shifted the costs to future governments

2. Those who do an (economically) highly valued degree at a very highly reputable institution get well above their loan value while other do not get anywhere near. Those who do well pay the loan of fast and end up paying much less than those who only do ok.

3. It's creating a system where student do not feel uni is worth it. They look at the cost (average now 45k) vs the prospective jobs and this makes them unhappy.

I think some form of graduate tax starting around 18k and being circa 1% so everyone pays something and building to 3-4% for high earners. This could also finish after so many years.