Paying For Uni

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by GP
Cry me a ****ing river. If the government supports all education for people, should they support all business ventures for poor people? Getting a degree is not the only way to "get ahead". SNOB.

If you think that it's unfair that rich people can pay for their kid's college while poor people have to get loans, than it's also unfair that rich people can give money to their children. It's just unfair to be rich and not poor.

That's exactly right. So we need to level incomes. One of the ways we do that is with social programs, and one of the most important social programs is education, stopping kids from poor families getting stuck because mommy and daddy can't afford to lay out the kind of cash a private education requires.

Why don't you just get rid of the public school system entirely, GP?

[MikeH]

Cry me a ****ing river. If the government supports all education for people, should they support all business ventures for poor people? Getting a degree is not the only way to "get ahead". SNOB.

If you think that it's unfair that rich people can pay for their kid's college while poor people have to get loans, than it's also unfair that rich people can give money to their children. It's just unfair to be rich and not poor.

Boddies just showed the difference in earnings between a college graduate and a non graduate. Sure, it's not the only way to get ahead but it's a good way.

It's in the interests of any country to get the right people in the right jobs. If that means giving intelligent people from low income backgrounds the opportunity to go to the best colleges then the government should do that.

The government does also support businesses in poorer areas development grants in areas of low unemployment etc. That's also beneficial to the country. You spend some money that gets people working and paying tax and off benefits. So you not only make money from their taxes but also save what you were giving them. It is just common sense.

[TCO]

Originally posted by Frogger


That's exactly right. So we need to level incomes. One of the ways we do that is with social programs, and one of the most important social programs is education, stopping kids from poor families getting stuck because mommy and daddy can't afford to lay out the kind of cash a private education requires.

Why don't you just get rid of the public school system entirely, GP?

Why not get rid of the free market?

I guess I'm ok with a limited welfare state. I just don't think it goes forever. Should we pay for everybodies pilot training also? It comes down to where you want to draw the lines.

Are you really in favor of eliminating all income difference? "To each according to their needs"

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Boddington's
Why? I'm sure the government will introduce restrictions on universities to make them accept by merit.

Sure, like Harvard did with Dubya...

And surely the need to take up a huge loan will be a threat to less well-off students, even those with high capacities. Taking up a loan is always a risk and an even higher risk, the poorer you are. Sure, if you succeed and do well in your studies, you can more easily pay it back. Yet, when I think back to when I was 18, I have to say that I did not know exactly how I would do in university competition. If I had had to pay so huge fees, I wouldn't have started my studies in the first place, especially because I'm studying something you probably call "Backhamology": History.
Now it turned out that I'm among the best current history students at the department. With such fees, my university would have lost my potential.

anyone put off from attending a good university by fear of that debt doesn’t deserve to be at any university in the first place

Now this is most cynical! Economic existential fears rank among the toughest psychological pressures and someone who lacks the economic background to have something in the back-hand will be put off even if he has a high potential.
Thus only those students from a bad social background who additionally have a tough psychological armor, an extreme will and self esteem and studying one of those very few studies that guarantee high earning (especially technical) will go to universities . The rest of the places in good universities will be reserved kids of rich people who won't die if they fail (or even only need a semester longer).Rich people who don't know these existential fears simply can't understand what it means to live with debts! Saying that someone who fears debt doesn't deserve to go to university is more than cynical. Now I know some people at my university that don't deserve to be at university, but it's generally not those who would be put off by fees. Rather they're children of politicians or well-off professors who more often get good marks for nothing and are dumb and ignorant as hell who simply can't understand the problems of those who are less well-off. (Of course also only a certain part of those "rich children" are like this, but I talking about that group which is dumbest at university).
And all that already WITHOUT high fees. With higher fees, this will augment! It's already a shame to see that those mediocre guys get the best jobs after university even with medium or bad marks, while A-students without an important daddy get only relatively bad jobs if any.

[MikeH]

Originally posted by GP


Why not get rid of the free market?

