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'Best' Universities to charge more.. Discuss.

Mullardman

Mullardman

Moderately extreme...
http://www.theguardian.com/educatio...an-to-allow-better-universities-to-raise-fees

If I've read this right, this is just another bit of Tory 'cowtowing' to 'the money', along with more of their pathetically simplistic view of education.

Quite apart from how they will actually establish what constitutes 'better' teaching, they will automatically distort outcomes because unis will recruit those who can pay, rather than those who can perform.

Discuss.

Mull
 
So education is only for the rich...the system is broken

Round here in Cardiff we have a situation where the local government created a new school and then placed 3 of the most deprived areas of Cardiff into it. GCSE pass rate last year was 13%!!!

They closed a school in the most densely populated area of Wales ( Roath, Penylan ) to make way for this. That then became a "welsh" school... leaving no " normal" High school located in the most densely populated area of Wales.

The only normal high school they can now feed into was Cardiff High which has a 85% GCSE pass rate.That then received 635 applications for just 240 places, meaning you would now had to live right next to the school in the most expensive area in Wales to get in....

The people who decided this should all be sacked immediately!
 
When the £9,000 tuition fee was introduced, it was intended as an upper limit; the 'less good' universities could charge less and undercut the better ones. This didn't happen, for obvious reasons; no university wanted to be seen as cheap or cut-price. So this is a second bite at that cherry, with at least a semi-objective measure of 'the best' via student satisfaction scores (though this in turn will mean another layer of bureaucracy).

The real problem, however, is supply and demand. Even now, AAA students can find it difficult or impossible to get into their preferred university. The government's response has been to lift the ceiling on student numbers for some subjects, resulting in overcrowding and almost no personal tuition.

Another problem is the Student Loan Scheme, floated on the idea that within x years of graduation, almost all graduates would be earning enough to start paying off their loans. This is far from being the case, so a huge pile of student debt will have to be written off at some point.

Finally, there is the issue of housing in university towns/cities, where the demand for student accommodation has fuelled a massive BTL bubble, creating student ghettos and pricing out local residents.

I don't know what the answer is, but I'm fairly sure that allowing the best universities to charge more isn't it.
 
This was always coming and we only have Tory voters to thank.

It would make far more sense to tax poor babies - say £100k and charge base plus 3% from birth - tax all income at source. Then by the time they retire age 95 they would hopefully have paid it off - otherwise the bailiffs go in and size the remaining assets for distribution to rich families. There, job done.
 
I met someone recently who runs a very considerable estate of purpose built, private student accommodation throughout the UK. They cater for all needs ( if your parents can afford it) in giant anonymous warehouses, with investors piling in to this new boom.
It's sounds utterly horrible.
 
I once proposed a two-tier system of university education. In tier one, anyone over 18 could go away from home to a campus for three years, drink, party, whatever. There would be no tuition, no assessment, no exams, and a 'pass' degree would be awarded to everyone. Fees and maintenance costs would be whatever the market would bear, and charged at full whack with no subsidy, and would need to be paid up front.

In tier 2, students would live in monastic seclusion. Teaching would be intense and rigorous, with continual assessment and exams, and those failing at any point being thrown off the course. Fees would be nominal and/or subsidised, accommodation though spartan would be free, and degrees would be classified with only the top 2 or 3 each year being awarded a First.

Tier 1 would thus pay for tier 2. Tier 1 campuses could be located in 'less desirable' towns, so that regeneration and gentrification could spread throughout the land.
 
TheDecameron said:
Chicken feed! I'll wager you wouldn'tgetoutofbedforlessthanthat™/ couldn't get a decent turntable for that etc.
Click to expand...

The £5,000 figure was what we paid when my younger daughter went to university, which was obviously longer ago than I remembered!
 
Uni research profile will also be a factor as I understand it. When I was in HE staff were under pressure from management to 'do research' in full knowledge you could barely get through the workload as it was. I did a Masters part time and it nearly killed me and had zero motivation to spin even more plates for the department.
R4 the other day had a piece about errors in the SLC calculator for repayments and also brought to light the huge disparity in the amounts /cost of repayments for various scenarios.
 
cooky1257 said:
R4 the other day had a piece about errors in the SLC calculator for repayments and also brought to light the huge disparity in the amounts /cost of repayments for various scenarios.
Click to expand...

The SLC issue has been known about for years; it's something that everyone in HE/government turns a blind eye to, because essentially it means that the current level of student numbers is unsustainable without a massive injection of taxpayers' money.
 
