Student debts wipe out most graduate pay premiums - report

I completely agree with the report. Far too often universities and the government uses the graduate earning bonus to deflect from genuine calls for better value for money.

While I'm not against tuition fee because it's not right to burden other taxpayers with subsidised education, I feel that universities must be more transparent in justifying their value for money.

I'd propose a legal requirement to publish an annual breakdown of how the tuition fee was used. It's important for students to be able to scrutinise their university's spending.

Universities publish public accounts which explain their spending.

I'd propose a legal requirement to publish an annual breakdown of how the tuition fee was used. It's important for students to be able to scrutinise their university's spending.

I'd propose a legal requirement to publish an annual breakdown of how the tuition fee was used. It's important for students to be able to scrutinise their university's spending.

I really don't see how this would help, this is just pushes the blame onto the universities when the actual cause of the problem is a lack of government funding.

That's an interesting proposition but I'm not really sure how it would help a student make a decision? Most degrees cost far more than the tuition fee, unis get charity money, gov money, endowments etc. It would be hard to put all this together to make a coherent cost of each degree and compare like for like.

For example a degree at oxford in med for an Int student is £25k. This means UK students are getting at least an extra 16k per year free.

For your example, UK students don't get £16k free. They will soon become taxpayers and that shortfall will be added to their taxes over time.

My point here is that my quoted degree costs an int student £25k. This is a more realistic cost of the tuition than the 9k a UK student pays. Whereas say English @ Coventry costs an international student £11k.

So in this example for uk students both pay the same fees and all other things being equal both pay back the same amount but the oxford student has had at least £14k more funding per year at no extra cost.

The tuition fee has little reflection of the cost of the degree and no reflection what so ever on career prospects. (These were both things instrumental to the plan to increase tuition fees)

I disagree, government funding really plays no part in a University's accountability on spending.

Government funding effectively means subsidising tuition fees at the expense of other taxpayers, including those who do not choose to study at higher education level. It is unfair to those people and it also changes nothing, because the expense will bite you back in the form of taxation.

My point is that Universities must produce data which allow students to scrutinise their department's tuition fees spending more easily.

A spending report produced at university level allows way too much leeway to distort spending.

For example my university's annual statement has an expense called 'academic departments' with no further breakdown of what is being spent on at departmental level.

I disagree, government funding really plays no part in a University's accountability on spending.

Government funding effectively means subsidising tuition fees at the expense of other taxpayers, including those who do not choose to study at higher education level. It is unfair to those people and it also changes nothing, because the expense will bite you back in the form of taxation.

Demanding universities to be more transparent about what they spend it on suggests that they are somehow responsible for our high fees due to extravagance or incompetence (neither of which are the case) and detracts away from the fact that they receive a pittance from the government for teaching undergraduates in comparison to other countries.

The danger is we are talking about average students. I'd rather nto be average and in those cases many students earn a significant premium because of their education as well as many only being able to access that niche job market because of a degree.

Theres also a class of student who will never pay off their debt because they take themselves out of the job market to become full time mums. Their debt is written off.

Definitely worth it for both of those groups.

I know but it really does not tell how the money was used for ones education. It would be much better to report the spending on a departmental level. I've accidententally edited this out on my previous post.

For example:

Staff wages (total wages paid in department / number of students in department) - £x
Lab supplies - £x
Maintenance
etc.

It is much easier for universities to dilute its justification when spending report is produced at a top level.

So table 8 of this public dataset that costs £41
https://www.hesa.ac.uk/index.php?option=com_pubs&Itemid=&task=show_year&pubId=1719&versionId=31&yearId=331

Or if you wanted more information then the sort of thing you could get for free with an FoI request.

As I said, what I am proposing is for all universities to be legally required to publish their departmental spending.

The fact that one has to pay £41 or submit a FoI request means that they are not publishing these expenses openly.

We are talking about an open and transparent procedure for students to understand what specifically their tuition fees are bring spent on. Playing the FoI game is not the most transparent way to go.

Hesa just finished consulting on making more of the data they hold freely available as part of their open data project.

https://www.hesa.ac.uk/component/content/article/19-consultations/3975-hesa-open-data-consultation?Itemid=435

What you're suggesting is already being made more readily available.

The consultation had only just closed 3 days ago, they still have not published the result and their intended actions.

Also in table K of the report you mentioned previously, which lays out the format for table 8, has extremely limited and broad categories for departmental spending.

The expenses are categorised as 'Academic staff costs', 'other staff costs', and 'depreciation'.