Britain to students: fuck you!

[Stark]

Not really; if you never make more than xyz, you never have to pay any of it in Australia, and when you do it's some ludicrously tiny amount of extra tax as a mandatory payment.

[Eternal_Freedom]

AFAIK here in Britain it's written off if it isn't payed after 20 years. And the interest rate is very low, as my former ead of school described it "the cheapest money you'll ever borrow"

And btw, sometimes when parents can pay off the loan immediately, its because they saved for twenty years, not just because they're rich

[Shadow6]

Not really; if you never make more than xyz, you never have to pay any of it in Australia, and when you do it's some ludicrously tiny amount of extra tax as a mandatory payment.

To expand upon this, it starts at 4% (of your income) per year once you start earning more than $45k (AUD), up to 8% once you are earning 83k or more. If you drop below 45k, you stop paying the loan back. These levels are adjusted every year.

Finally, there's an interest rate on the loan, which I frankly find preposterous - the time a person needs to find a job and start repaying is being charged, except it is a normal process for all sans the ones with rich parents. Nations with a universal education system don't have such problems at all.

HECS-HELP (and the other two, FEES-HELP for postgrad/bridging and such, and OS-HELP, for international study) have no interest. Scholarships exist to assist low income and disadvantaged students with accomodation, admin and related study fees. Not sure whether this applies for the UK.

The highly meritous students can get part of/most of their tuition/accomodation fees payed for through scholarships - federal, community and industry. I would say that, at least as far as tuition fees go, any Australian could study at university without worrying about paying for it.

[HMS Sophia]

AFAIK here in Britain it's written off if it isn't payed after 20 years.

IIRC that's only if you haven't started paying it off by that point. Otherwise the time before write-off is longer.

Also, while I don't dispute that fee's have to rise in order for institutions to stay at the same level, I dispute the fact that the Government has also cut all university budgets for courses that fall under arts, media, or social sciences, and slashed the budget of most other courses to near zero. Seeing as my course falls under arts (Its military history... go figure), I'm a little annoyed about this.
This is what people are not seeing. The only reason fees are going up, is because the government is no longer funding universities to the extent it was, if at all... which is a disgrace, no?

[HMS Sophia]

Oh, and I forgot to mention: Fuck those student rioters... Its a fucking disgrace...

[mr friendly guy]

Not really; if you never make more than xyz, you never have to pay any of it in Australia, and when you do it's some ludicrously tiny amount of extra tax as a mandatory payment.

That depends. When I finished paying off my HECS if informed payroll and that automatically led to a $150-$200 pay rise every fortnightly pay. In this day of ridiculous property prices and standard of living, I find that every little bit counts.

[Starglider]

The shameless misrepresentation of this is pretty sickening. The loan criteria are so generous that this is in no way a barrier to poorer people going to university, as the politicians involved tried to point out it is actually an improvement.

How is a rise in tuition fees "an improvement", and what does it improve, exactly?

The repayment threshold is being raised by 30%. Previously graduates were very likely to start repaying their loan in their first job after university (albeit in small amounts), not they are not likely to start making repayments until after a couple of years of experience and pay rises. This is good if you believe that 22 year olds earning 20k/year are poor impoverished creatures who can barely afford to exist, which you apparently do.

It is common for nations with a universal higher education system to have the costs paid for the by government, i.e. by the workers to the students, because the students are future workers anyway.

This is inherently unfair to people who manage to make a decent salary without getting a degree, i.e. without burdening the state with the cost of university education and without losing 3+ years of productive (and taxypaying) time. 100% government-funded university is not a case of taking from the rich and giving to the disadvantaged (students), it is people (non-graduates) being punnished for not taking a handout. Imposing some costs on students, even deferred means they at least give some thought to 'is my degree worth the cost', whereas with free university they have unlimited license to force taxpayers to pay for their trip to university with no concern over whether it will benefit the economy.

What is the difference between making the students indebted and workers indebted? Frankly, with the current youth unemployment, it is especially cruel to bring on a debt burden at an early stage in life.

Given the repayment criteria, the debt burden is trivial. Unlike normal debt, if the person has a crisis and earnings drop, the debt effectively disappears until they get back on their feet.

And why not? Have money instead of brains decide who gets it and who doesn't? I'm sick of this attitude and all who support it.

Except that the scenario of 'brains deciding who gets it' is not on the table. This was the case thirty years ago, when a relatively small number of people went to university and you actually had to have academic ability to get in. A combination of aspirational/entitlement (and just laziness-don't-want-to-get-a-job) pull and employer inflated-requirements push has led to a situation of over 60% of UK school leavers going into higher education, a significant fraction of which is of no real benefit to the economy. Fee rises have occurred because this is unavoidable even with the significant reduction in teaching quality as resources are spread thin. One of the root problems of course is the major loss of well-paid non-academic primary and secondary sector jobs to globalisation, which (for the UK government) is just an unavoidable 21st century reality.