The rule seemed to me when I worked in the ed biz that you were required to spent half your time teaching, half your time doing research, and half your time form filling, justifying your existence, etc... Oh, hang on... 8-]

The basic problem is that Govenments decided that about 50% of the cohort should "go to Uni", but never funded that. Thus throwing the costs onto students. Given the real costs it was inevitable that any initial 'cap' on fees would be lifted as time passed.

Since I spent most of my ed biz time in Scotland I'm aware we didn't have the same fees. The problem being that the Scots Government didn't cough up all that has been needed, either. So some Unis (like mine) make up the difference by taking in overseas students and charging *them* high fees. But not every Uni can succeed at that and use it as a way to essentially subsidise local students. So there is downward pressure on useful contact time and support for undergrads alongside pressure to raise fees.

Personally, I feel the elephant in the room is the way past Govenment did away with the schemes that pushed companies into funding apprenticeships, etc, because they had to pay up via a levy if they didn't do it directly. Combined with the decisions to essentially treat all the third level institutions as 'a Uni' expected to compete on the same sort of basis. This has been further eroded by the reduction in support for 'third age' courses, and the rise in OU fees to a more 'market' level.

The result has tended to drive everyone away from personal and skills education towards academic 'Uni' education because that's what tends to get paid for and the institution is 'graded' upon.

In the end, we get an ed biz that we decided not to pay for. Quell Surprize. 8-/
 
Joe Hutch said:
The SLC issue has been known about for years; it's something that everyone in HE/government turns a blind eye to, because essentially it means that the current level of student numbers is unsustainable without a massive injection of taxpayers' money.
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In essence its 'PFI' in another form. Gets the cost off the Chancellor's Books, but becomes a far bigger tab to be picked up eventually. Convenient for politicians who can then pass the buck and blame someone else.
 
The current student loan system is going to end up costing the tax payer more than the one it replaced.

Of course, having set the precedent with freezing thresholds, governments can now renege on all previous assurances to improve profitability.

What was that figure when they tried to sell of the last tranche of the loan book? Wasn't it single figures percentage of students repaying anything?
 
Lots of GIANT elephants walking round the room in our scam and sham of an education system

A substantial amount of students will never earn enough to start paying the loan but it will be hovering over them for the rest of their working lives.
It will never be paid in many cases. Its putting people off going to university which I know is the overall plan to make it more exclusive and perpetuate the class system. The taxpayer still picks up the bill in many (most?) cases.

Graduates are now doing jobs like telesales/chugging because quite frankly there will never be decent opportunities for them no matter what piece of paper they were handed on graduation day. They essentially have no skills that anyone will pay for so they have been duped.

A case in point is the young woman with a degree who was forced into work "experience" at a pound chain. Its all very well saying she wanted to work in a museum but it took her a long time to get anything more than DWP abuse.

If they were being given information that would make them a fortune, what is the lecturer stood there for????...ie on many courses you are being trained to lecturer standards with the same old info regurgitated again.

Its fast becoming an all or nothing economy. Either you think outside the box and create the next Facebook/Naim or its grunt work all the way. You need to be doing serious courses like medicine or dentistry. The middle range jobs are fast disappearing.

I graft and I graft hard but my skills are nothing a university could have taught me. College was fine and even then I learn something new on many jobs. I accept I wont be buying a superyacht anytime soon :)

Way more than 50% of the courses are garbage. They lead nowhere and take no account of the current saturated and overcrowded jobs market. They play on the young naivety of wannabe students. The universities and lecturers are still raking it in because its a cynical ploy to create wishy washy courses and earn a living

Ive seen this at all levels from confidence courses to false apprenticeships The only people benefiting are guess who?.....the tutors and organisations set up to rob the european social fund and taxpayer

Who is going for a life experience now with a £30,000 loan? I quite fancy a social networking/ drinking session for 3 years but not at that price :) I quite fancy expanding my horizons but I dont agree with people who say that any "education" is worthwhile. Thats the sort of nonsense put forward by the education industry

Seriously its all part of the plan to extend a class and two tier education system. Rant over. Im calm....now discuss :)
 
Minstrel SE said:
Lots of GIANT elephants walking round the room in our scam/sham of an education system

A substantial amount of students will never earn enough to start paying the loan but it will be hovering over them for the rest of their working lives.
It will never be paid in many cases. Its putting people off going to university which I know is the overall plan to make it more exclusive and perpetuate the class system. The taxpayer still picks up the bill in many (most?) cases.

