Tories talking about raising Uni fees to £16,000 a year!

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/9k-doesnt-cut-it-fees-may-need-to-go-up-says-tory-mp/2016087.article

This is said by a Tory MP who is also on the Tory policy committee who vote through policy and help create the manifesto (not that it will say it, just like last time)

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Reply 1

james22

I'll wait for this to actually be on their manifeso before I start caring.

Reply 2

SnoochToTheBooch

People aren't gonna be able to pay off their loans at 9 grand. I don't know what they expect to achieve here apart from more shortfalls, unless it's some way of detering people from applying.

Reply 3

XMaramena

Funny, I did some calculations a few months back and worked out that my university pulled in close to $400m in profits in 2013 alone.

Reply 4

Birkenhead

Original post by SnoochToTheBooch

People aren't gonna be able to pay off their loans at 9 grand. I don't know what they expect to achieve here apart from more shortfalls, unless it's some way of detering people from applying.

If you can't pay off 9k per year tuition fees after graduating then you have either chosen a course with poor job prospects, failed in a lifetime to apply your degree to the working world, or a combination of the two. 9k fees with the current repayment stratifications are perfectly reasonable, and there are people studying from and in other countries who manage very well on much steeper turf.

Reply 5

NerdyMeg

So home students will pay same fees as international students? That'd create great havoc.

Reply 6

SnoochToTheBooch

Original post by Birkenhead

reasonable, and there are people studying from and in other countries who manage very well on much steeper turf.

Well that sounds like it's gonna apply to plenty of people:

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/12/higher-education-budget-multibillion-shortfall

Reply 7

Huskaris

Original post by Birkenhead

reasonable, and there are people studying from and in other countries who manage very well on much steeper turf.

Wrong. I am a student and as such I shouldn't have to pay for anything. How dare you suggest we should pay £9,000 a year for something that makes us more employable and earn more wages. It should instead be subsidised by people who pay for me to go to university to earn more than they ever will. That's much fairer ;-)

Reply 8

Birkenhead

Original post by SnoochToTheBooch

Well that sounds like it's gonna apply to plenty of people:

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/dec/12/higher-education-budget-multibillion-shortfall

I'm not surprised. There are far more people at university aiming for graduate level jobs than there are graduate jobs available; the 'Arts & Other' category is especially guilty, especially as you go lower down the ranks and the tenuous skill sets of these graduates become even less persuasive. A sustainable way of dealing with this problem would be to deadhead university places, imposing caps so that far fewer people went to university and financing this by a combination of government subsidy and raised tuition fees which would be covered in the same way with loans and income variegated repayments. I would personally be in favour of a certain number of the worst-performing universities being dead headed completely. There are too many people at university and a necessary evil of balancing university places with graduate opportunities would be to raise fees; the upside to this would be that graduates would be much more likely to find work and much more likely to find well-paid work and to progress faster up the income ladder so shortfalls would become less common. I don't see much point in raising fees without seriously drawing back places, however.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 9

STUDYREVISE

Posted on TheStudentRoom

(edited 8 years ago)

Reply 10

Noble.

Original post by STUDYREVISE

What?!

This is not fair.

How do you know it's not fair? Without knowing what they'd do to the salary threshold before you start repaying it's pretty impossible to say whether it's better, or worse, than the current system.

Reply 11

TheBigGeek

Original post by Birkenhead

reasonable, and there are people studying from and in other countries who manage very well on much steeper turf.

The median income over the last few years is 25k. You pay student loans back on everything over 21k. 9% of 4000 is 360. The debts are written off after 35 years. Given the tuition fees are 27k plus maintenance loans let's say we're looking at 40k. 360*35 is only 12600, so a fraction of the total.

Lots of uni degrees are a waste when considering earning potential. There have been lots of studies - compared to someone who went straight into work at 18, only people with a 2:1 or better from the top ~20 uk unis are earning more.

Reply 12

nulli tertius

She is reported to have said that:-

"The reason being because the actual cost of providing higher education at this level exceeds £9,000 for most courses in most universities."

I wonder what her evidence base is for this. The data on the actual cost of providing degrees is very opaque.

Look at these examples.

It is believed that the cost of providing law degrees is higher than that of most arts subjects because the library costs are higher and the number and pay grades of additional casual staff to teach tutorials is higher. The cost of a GDL must be higher than that of an LLB because the material is essentially the same but taught more intensively with greater contact hours. There are no government subsidies for GDL fees. Plymouth charged £4770 home fees in 2014. Westminster is charging £3250 for 2015. I accept their overseas fees are much higher, but are we really suggesting that these courses are running at a loss for home students?

