Would you cut course fees for disadvantaged kids?

And I can equally say "I don't get why my parents have to directly subsidise the poor rather than subsidising everybody and having a graduate tax (again)".

The problem is that student finance uses a very crude tool for working out whether parents 'can pay' for their children's education.

But, in any event, whilst you may think parents should pay, they don't have to. Imagine child A's parents don't make enough money to pay for his education, and child B's parents make money but refuse to pay for his education. Why should child A be funded, but child B not? Why should child B be punished for his parents' spending choices, when child A could well be benefiting from his parents' educational/career choices in ending up on low incomes?

Personally, I think the terms of student loans should be quite a lot stricter. Perhaps if more students actually paid back their loans, we could afford to provide a means-blind loan of an appropriate amount, which would not be unfair to people like child B. It would then be the individual student's business how he raised the rest of the money he needed.

I think the solution to this problem is very simple like taxes, the funds required for Student B to go to university should just be removed from a parents income and given to the university and then everyone can get the same grants.

The parents of Student B can't love them that much if they won't make sure that they are alright financially at university, which should be their top priority above buying unnecessary items.

Not enough profit to make up the kind of difference you are talking about.
Higher payback rates could make it is easier for student finance pay out more to richer students but if it takes a single penny of a poorer student (which it would have to in order to make up the difference) then it's simply not worth it, poorer students would struggle to go to univeristy with or without parental support. Richer students would only struggle without any parental support.

The graduate tax is a horrible idea too.

It not only retrospectively makes education more expensive for those who make the most productive use of it, but also makes it more expensive for people who have future success which is entirely unrelated to their degree. Meanwhile, those who squander their education get it cheaply. That is a perverse result.

Parents who aren't poor can afford to pay for their children and especially since of the deficit it can only make sense for taxes to subsidise the poor, those who have had a much worse quality of life than richer students.I hate the rich's spoilt attitude, if you can pay then you bloody well should pay for your children instead of expecting the state to do it for you my mam would support me as much as she could if she weren't poor.

These rich parents already have far too much money(poor people can survive on much less so that should leave a large sum remaining), so they may as well spend it on their children instead of splashing it out on unnecessary items/wasting it.

I'm not even going to bother with making an argument for the 50th time explaining how "cost of living of high income=/=cost of living of the poor" because you just go "that's a load of crap".

The fact that the cost of living of high income isn't equal to that of the poor just suggests that they are greedy/waste things because the poor manage to get by but they couldn't be expected to reduce their cost of living, when I think the rich can and should be more reasonable instead of spending what seems to be extortionate amounts, from a poor person's perspective.

Or, as said a million times already, they prefer to eat food rather than cardboard? Maybe they want to use a car rather than a bus? Maybe they want a computer that will actually do things rather than freeze whenever you want to do anything mildly taxing?

Nothing wrong with using a bus, a car is rarely essential but there are a few exceptions.Cardboard Food I have never heard of that cheap food is pretty delicious, maybe because I am accustomed to it-I prefer it to a lot of more expensive stuff.If you save up money then even a poor family could afford a reasonable computer(probably pre owned but it would do).I think rich people finance extremely badly because I keep thinking what they spend their money on cars are expensive like but even with a low income there is a lot of things you can get-I am on a fast laptop now(pre owned though).

To be fair one of your original points was right about investing money into ISAs and stuff because my brother got so rich at university and accumulated 10k-I think He had 3k before University though because of EMA+EMA bonuses(why did they scrap that) and He didn't even take out the student loan until the 4th year.

I plan on going to Cambridge University and they offer an extra bursary on top so I still reckon I can get rich during my course.To be fair though richer students probably could have saved up that amount, from money from their parents and stuff and if parents pay for university then they would be just as well off or better than their poorer students and if they aren't then this balances out the better lifestyle they have had when growing up.

A major problem with the rich is they can't seem to finance/spend carefully my family probably has bank money of around 15k at least in total(10k is my brother's though) yet most families have about 1k, from what I read somewhere hence why payday loan companies do so well-so my family just fail to get where the rich spend their money because my family are poor with my mam on benefits, my brother and sister have university debt though.I have 1.5k, which was never given as direct payment from my parents but I saved it all up from my pocket money.

...findings in research conducted by our very own Student Room team has found that disadvantaged students are nearly TWICE as likely to be worried by course fees.

Yet, the government claim they're getting more and more disadvantaged students into university education.

Would you go as far as cutting course fees for the disadvantaged as an incentive to go to university?

Rich people spend their money because they have money to spend. If they were bad with their finances, they would not be rich.
My parents don't earn an awful lot, but through saving and really being tight on everything (and I literally mean EVERYTHING) they have managed to save up a LOT of money.
From my experience, it's those who are poorer who can't deal with finances properly. Anyone can save. Poor people are poor because they'd (typically) rather buy their kids the latest gadgets and games consoles and have a tv in each room and have designer clothes rather than pay the rent, buy food and save up.


Posted from TSR Mobile

wow. . Poor people tend to be able to deal with finances better then rich people. They make alot less money go alot further. If someone is earning over £50k and cannot support their child's education then clearly they are bad at managing money.

wow. . Poor people tend to be able to deal with finances better then rich people. They make alot less money go alot further. If someone is earning over £50k and cannot support their child's education then clearly they are bad at managing money.

Someone who earns £50k will only get something like £36k after tax. Whereas someone who earns less will have less money taken off them. And then people who earn more will have even more money taken away by tax.
I'm only saying that, from MY experience, people who are poor and struggle with money tend to spend their money on the wrong things and if they were able to budget, rather than splashing their cash on the latest phone or buying stuff from the buy as you view kind of places then maybe they wouldn't struggle as much.
Well I don't know anyone who's parents earn over £50k and can't support their child. It tends be be they won't support them because they want their child to learn to be financially independent so that they can get job and learn how to deal with money from an early age- if they can't afford something, they don't buy it and learn to save up.
And what if there was a family with 5 or more children? Or what if parents who, together earn £50k, are sending twins or triplets off to uni? Would you expect them to be able to pay for everything as well as they would if they only had one child?


Posted from TSR Mobile

The idea that parents effectively throw out their children at 18 and don't support them anymore suggests they would that as soon as the Government allowed, which doesn't seem right to me.

Middle Class/Rich students have had a much better living standard than poorer students during their early life, so obviously this needs to be balanced so that both have lived fair/equal lives.

Then after that students can decide to try for a good job or not but if both middle class/poor students do then poor students have not balanced their life out because they were worse off when they were young so that is not fair and this disadvantaged background can give poor students less ambition,less knowledge of university etc so they are thus less likely to go to University than richer students even if they are just as clever/gifted.

I think Middle Class/Rich people who oppose grants/benefits for poorer students don't appreciate the much better lifestyle they have had and don't understand the need to reduce inequality so that students from all classes are equal and have equal opportunities to get into university.