[Teebs]

But the loan must be repaid, even if it's not a commercial loan, right? Effectively, if you do bad, the payment is only postponed to a certain term. Which means that a young unemployed person will have this hanging over him like a sword of Damocles - as soon as he actually gets a job, which is itself not easy, he will start repaying his education.

As has been pointed out, it's written off after a certain amount of time. I think the actual figure is 30 years regardless of repayments. I don't see how you can describe having to pay a few percent extra income tax over a certain amount, which is what this actually is, as a sword of damocles hanging over the unemployed graduate. You don't pay anything on income below a decent wage and your repayments are then dependent on your income above that wage.

Finally, there's an interest rate on the loan, which I frankly find preposterous - the time a person needs to find a job and start repaying is being charged, except it is a normal process for all sans the ones with rich parents. Nations with a universal education system don't have such problems at all.

IIRC the interest rate is inflation matched so the real value of the money owed never increases.

This system behaves nothing like an actual loan and as I've stated before is much better described as a graduate tax with a cap on total payments.

[Skgoa]

Wow, the sd.net internet tough guy brigade is out in full force.

I would like to add a couple of points to the discussion:
- The 20% cut does not only mean that students have to pay higher fees (which in itself is a very stupid move), but also that the government is abandoning education and research. essentialy, old rich men are robbing future generations for short term gain.
- On everage, Germany has BETTER universities than Britain - and the US for that matter -, while (depending on the state) not taking any fees AT ALL or a maximum of 500 Euro per term. Thus, the claim that you need high fees for great education is utter bullshit.
- If you think the riots are happening ONLY due to the increase in fees... you either lived under a rock or are an idiot. Dissent has been growing rapidly for years now, this was just a reason for that anger to be released.

[Phantasee]

I don't see how anyone is being a tough guy. They are explaining the issue and making the case that it isn't as bad as it is said to be. Feel free to make an actual counter-argument, though.

[Big Orange]

I don't see how anyone is being a tough guy. They are explaining the issue and making the case that it isn't as bad as it is said to be. Feel free to make an actual counter-argument, though.

The violence is deplorable and the student's argument got undermined when the initially peaceful march got high-jacked by the Left's equivalent of the EDL, thugs who get a buzz out of breaking things, and people could've been killed (Charles and Camilla had their car trashed). But in these post-Globalisation times the Devil could make work out of idle thumbs for years to come...

- If you think the riots are happening ONLY due to the increase in fees... you either lived under a rock or are an idiot. Dissent has been growing rapidly for years now, this was just a reason for that anger to be released.

Yes, I agree that the recent spate of growing riots over university fund slashing and tuition fees are symptoms of deeper problems - the plain, dirty truth is that there are considerably less job/career/wealth opportunities for most people under the age of 30 in comparison to even slightly older people who were their age range in the 1990s and early 2000s, facing a fierce battle against Globalisation (which has hit the buffers over two years ago and is now beginning to get openly attacked by the alienated youth in the ailing West).

The number of 16 to 24 year olds applying for dole benefits has grown by 442% (costing over a 100 million anyway) and insane house prices haver herded millions upon millions of young adults into their parent's homes well into their fucking thirties. Multinational corporations simply don't give a fuck, why would they care about university graduates with Media Study degrees when they've got access to cheaper labour in Easten Europe and Asia? Cadbury's is fucking off out of the country all together and BAE Systems is downsizing (in the wake of government spending being slashed).

But I agree that colleges and universities should cut back on the creative writing and Media Studies bullcrap, with average quality students getting apprenticeships instead with the higher end sciences preserved as best as possible (the slashing of R&D sounds potentially suicidal for Britain's future). And if similar or greater quality further education is more affordable in Germany, Scotland, Finland and Norway etc, I guess the more enterprising students will go there instead...

[Phantasee]

I'm not entirely sure how that addressed what I was talking about. I was replying to Skgoa, and not referring to the rioters.

[Skgoa]

I was talking about the variations of "I have to pay for my tuition, too. So poor people can go fuck themselves!" Or Starglider conveniently forgeting that culture and society is not just about technology, in order to claim that everyone who is getting a "soft sience" degree is freeloading.
I can understand if people don't agree with the protestors or think that they are doing a bad job by being violent. (Although only a very small minority actually is violent.) But some people in this thread might want to think about wether "I got mine, so fuck everyone else" is really what they want to say.

[Starglider]

the plain, dirty truth is that there are considerably less job/career/wealth opportunities for most people under the age of 30 in comparison to even slightly older people who were their age range in the 1990s and early 2000s

Unfortunately true and this situation will not be improved by pumping out more graduates, particularly if those graduates are of mediocre quality. As I said, we already have over 60% of school leavers going to univeristy, and that is with current fees. If we abolished fees, maybe the number would go to 70%. There is absolutely no way that university funding could be increased on the current tax base, at best it might be maintained (which would mean a huge deficit that bankrupts the country later). Would having 70% of the potential workforce rather than 60% having a degree make jobs come flooding back? Certainly it won't attact multinationals, generic graduate employees can be found all over the world much cheaper. Very high skilled individuals are attractive and companies will go out of their way to recruit them, but improving the number of those that requires a concentration of resources into top universities and top schools (e.g. a resurrection of the grammar/secondary split) which socialists mentally cannot comprehend. The only other way to create jobs is to encourage the formation of new companies, and the growth of small companies that are inherently more likely to employ locally. Again these companies prefer a smaller number of better trained graduates over masses of graduates with worthless degrees, and promoting growth requires some combination of small business grants and lower taxation which (one again) socialists cannot comprehend.

