Tuition Fees Under Review: PM proposes to cut tuition fee cost for some courses

Still, there seems something fundamentally unfair where an Eng lit student is subsidizing a physics student. We don't know how much by but my guess is it's at least £2k a year.

The point isn't to be fair to the individual, it's to be fair to the population.

Hypothetically,

To fund one medical applicant £13500 ("Greater benefit to society, considering the state of the NHS" -Priortised
To increase admissions of medical applicants, it should be made affordable, therefore is decreased to £9000

To fund one Art Applicant £4500 (Less benefit to society) Not priortised
To compensate from losing £4500, then art students should pay £9000 too. Considering the Art students really dont have a significant contribute to society or enhancing the quality of life to the British Public, according to the article and current affrais; then a universal system ensures a continous stream of revenue to fund these degrees in the most cost effective way, in order to efficiently fund more priortised and expensive degrees such as engineering and medicine, whilst not jeprodising the quality of educatin for other students.

Not much love for the arts here! Sure I can obviously see why you'd discount key state workers like the NHS (and that's done differently anyway). That's not my argument. It's more those that go on to work in business for huge sums of money.

I guess its really difficult to know without hard figures and universities are notoriously opaque with this.

Suppose course A costs 6k to provide and the course B costs 12k. At the moment it seems like we just even out the two to 9k. But then the person taking course B goes on to earn substantially more. Have they not had an unfair advantage?

Secondly, I think you're both making huge assumptions about the 'value to society' is someone's value simply how much tax they pay in? That's a sorry state of affairs.

I guess I'm arguing that a course should cost the amount to provide and any discount is taken off separately. Not as it is at the moment where one student subsidizes another.

Universities would offer contracts to their students, who would agree to pay to the university they attended a given share of their earnings in return for their degree course. Essentially, the university would be taking an equity interest in the graduate premium earned by the student, although any student who chose to do so could, alternatively, pay the full fees up-front prior to beginning their studies.

The talk about courses subsidising each other is nonsense. Most graduates won’t repay their fees (never mind their maintenance loan) - that’s the issue that the government has suddenly realised. With earnings stagnant the write off of student loans means that governments over the next 20 years are going to have a whole in their income compared to forecasts.

The current system isn’t costing less - it is costing more (to the government as well as individuals). It just spreads the costs out over 30 years and they’ve only just realised this.

The person on course B doesn't really have an unfair advantage as person B went into the course knowing that they would likely be paid more and person A knew they would likely be paid less. It's not unfair if you choose course A.

Though I largely agree with what you're saying this is NOT the debate that is taking place if you listen/read to what politicians are saying. The debate is around what's a fair contribution for students to make.

I do like the sound of this, for the following reason:



This could be improved by:

You need to look at the bigger picture and realise that simple taxes on earnings often leads to inequality because they don't take peoples' personal circumstances into account.

The problem with a simple tax on earnings is that it tells you nothing about somebody's overall wealth nor how that tax will affect them. Knowing how much money somebody earns doesn't tell you how much money they have at the end of each month once they've covered bills and other basic living costs for themselves and their family.

Even somebody on a wage which appears to be high on paper may have personal circumstances which mean they aren't getting to keep much or any of that money for themselves by the end of the month - e.g. if they're a single parent renting an apartment in London earning £50k, then they might be in a far worse position to afford to pay a tax on their earnings compared with somebody in a childless marriage renting an apartment in Leeds earning £30k.

Indeed, that is a problem, but there aren't really any way for us to negate this

Well, actually there is - have a look at the Universal Credit system which the Govt is currently rolling out - It's by no means perfect, but its based on assessing people's circumstances to solve a similar problem to the one I've mentioned above with taxation on earnings for people with lower wages.

Edit: Actually, there are wealth taxes, but they don't work very well (which is why they aren't used).
Also, wealth may be there before the grad went to uni, so if it was based on wealth the uni may get taxes that aren't caused by that person (causing unis to start unfairly admitting rich students)

I wasn't suggesting wealth taxes, the point is that you can't assume that somebody's earnings will leave them in a position to be able to afford higher taxes.

Somebody's wealth plays a significant role in how an earnings tax will affect them throughout their lifetime, so if wealth isn't a consideration then any such tax will have a disproportionate impact on the less-wealthy, even if the less-wealthy person earns more money in their lifetime as a result of being a graduate.

For example, people who rent and are unable to put away enough savings for a deposit for a house (or borrow that money from family) will end up significantly poorer than people who own their house outright. Somebody paying off a mortgage (even if they only had very modest/average earnings) will end up with very low living costs toward the end of their life, but somebody who spends their whole life paying rent will never find themselves in that position.

Unfortunately, it's a reality that even reasonably high-paid graduates are finding themselves in a position where being able to afford a house in some parts of the country is getting less and less realistic, so there's a very real chance that high earning graduates whose personal circumstances leave them unable to save for a deposit on a house will spend decades of their entire life paying rent and not even begin to acquire any wealth for themselves until their 40s, or possibly never.

Even without an extra tax, a lot of higher-earning, less-wealthy graduates are already facing being poorer by the end of their life despite those higher earnings, and paying higher taxes. Adding an extra earnings tax on top just makes it even harder, widens the inequality gap for the less-wealthy, and might even lock them out of the housing market altogether.

So instead you would suggest that instead of the person who benefits from the education paying, everyone else should pay instead, potentially making it more difficult for them to acquire any wealth for themselves.

You're forgetting that someone has to pay for university education; either the graduate (who are the ones who benefit the most), or the rest of the population. free education would be fine, had the UK been any other country;