Graduates are now doing jobs like telesales/chugging because quite frankly there will never be decent opportunities for them no matter what piece of paper they were handed on graduation day. They essentially have no skills that anyone will pay for so they have been duped.

A case in point is the young woman with a degree who was forced to work at a pound chain. Its all very well saying she wanted to work in a museum but it took her a long time to get anything more than DWP abuse

If they were being given information that would make them a fortune what is the lecturer stood there for????...ie on many courses you are being trained to be a lecturer with the same old info regurgitated again.

Its fast becoming an all or nothing economy. Either you think outside the box and create the next Facebook/Naim or its grunt work all the way. You need to be doing serious courses like medicine or dentistry. The middle range jobs are fast disappearing.

I graft and I graft hard but my skills are nothing a university could have taught me. College was fine and even then I learn something new on many jobs. I accept I wont be buying super yaught anytime soon :)

Way more than 50% of the courses are garbage. They lead nowhere and take no account of the current saturated and overcrowded jobs market. They play on the young naivety of wannabe students. The universities and lecturers are still raking it in because its a cynical ploy to create wishy washy courses and earn a living

Ive seen this at all levels from confidence courses to false apprenticeships The only people benefiting are guess who?.....the tutors and organisations set up to rob the european social fund and taxpayer

Who is going for a life experience now with a £30,000 loan? I quite fancy a social networking/ drinking session for 3 years but not at that price :) I quite fancy expanding my horizons but I dont agree with Mull and others that any "education" is worth it. Thats the sort of nonsense put forward by the education industry

Seriously its all part of the plan to extend a class system and two tier education system. Rant over. Im calm....now discuss :)
Click to expand...

This is fundamentally correct, we are guilty of over-educating our population, for which there just aren't the requisite jobs in society.

When I went to university in early 80's only 12% of my year group went onto any form of further education - degree or otherwise, now we send 50% of a year group to university.

We don't just over-educate here, we encourage third world countries to educate, so that generations forget/don't learn to work the land and end up in ghetto poverty in large cities, as they have been educated and now believe they can achieve an academically stimulating career.

The whole system needs a rethink
 
Minstrel SE said:
Lots of GIANT elephants walking round the room in our scam and sham of an education system

A substantial amount of students will never earn enough to start paying the loan but it will be hovering over them for the rest of their working lives.
It will never be paid in many cases. Its putting people off going to university which I know is the overall plan to make it more exclusive and perpetuate the class system. The taxpayer still picks up the bill in many (most?) cases.

Graduates are now doing jobs like telesales/chugging because quite frankly there will never be decent opportunities for them no matter what piece of paper they were handed on graduation day. They essentially have no skills that anyone will pay for so they have been duped.

A case in point is the young woman with a degree who was forced into work "experience" at a pound chain. Its all very well saying she wanted to work in a museum but it took her a long time to get anything more than DWP abuse.

If they were being given information that would make them a fortune, what is the lecturer stood there for????...ie on many courses you are being trained to lecturer standards with the same old info regurgitated again.

Its fast becoming an all or nothing economy. Either you think outside the box and create the next Facebook/Naim or its grunt work all the way. You need to be doing serious courses like medicine or dentistry. The middle range jobs are fast disappearing.

I graft and I graft hard but my skills are nothing a university could have taught me. College was fine and even then I learn something new on many jobs. I accept I wont be buying superyacht anytime soon :)

Way more than 50% of the courses are garbage. They lead nowhere and take no account of the current saturated and overcrowded jobs market. They play on the young naivety of wannabe students. The universities and lecturers are still raking it in because its a cynical ploy to create wishy washy courses and earn a living

Ive seen this at all levels from confidence courses to false apprenticeships The only people benefiting are guess who?.....the tutors and organisations set up to rob the european social fund and taxpayer

Who is going for a life experience now with a £30,000 loan? I quite fancy a social networking/ drinking session for 3 years but not at that price :) I quite fancy expanding my horizons but I dont agree with Mull and others that any "education" is worthwhile. Thats the sort of nonsense put forward by the education industry

Seriously its all part of the plan to extend a class and two tier education system. Rant over. Im calm....now discuss :)
Click to expand...


£30,000 loan?
If only!

3 years at £9000/year tuition loan and £5000/year maintenance loan is £42000 for a 3 year course.
 
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