facing a fierce battle against Globalisation (which has hit the buffers over two years ago and is now beginning to get openly attacked by the alienated youth in the ailing West)

No, they are not 'fighting a battle against Globalisation'. They are bitching and whining on blogs and maybe going to a riot when there's a G8 summit near by. Fighting against globalisation would be at minimum buying products and services made locally rather than imported, and realistically starting companies (or collectives, whatever you want to call them) that actually produce said goods and services locally. Obviously this doesn't happen, they bitch and whine online but do so using China-made laptops and complain to Indian call centers when they break.

insane house prices haver herded millions upon millions of young adults into their parent's homes

Of course, but again virtually no home owners are prepared to take a loss in their home value to get this back to sane levels. The mere notion of falling house prices causes shock and horror through a big segment of the electorate (specifically, the part that pay nearly all the taxes). There isn't a lot the government can do about this, high interest rates would /eventually/ bring house prices down through sheer unaffordability, but people are so reluctant to drop prices even in a demand drought that it would take years, and meanwhile unaffordable borrowing would strangle the economy (and bankrupt half of it).

And if similar or greater quality further education is more affordable in Germany, Scotland, Finland and Norway etc, I guess the more enterprising students will go there instead...

Norway is floating on oil; the UK would have a lot more public spending leeway if it had the oil revenue/population ratio that Norway does. Germany is one of the few Western countries that has significant manufacturing and a good balance of trade; for complicated historical reasons which are worth examining but which aren't really relevant to the UK's current budget dilemma (even if you assume the UK could build back up to German level export manufacturing, it would at least a decade, probably several). All other European countries that manage to supply free higher education do so via massive completely unsustainable public debt.

With regard to funding university research, how is this going to help the economy? The results are published and read globally, and are just as usable to foreign competitors as UK companies (and the former can manufacture them much more easily). University research only benefits the economy in the presence of a robust technology transfer programs (at universities) and a culture of both private applied research and funding availability for start-ups, so that grad students can take their work and turn it into a fast-growing company. Technology transfer was one of the first things to be cut. Small business grants are hated by the socialists as 'subsidies to private interests' etc etc, Labour massively cut them prior to leaving government. VC funding is almost unavailable in the UK, particularly to postgrads with no commercial track record (it is actually much easier to get in most developing economies, with all the hot money that's gone there in the last few years).

The truth is that as with a strong army, a comprehensive high-quality education system is only affordable with a strong economy. Trying to attract and keep multinationals is getting harder and harder, arguably a fools game with the amount of concessions now needed and how easily they can leave again. Creating more public sector jobs is completely useless, the sector is already very bloated in the UK, productivity is much lower than private industry and from a tax point of view it is inherently parasitic, leading to massive deficits and bankrupcy if any attempt it made to expand or even keep it at Labour levels. Small businesses are the only answer but of course they are kicked and spat upon by the entire left of the political spectrum and much of the right (specifically, all the politicians bought off by large multinationals).

[Danny Bhoy]

This totally doesn't fuck our students, we only doubled and in some cases tripled school fees. Hell my yearly tuition here is around $4,000 a bit over once you include text books and other school fees, $6,000 and I would have stayed a minimum wage slacker as I couldn't secure funding for school.

Unless you have rich parents, how is a student going to afford 9000 pounds?

Back in the day (1995-1998), tuition fees were in the 5000ish to 6000ish/7000 quid range for us non-EU furriners with the pound far stronger then. And that was just in the non-lab courses. If they're hiking tuition for local/EU students to 9000...

[Teebs]

Back in the day (1995-1998), tuition fees were in the 5000ish to 6000ish/7000 quid range for us non-EU furriners with the pound far stronger then. And that was just in the non-lab courses. If they're hiking tuition for local/EU students to 9000...

They aren't £9000 is the absolute top rate and for universities to charge that they have to fulfill various other conditions. £6000 is the new normal maximum as I understand it.

Anyway, as I have pointed out repeatedly these fees are not up front payments. They are nothing like what international students have to pay because of the extremely supportive loan system.

[Teebs]

Back in the day (1995-1998), tuition fees were in the 5000ish to 6000ish/7000 quid range for us non-EU furriners with the pound far stronger then. And that was just in the non-lab courses. If they're hiking tuition for local/EU students to 9000...

They aren't £9000 is the absolute top rate and for universities to charge that they have to fulfill various other conditions. £6000 is the new normal maximum as I understand it.

Anyway, as I have pointed out repeatedly these fees are not up front payments. They are nothing like what international students have to pay because of the extremely supportive loan system.