Students pay for your biscuits - University Fees Rising.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11677862

So its been decided, such as when "top up fees" came along, university fees are rising - threefold. I should be more accurate and say they are rising from £3250 to between £6000 to £9000. However I wont be more accurate because when top up fees came in it was up TO £3250, the now standard rate.

For some of my students this means no university. Im not saying that there arent routes outside of further education into a good life, but what about those who just want to learn but either cant afford it, or cant face a £30000+ bill at the end of 3 years (remember you have to live on top of your tuition fees).

I understand that there is a problem with the economy and its something that does need to be rectified, however we seem to be fixing a bad situation by neglecting the future society. Im pretty annoyed today :<

(Also, so long to either my masters in game development or my masters in education, great, thanks government).

[rant]

Just an addendum rant, please feel free to overlook. The conservatives on education that directly relates to teachers, they want:

- PGCE students then to pay up to £9000 to become a teacher (on top of the £27000 they need to get their qualification).
- Then, the conservatives want this to be a masters profession! Lets add another £9000 onto that.

But thats OK, because teachers are really well paid and they have provision for teachers so they can afford this... oh wait no, they froze our salaries.

When the lib dems, the guys I voted for joined the conservatives I said ok, best of a bad situation - now im just like wtf. REALLY. ARGH.

[/rant]

Viva Ed Milliband!

 

i have been following this a little as a student it really will effect me, 2'nd year with 2 more left. but what i have noticed by reading this is everyone is telling them it is a bad idea but they are just not listening.

 

You wont be affected as you entered into university understanding the fees to be £3250, so they cant charge you the extra amount.

The universities think its a good idea which is the crucial part for the government. What is most gutting for me is this bit of this other article (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11686883):

Essentially saying students have no other choice, "HA HA", pay our fees or fail.

In other news, join the open university.

 

Looks fairly obvious that they're putting up fees to discourage people from going to University.

Only the upper-middle and upper class are going to be able to afford to go anymore, and they still will.

Class divide? What class divide? Oh wait, Tories are in.

 

Nevermind the fact that there are going to be loads more subsidies out there for the lower class?

 

I would rather they cut the number of places available at university as well as discouraging people from studying worthless courses(no names). Additionally, any university that is struggling should be allowed to fail, which will probably reduce the number of people going .(That is their aim, correct?)

A-levels should be a rigorous enough examination that businesses ought to be able to recruit a decent workforce directly from 6th form leavers, as opposed to requiring a degree (in god know's what), ideally only jobs that require the knowledge or training offered by such degrees would ask for one, ie, an chemistry/biology/engineering firms, accounting, architecture, journalism is a grey area in my opinion, but an english degree with a focus on journalism would be useful, etc, etc

Clearly courses need to be more focused on real life demands(although the option of academia based courses should remain open to those who wish to study it) in order for these degrees to be worth anything, this is even more essential with any increase in cost, after all a graduate needs to be able to use his/her degree to find a job and live.

 

Basically. A-levels should toughen up to mean something again as a qualification, apprenticeships should come back and university courses should be in serious subjects that lead to a serious career.

There is no shame in being a capable plumber or electrician. I know people who make good money in that.

This country is turning into a workforce of glorified office gophers and token academics. We are experiencing an inflation of qualifications. Everyone's got a University degree so the concept is becoming less and less meaningful and valued. Teaching probably requires a Masters now for that reason alone.

 

Im inclined to agree with all of what Nexxo said ( must be something wrong with me.. ).

6th form and college should offer more vocational courses that can lead into either a career or into employment that then provides further on the job training ( your employers foot the bill to train you in certain areas as they require ). Pointless degrees or A-levels in media studies or other random crap dont provide the individual with any useful qualifications and future employers wont be impressed when you are up against better qualified/ better suited candidates, especially when its an employers market like it is now...

I never went to uni because I didnt fancy being ~£40k in debt and spending 7 years of my life their studying something like architecture or engineering and having no guarantee of a job at the end of it all; wada you know, I wouldnt have either- loads of projects being scrapped or put on hold because of the economic situation. As it is I became a checkout & shelfstacker monkey and have nearly £8k to my name; not much but its better than -£40k...

 

I don't have one. (working on it though).

Thankfully I'm doing one of the most employable degree's somehow..

 

In all honesty this might not be Such a bad thing....

Going off of Nexxo's statement of qualification inflation (which is very true, esp here in the US) by increasing the barrier into college, it forces people to make a decision.

