Keele charges maximum tuition fee from 2012...

[PotGuy]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...shire-13024559

As everyone already knew, just about every university will be charging £9000, even crap ones like Keele.

Spoke to one of my lecturers a few weeks ago for quite a while, found out that they were looking at well over £6k just to break even, and that is with 20% redundancies across the board.

I think that will pretty much be the end of widespread university education.

[Hornmeister]

Too many people are going to University these days.

In the past people didn't do journalism or media studies degrees, they worked they way up from local papers, local radio to TV etc.

Now people spend £30,000 to get a journalism degree and then can't get a job at a local paper.

We need to go back to workplace learning, apprenticeships and sponsored sandwich courses and not expect people who are working hard for a living to fund a three year jolly with little prospect of employment at the end of it.

I'm all for 100% funded by the tax payer degree courses for the subjects that are needed by the workplace and for the most able of students, regardless of their own financial background, but this does need to be limited, far more than it has been in the past.

[afanof]

I'm all for 100% funded by the tax payer degree courses for the subjects that are needed by the workplace

You have no soul.

[PotGuy]

Too many people are going to University these days.

In the past people didn't do journalism or media studies degrees, they worked they way up from local papers, local radio to TV etc.

Now people spend £30,000 to get a journalism degree and then can't get a job at a local paper.

We need to go back to workplace learning, apprenticeships and sponsored sandwich courses and not expect people who are working hard for a living to fund a three year jolly with little prospect of employment at the end of it.

I'm all for 100% funded by the tax payer degree courses for the subjects that are needed by the workplace and for the most able of students, regardless of their own financial background, but this does need to be limited, far more than it has been in the past.

Exactly right. That is precisely the system that is needed. Although I do think students should be a proportion of their degree - <£2k of it mind.

That is not Cameron's system though.

In Cameron's system, everyone will carry on being funnelled into idiotic, useless degrees through a school system where everybody gets high enough grades to qualify for university, but at no cost to his government.

It hides the unemployment figures while at the same time making his budget look far better.

In the long run, we all lose.

[Hornmeister]

You have no soul.

We can't afford to have a soul.

Exactly right. That is precisely the system that is needed. Although I do think students should be a proportion of their degree - <£2k of it mind.

That is not Cameron's system though.

In Cameron's system, everyone will carry on being funnelled into idiotic, useless degrees through a school system where everybody gets high enough grades to qualify for university, but at no cost to his government.

It hides the unemployment figures while at the same time making his budget look far better.

In the long run, we all lose.

I'm not so sure about students paying for fees. Strictly speaking a higher educated person should command a higher salary and would pay for the degree by paying more tax over their lifetime.

I'm fed up of extra taxes for this, rebates for that mentalities. Theses schemes just exist to overcomplicate things and to give tax advisers a job. They exist because the fundamental tax system is wrong and are in place to tinker with it to try and get a bit more fairness.

There's no denying that having more students improves the unemployment figures but it is a temporary measure which only delays the inevitable.

[wfcmoog]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england...shire-13024559

As everyone already knew, just about every university will be charging £9000, even crap ones like Keele.

Spoke to one of my lecturers a few weeks ago for quite a while, found out that they were looking at well over £6k just to break even, and that is with 20% redundancies across the board.

I think that will pretty much be the end of widespread university education.

£9000 is just a number. Students won't have to pay it back until they graduate and are earning above the average wage.

Even then, it's only peanuts per month.

[99mph]

I think I said this last time but when I was at Uni, I was thankful for all the students doing the rubbish degrees as their tuition fees subsidised the cost of my course (Aerospace Engineering)

[Berkohorn]

I think I said this last time but when I was at Uni, I was thankful for all the students doing the rubbish degrees as their tuition fees subsidised the cost of my course (Aerospace Engineering)

Hi 99MPH, where did you do your degree and has it been a problem finding work? My son (doing GCSE's this Summer) want to study maths, further maths, physics and chemistry at A level and then Mech Eng or Aerospace Eng at Uni. He wants to work in the auto racing business (target is F1 race engineer) and has done work experience with Red Bull Racing and works for Fortec Motorsport in his spare time. If you prefer to PM that is fine.