I guess I'm ok with a limited welfare state. I just don't think it goes forever. Should we pay for everybodies pilot training also? It comes down to where you want to draw the lines.

Are you really in favor of eliminating all income difference? "To each according to their needs"

No, just enough to allow people to have the same opportunities no matter what their background (isn't that the American dream?). If everyone has a chance to make something of themselves then it's up to them whether they take it or not. We don't have to hand it to them on a plate. Just have it there if they want to work for it.

All we're saying is that if you want to go to uni and you work hard enough, and are intelligent enough, then there shouldn't be a financial barrier preventing you from going.

Similarly there's absolutely no point educating stupid kids at university just because their parents are the only ones who can afford it.

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by GP


Why not get rid of the free market?

I guess I'm ok with a limited welfare state. I just don't think it goes forever. Should we pay for everybodies pilot training also? It comes down to where you want to draw the lines.

Are you really in favor of eliminating all income difference? "To each according to their needs"

I'm not entirely at that point (I do see need for some income-based incentives) but I'm certainly closer to that than I am to free market (which IMO overemphasises the differences in contribution).

In my world the difference in incomes between top and bottom of the social scale would be 50%, not 50000%.

[Solly]

"All we're saying is that if you want to go to uni and you work hard enough, and are intelligent enough, then there shouldn't be a financial barrier preventing you from going."

How does the introduction of "top-up fees" and a much more liberal student loan system create a financial barrier?

As for Wernazuma's post, you are just trying to rationalise irrational intertemporal choices.

[MikeH]

I'd prefer there to be no fees. I understand why there are though, political priority. There aren't many votes in keeping uni education free and there aren't many votes in raising taxes to pay for higher education and the unis are losing talent to overseas institutions. Fine. Not what I'd go for in an ideal world. I'd prefer to pay a bit more tax and have uni education cost less to those who go.

Just make the loans the same for students whatever institution they go to and have the gov't spread the cash out. If they want to phase out the new unis and make more vocational colleges then great. Do that as well.

[Ramo]

Believe it or not, some people don't try to get an education to become rich. My college education, for instance, is a pretty bad financial investment (if I had to pay full tuition), relative to other possible investments.

[Solly]

Forget political priority. I've argued why there is a rational case for higher fees. I might as well show the full article now.

The Government is about to introduce a new test for those considering a university career. The central question will be punishingly direct. Do you want to run up a debt of £21,000 in order to go to the best British universities? Some people will, apparently, be put off applying to our elite institutions by the prospect of taking on a debt of this size. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is all to the good.

The first point that needs to be made about the so-called deterrent effect of a £21,000 loan is that anyone put off from attending a good university by fear of that debt doesn’t deserve to be at any university in the first place. Incurring such a relatively small debt to pay for the huge economic benefit conferred by proper higher education is a fantastic deal. Over a lifetime, the direct financial benefit in higher earnings is around £400,000. Those who attend our best universities can expect to earn even more. Borrowing £21,000, at preferential rates, to secure twenty times that sum, is an offer you’d have to be a fool to turn down. And if you’re such a fool that you don’t want to accept that deal, then you’re too big a fool to benefit from the university education I’m currently subsidising for you.

I accept that some graduates will take up jobs which do not command handsome salaries. Individuals may pursue admirable work for which there is no great monetary reward, in the Church, the arts or public service. In these cases there is a strong case for the taxpayer bearing the cost of their degree. But why should the vast majority, who go on to benefit financially from their degree, be subsidised by me?

Those of us who are net contributors to the State, graduates or not, are getting a terrible deal for our money. We could guarantee far superior healthcare and schooling for our families if only the Government gave us back the money which it confiscates from us in taxes and then spends on the schools and hospitals which it runs so badly. But of all the money wasted by the State there is perhaps no greater scandal than its mismanagement of the funds it takes to spend on higher education. The system it has built to disburse our money is inimical to equity, liberty and excellence.