Example:

Do I want to spend 30,000+ to become an Art Major which will force me into at least 10-20years of loan repayment or is there another way to achieve my goal without college?

If anything, this will start reducing the qualification inflation and whilst it will force some incredibly qualified people out of Uni, it will also allow the highly specialized degrees (Engineering, Med, Pharm, Vet, etc) to attract more serious students. And while some of the less specialized degrees will start moving out of Uni classes, they will move into a different method of being taught to those that want to learn and want some sort of certification.

 

Problem is there are too many plumbers. There's 3 in my street and 2 of them can't find work. One was kept on to do costal defence type work or something related to it cause he managed to get the extra qualifications. Now thats almost finished the company will be looking to lay off workers.

Part of the problem is lazy nationals and foreign workers that arn't needed. Yes there is a case for some professions needing foreign workers tho plumbing and plastering and construction in general shouldn't be. Teaching degrees are a big problem. I can't remember the figure but most of the people that come out with teaching degrees don't find a job unless they have a degree in some sort of language or science it due to so many getting the qualification.

TBH i've doubted if I should finish my degree. The only thing thats keeping me going is the fact i need the qualification for the job area I want other than that I would far rather go up to my local computer store and work there. Heck the civil service pay was good if the job wasn't so mind numbingly boring. There seems to be an elite form of snobbery that if you don't get a qualification life ends, game over. This was especially bad at my school where as long as you went to uni it almost didn't matter if it was just to clean loos. A lot of my friends either have a useless qualification and a nice debt and justify it with "it was worth it for the university experience" or dropped out completely. I know a couple that dropped out after switching between 3 courses just under the pressure of "having to get a degree to get anywhere in life" until getting a job in some office and he loves it.

 

So basically, researchers can go screw themselves because they require a degree and still dont get paid large amounts? "Less Serious" people after alevels, no matter how they might turn out, have forfeited the experience of university?

Whilst I agree some courses arent terribly useful in relation to the job people end up with at the end of it (media studies, etc) that doesnt mean they arent interesting to the person learning them. Why are we penalising people for being interested in something and wanting to know more about it ?

So, the only thing thats keeping you going is because the job you want requires that you know the stuff on your course? How is that wrong?! If you arent happy in your degree, and you want a job where you do stuff thats taught on your degree, why do you want that job?!

Another thought: Why should 18 year olds have to decide upon the direction their entire life takes without having known the broad range of things offered at university?

 

As per usual Nexxo hits the nail squarely on the head. I work in a university and i have some strong opinions on how universities and courses should be funded. All our qualifications from school upwards are being watered down to the point they are heading towards meaningless. My dad was a university lecturer for over 30 years and when he first started they were worried about the falling standards of school education and the abilities of the new students and it has got steadily worse.

University courses should be funded according to their value to the country. I.E. if the country is facing a shortage of maths graduates than maths courses should be subsidised. The pointless courses such as most of the arts and humanities should still be available but you have to pay if you want to study them.

This country has a skewed perspective on university education and looks down on those who do not have a degree. Many of my friends are tradesmen, or more accurately, highly skilled craftsmen. They did a four year apprenticeship, just as long as a masters degree, but they worked 8am to 5pm and actually learned a useful skill. I have far more respect for them and their abilities than i do for someone with a degree in journalism or philosophy for example. The government should take a cue from the Germans where trades are held in as high a regard as a university degree.

The other major issue is university funding is based on the universities research score, not its ability to teach. Citing my dad as an example the year before he retired his department were told they had to reduce their teaching hours by 20% so they could focus on research to try and increase funding. Its a ridiculous system that encourages spending on pointless research that should be spent on improving the education of the students.

 

University and higher education in general shouldn't be aimed at kids leaving school.
Im 23 and have only just realised where i want my life to go.

I went through school dreaming like so many other kids about programming games.
So i left school with pretty good GCSE results and picked what i thought would be a good programming course at my local college.
Of course it wasn't what i expected at all, i still have a passion to learn different programming languages but at that age and time in your life college is just simply amazing for some many other reasons. (drinking, parting, etc etc )

Basically college and then uni for alot of people at that age are glorified parting sessions.
Now if i went back to college/uni now i would have a completely different attitude towards it all as i have grown up since.

TLDR version: your to young to decide if you want to be in that much debt and what you really want to do career wise at that point. As less face it you have what to compare it against? You have barely lived life at that point in time.