Sorry for hijacking thread!!!

[wfcmoog]

Hi 99MPH, where did you do your degree and has it been a problem finding work? My son (doing GCSE's this Summer) want to study maths, further maths, physics and chemistry at A level and then Mech Eng or Aerospace Eng at Uni. He wants to work in the auto racing business (target is F1 race engineer) and has done work experience with Red Bull Racing and works for Fortec Motorsport in his spare time. If you prefer to PM that is fine.

Sorry for hijacking thread!!!

Surely it can't be hard to find work? If nobody will employ you, you can go self employed, like Hugo Drax.

[inayellowshirt]

Hornmeister talks a lot of sense (because I agree with him)

too many people treat Uni as a 3 year jolly. You can be successfull by simply leaving school at the end and knuckling down to work.

[TheDon]

I'm looking to do a media production course.

[PotGuy]

£9000 is just a number. Students won't have to pay it back until they graduate and are earning above the average wage.

Even then, it's only peanuts per month.

I'm all right Jack, eh?

Its a £36,000 debt moog, including maintenance loans.

[wfcmoog]

I'm all right Jack, eh?

Its a £36,000 debt moog, including maintenance loans.

None of that is a relevant retort to my post.

It's not a debt in the same sense as a mortgage or personal loan, because you only have to pay it back when you are earning enough to comfortably afford to. You won't be made bankrupt if you leave university and take some time to get to a higher earning bracket, because the repayments won't kick in until you do.

What part of that is so hard for today's higher education applicants to get their heads around?

[Birdydoug]

Does that amount include the gap year in upper moogoloia or is that in addition

[PotGuy]

None of that is a relevant retort to my post.

It's not a debt in the same sense as a mortgage or personal loan, because you only have to pay it back when you are earning enough to comfortably afford to. You won't be made bankrupt if you leave university and take some time to get to a higher earning bracket, because the repayments won't kick in until you do.

What part of that is so hard for today's higher education applicants to get their heads around?

I'm well aware how it is paid back. Just because it is paid back slowly, doesn't magically reduce the amount that is paid back. You are still losing £36,000 in exchange for next to nothing - or at least far less that people have been receiving until now! They are paying twice as much as I have done for a vastly reduced university budget, and £36000 more than Cameron and co paid for theirs.

The payment system is a million miles better than the one I am going to be using, I have no problem with that and never indicated I did.

I have a problem with the government, who are continuing the policy of encouraging all and sundry to go to university to take up golf course management and parading university as the only 'correct' route, but at no cost to themselves.

It is the perfect system for them, where they can blab on in the elections about how x% of the population are going to university and how good the budget looks, while crippling those who do with an absolutely ridiculous level of debt and a further devalued degree where teaching quality has been severely reduced due to mass redundancies.

What needed to be done was to cull the university culture and open up, or at least vastly improve, other avenues of further education. Instead, they have washed their hands of it completely, which was the easy, pathetic path to take.

I think 'I'm all right Jack' appears to sum up your opinion on tuition fees to be honest. If you were actually facing a £36,000 debt as a 17 year old, in return for a severely reduced service which was received for free by those in power and double what was already being charged, you wouldn't be so aloof about it.

[luke_golden]

Just move abroad and never pay a penny back, like me.

Cheers taxpayers!

[afanof]

Just move abroad and never pay a penny back, like me.

Cheers taxpayers!

What to do if you move abroad
If at any time you move abroad, you're expected to inform the SLC so you can make repayments directly to it (usually by direct debit). Different repayment thresholds apply in different countries, depending on their national average earnings and typical living costs, so you must provide details of your new salary (see the SLC website's country by country details).

Repayments will be deducted in pounds sterling and you'd be responsible for any costs involved in converting the currency.

There are severe penalties if you move overseas and don't tell the SLC, or for not providing the information it requests to be able to deduct repayments from your salary. Penalties include applying repayments based on an income equal to twice the UK average earnings, and even - in the most extreme cases - demanding you repay the total loan in one go.

[luke_golden]

We'll see if they ever find me then!

[matimbers]

We'll see if they ever find me then!

I work for the SLC Luke!

[luke_golden]

I work for the SLC Luke!

Best be moving to another state then!