Higher education is now a nationalised industry, with universities utterly dependent on state support for their survival. Like all the nationalised industries which taxpayers had to subsidise in the past, from British Coal to British Leyland, UK Universities suffer from grotesque inefficiencies, low motivation, ministerial second-guessing, poor salaries, and a stifling excess of bureaucracy. But at least with British Coal the taxpayer was subsidising the poor. Although it was a hideously inefficient mechanism, giving taxpayers’ money to British Coal did transfer resources from the wealthy to keep working-class people in jobs. The stunning injustice of our current higher education system is that working-class people in jobs are paying taxes to subsidise the wealthy. Because anyone who graduates from university, whatever their social origins, is then in a position to make far more money for themselves than they ever pay out for their degree.

The current system of university funding, with students paying fees which do not reflect the real cost of their courses, let alone the real benefits they will then accrue, is profoundly inequitable. But worse than that, in an effort to legitimise this unfair process ministers have progressively imposed a level of state control on universities which is crippling higher education.

The State has set a national target for the number of students, it has decreed that state support for the best universities should depend on meeting specific recruitment targets from certain socio-economic groups and it now proposes to link future state funding to government oversight of internal university management.

It is understandable why ministers should wish to set targets and monitor the management of institutions who receive Government largesse. They want to promote efficiency and productivity. But central planning is no more likely to work with universities than it did with pig-iron smelters in Siberia. As Alison Wolf, Professor of Education at the University of London’s Department of Education, has pointed out, the Government’s approach “is precisely analogous to the way in which the Soviet planners ran their economy and it has precisely the same drawbacks”. Quantity is measured rather than quality, research and innovation are cut back in favour of processing numbers, the whims of politicians take precedence over the individual judgments of professionals. The universities which once produced Rolls-Royce minds have become Lada plants.

The British higher education system is betraying all the symptoms of strangulation by over regulation. Professors are paid peanuts, more students are getting progressively more worthless qualifications and our research ratings are dropping precipitately behind nations such as America where universities operate on a much more rational, market, basis.

A centralised drive to increase participation in higher education brings no demonstrable economic benefits to the nation; all it does is confer a relative advantage in the jobs market to graduates. And that advantage is secured at considerable, and wasteful, expense.

First-rate universities with superb research facilities do bring benefits to the nation, economic and cultural. But the only way Britain can match America in boosting such institutions is by freeing them from the State, allowing them to charge reasonable fees and giving academics the autonomy professionals deserve; in a word, by privatisation.

The only reason they still make cars in Oxford is because the British motor industry is no longer run by the State. How much longer can we afford to run Oxford University on the principles of British Leyland?

[MikeH]

Then you get the problem of corporate sponsorship affecting research which is epsecially a problem in science and engineering.

If you get an oil company massively sponsoring a chemical engineering department at a university do you think that there could be potential for the focus of the university's research to change?

Surely by the same reasoning you should also argue that all schools should be privatised.

[MikeH]

Oh and don't forget that they are putting the fees back so you don't have to pay them in advance, a good thing, and bringing back maintenence grants for the poorest students.

[Wernazuma III]

Originally posted by Boddington's
As for Wernazuma's post, you are just trying to rationalise irrational intertemporal choices.

Sorry, maybe it's my English, but I don't get that. What choices do you call irrational.

[OPD]

What gets me about the whole tuition fees thing is whether its worth the money at all. I don't mean being able to get a better job at the end I mean the actual education you get. Although I didn't go to a decent university (maybe things are different there) I can honestly say that I could have done just as well using notes off the internet and recommended books, which many people did. The lectures were rubbish and the tutors were barely worth getting out of bed to go and see.
The fact that I had to pay a thousand pounds each year made me feel like taking a dump in a bag and hiding it somewhere on campus.

[Provost Harrison]

Well I am still waiting for that return on investment. University guarantees you nothing, in hindsight, I'd have probably been better off if I hadn't gone, I'd have been in a better financial position now. And I went to a very prestigious university, so figure that out