 

There are two issues here:

The first is the idea that *everybody* should be at university - they shouldn't. Universities should be elitist - the top X percent of the population should be encouraged to go to university... And X should be nearer 20% than 80% which is the way we were heading. We dumbed down GCSE's to improve pass rates and make the government of the day look better. Consequently, we had to dumb down A-levels and then degrees to get these people through to the end. IMHO, a big group of people should leave school at 16 and enter vocational training. Another big group, should enter 6th Form and leave with qualifications that open up worthy careers (Nursing, banking, Tech Support, etc). And a sizeable, but smaller group should progress on to University, hopefully with meaningful careers at the end (Medicine, Engineering, Research etc).

The second issue is one of priorities. We have a short-term memory... during the election campaign, almost all of us recognised that firm action was required. But even though both the Lib Dems and the Tories told you it would be hard (and to a certain extent even Labour faced up to this), we seem to have forgotten that, now it has come to the crunch.

We are broke. The action being taken is not going to balance the books,you know. It will merely start to stop the rot. Labour's mantra is that growing the economy is the solution. Well, for 10 years the economy was growing nicely, but instead of saving for a rainy day, Gordon was spending & spending and we were badly in debt BEFORE the crash. The crash merely finished us off. The current coalitions solution is also growth, but they saw how it wasn't enough for Labour throughout this decade. So we both need cuts in spending, and steady growth, to even begin to close the black hole.

So given that we need to do this, what do we cut? Bogomip thinks Higher Education needs preferential treatment. Nexxo thinks the NHS needs protecting. There will be unemployed people who think taxes should rise and the middle classes should pay more. Soldiers will want the Forces to be immune. My wife wants more money for the voluntary sector. I want more incentives for industrial growth. My brother wants more perks for small businesses. But the reality is that we all must suffer our share of the burden.

And if we were to grant immunity to one demographic group, it certainly wouldn't be students, no matter how much I recognise their plight. In the pecking order of priorities, students aren't even in sight of the top.

We shouldn't 'penalise' them. But why the hell should we pay for them. The state doesn't fund students to keep them amused - it funds them because it recognises that the country will benefit from people with various skills, abilities and training. We need people doing degrees that will equip them to help themselves and help the country - if they also find it interesting, that is a bonus to them, but it is of no interest to the state.

 

Agreed, myself i'll probably have a smallish job to save up for uni If i go.

 

Once again it looks like we're taking the easy way out and blaming it all on those pesky Art majors. Never mind the fact that Art majors can and do go on to a number of serious careers in the arts. Most Art students don't just become self-employed artists, painting away in studios for low wages. Most of them go on to work in places like museums or design/media studios. I agree there is a flood of college degrees in the job market, but all those Media Studies folks aren't competing for the engineering or medical jobs. I believe there is a place for serious academic study of the arts (literature, art, music, and yes, even media studies). At the same time, I also agree that college isn't for everyone.

Having said that, I do agree to some extent with Nexxo and others that we should place a greater emphasis on apprenticeships and non-university career paths. On one of my recent flights, I was reading an article by Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs. In the article, Mike wrote about the distinction we make between blue and white collar jobs, and how we've created a culture and looks down upon anyone who has to get their hands dirty for a living. It was a good article, and it made a strong case for re-establishing trade schools and apprenticeships, and de-emphasizing college as the only path to a successful career.

Interestingly, I could very well have have gained my current skills through an apprenticeship. My job, however, required a college degree with emphasis in media.

 

One of the issues we are always going to have with trying to talk about the university system is that people will all have very different ideas about what constitutes a valuable degree.

for example (and it is just an example, I'm not saying I agree or disagree with Da_Rude_Baboon's views on what courses are worthwhile!)

It is widely accepted that well trained journalists are an important part of our culture though.

Any changes will surely have to happen across the board of subjects.

 

My biggest worry about this move is what it does to the demographics of medical students (of which I am one). If I were to guess, I'd say that probably around half of the medical students in my year at university are privately educated, and as such come from wealthy backgrounds. On a six year course, how many people who don't come from such a background will be able to justify the expense to themselves and their family? Recently there has been a big push for widening access to the course, I mean who wants all doctors to be a part of the privately educated old boys club? This feels like a massive step backwards to me. Well, we do have a Tory government, so I'm hardly surprised.

Oh, nearly forgot, I'm one of those privately educated people for whom my parents pay, and in my experience those from a similar background, in general, seem to be the ones in it for money, status or because daddy said so. My gut feeling is that these are the people who make worse doctors in the end.

 

I agree which is why i specifically said of value to the country. If there is a specific shortfall of graduates in an area and employers are asking for them then those courses should be subsidised. Which courses are subsidised should be reviewed regularly.