Instinctively one assumes that the cost of a degree Child Care ie training as a nanny with a salary potential in the stratosphere, at the private Norland College (which is a commercial organisation) is about as good and expensive as it gets. Yet their fees are £12,750 per year.

Heatherley's Art School is a private charitable art school teaching at degree level in London. Its fees are £8310 per annum.

Leicester's Study Abroad programme fees are £9,000 arts and £12,000 sciences. UCL's are £15,200 arts and £15,200 sciences.

Harlaxton, a US Study abroad campus in Lincolnshire which recruits students from a wide range of US Colleges is charging a top line price (before financial aid after the US fashion) of $21,343 including accommodation and meals.

Scottish Baptist College receives no government funding. Its fees for theological degrees are £3850 per year.

What is very hard hard to find is the true cost of the provision of science degrees because there is virtually no wholly private sector science teaching. The Centre for Homeopathic Education is charging £4,350.00. Ignoring the pseudo-science underpinning homeopathy, the course content is probably little different to that for any other profession allied to medicine.

I have chosen this list to try and find fees which are neither constrained by government fee caps nor where the institution is simply charging what the market will bear. Several of the providers have no mainstream fee cap students so their fees cannot be being charged on a marginal cost basis.

Not a lot here suggests that the actual cost of providing higher education at this level exceeds £9,000 for most courses in most universities.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 13

Clip

Original post by nulli tertius

Instinctively one assumes that the cost of a degree Child Care ie training as a nanny with a salary potential in the stratosphere, at the private Norland College (which is a commercial organisation) is about as good and expensive as it gets. Yet their fees are £12,750 per year.

Away with your Gospel of lies. No-one on TSR wants to hear that a young woman who enjoys looking after children can earn double or triple that of a STEMM graduate sitting in process meetings.

Wealthy people pay six figures for a professional nanny to look after their most treasured possessions? Never! They should pay £10ph to a poor-but-honest and high achieving A-level student.

Reply 14

Hal.E.Lujah

Original post by Birkenhead

reasonable, and there are people studying from and in other countries who manage very well on much steeper turf.

9% Past 21k. For most people; 9% of 9k = £810 Repayed per year on their £40'something thousand loan.

So paying back £800 a year is going to leave you paying it back in 50 years if you earn massively above the average salary of someone with a 1st in Dentistry.

But lets assume the best. Someone earns £50'k pa leaving uni. Paying back £2610 PA on your loans STILL Equates to twenty years of repayments.

Sure, there might be some progression past that for the dream candidate. But the massive majority of graduates arent going to be earning either of those wages, and wi end on a 30/40k wage. They havent failed, they've gotten away with free money. The government is the only loser in this situation for designing a scheme where very few people will ever pay off their loans.

Sounds fair enough

Original post by TheBigGeek

There have been lots of studies - compared to someone who went straight into work at 18, only people with a 2:1 or better from the top ~20 uk unis are earning more.

Have you got a link to one? (Not being a dick just want to see)

Reply 17

Le Nombre

Original post by Birkenhead

Or just let the market take its course? It would seem, judging by the US, that there is in fact a market for average at best education at not inconsiderable cost.

Also, just because a course, objectively, has low prospects, doesn't mean people won't pony up for it, just look at the BPTC numbers vs pupillage numbers (and that doesn't account for sols transferring, who get a fair few pups).

Reply 18

Gwilym101

Always find this sort of thing especially galling when at the time Cameron and has cronies went to uni it was free.

Reply 19

Rakas21

Original post by Ace123

Aye, i think it was first proposed by the head of Oxford or Cambridge. They've been wanting raised fees for years (though they could survive as purely private entities anyway visa vi Harvard and their scholarship offers for pupils who can't afford).

I'm not against this myself. First because it won't affect myself and second because i do believe their should be a financial cost to university so long as student loans exist in a similar manner to now.

Original post by SnoochToTheBooch

People aren't gonna be able to pay off their loans at 9 grand. I don't know what they expect to achieve here apart from more shortfalls, unless it's some way of detering people from applying.

It may well deter people from applying given we saw a 9% and then 2% fall before numbers increased again this year (i think) however university places are actually being uncapped so that universities will cover this drop with international students anyway.

Original post by Birkenhead

reasonable, and there are people studying from and in other countries who manage very well on much steeper turf.

Normally i'd agree but there'd need to be significant repayment changes made to the system if as i read somewhere you need to be earning over £35k to pay within the 30 years. Achievable for many (i expect to at least) but there are too many graduates who never get there.

Original post by STUDYREVISE

What?!