The way student loans work is more like a graduate tax, but you have to apply for it. It’s probably not right to think of it like a bank loan, where that loan needs repaying regardless of other circumstances.
The ways loans work now is that you pay back a percentage based on your income over a threshold. I think it’s something like 8% on everything you earn over £25k a year.
Funding optional education is always going to be divisive, and there are valid arguments on each side. Why should someone’s further education be funded by general taxation? Why should someone who leaves school at 16 and goes into a trade be paying for someone to stay in education until they are 21, so they can earn more money than them? On the other hand, the country massively benefits from people going to university so why shouldn’t the country pay.
Personally I don’t like the way further education is funded, and I am very much in the camp that sees education as something that benefits the country and the country should see it as an investment (as aside, I would expect a lot of crossover on the Venn diagram of ‘I’m not paying for some twat to go to university’ and ‘we should train our own doctors and nurses’).
But the bigger impact is on social mobility. Tuition fees have undoubtedly put off many lower class people from attending university, and a system which means you can avoid debt if mummy and daddy can find 50k to help you out is always going to drive inequality.
I think I have a compromise. Let’s start from the basis that university education is a good thing, and if you go to university you are likely to be enhancing your earning potential and future prospects.
Let’s get rid of the loan system, and instead replace it with a proper graduate tax - which it almost is at the minute. Everyone who graduates from university is subject to a 8% tax on their earnings over 25k (or whatever the threshold is). Everyone who benefits from a university education has to pay for it and no-one gets off with thanks to mummy and daddy. You benefit (ie you reach a higher earning level) you pay.
I think that is much fairer, much more inclusive and makes university education much more accessible.
I work in HE and have direct control over a significant budget, have been thinking of little else for months now.
Very fortunately, my little part of the world is in incredibly good shape, however, the sector is in real trouble. We should all expect a significant shrinking of providers over the next decade or so.
Just as an aside, probably the only way I’m like @Dane is that I have a similar antipathy towards debt. I got rid of my credit card, and I don’t buy anything unless I have the money to pay for it. I hate the idea of owing money. Aside from my mortgage (which itself is very low - I saved up for ages and bought quite late, because I don’t like debt) I don’t have any debt.
When I left Uni, I had about two grand of student loans. I got a grant, my tuition was free, I was lucky enough to get some shares when my building society converted to a bank, and that mostly got my through my first couple of years. I had to take out a loan in my final year because I was properly running out of money.
A few years later, after I’d been working a while, I’d managed to save up some cash, so of course I immediately paid back my student loan. I wasn’t even over the repayment threshold.
I was feeling pretty good and I mentioned this to a mate in the pub later on. He hit the fucking roof.
I was really shocked. He explained that I would never have a loan again in my life that had such favourable terms, and I would have been better to take the two grand, put it in an ISA and pay the loan back from the proceeds.
I said that the woman on the phone was a bit surprised that I was paying back two grand in one go, and kept asking if I was sure? He said ‘Yeah, that’s because it makes no sense you fucking idiot’.
I also work in HE. Whatever way tuition fees/loans are spun, we are straddling our young people with debt that many will be paying off for the rest of their lives.
The biggest problem with the commodification of HE is that students sometimes see themselves as customers who are paying for their degrees. This brings huge challenges to assessment, rigour, and development of critical thinking in adult learners.
A bigger nettle to be grasped is that there are too many universities in the UK and some will inevitably have to close. There is an argument that HEIs taking students with low A-level grades is not the best thing for society or for the students themselves. Universities are forced to drop standards to take in bigger numbers/fees. And young people that don’t have the academic capacity can find university extremely stressful. Many of these could make a better living (and have less debt) by doing other forms of further education or vocational training
One thing I’m really curious about is how the relationship between students and institution has changed over time.
My time at Uni bridged the introduction of fees and scrapping of maintenance grants. The tuition I got was on the whole piss poor, but you accepted that because you were sort of an afterthought, and research was where Uni’s made their cash.
I remember speculating at the time that Uni’s were going to be in for a shock when the turned students in customers with a right to demand a quality service for their money.
Should be means tested.
My lad got free tuition fees for his bachelors degree, but I paid for his masters.
He mentioned filling in a bursary form when he first enrolled, I told him not to waste his time.
I paid non-home fees, so around £20k/year. In return I had lectures where I had to sit on the floor because there were no seats available. This was at a top-tier university too.
Absolutely atrocious, I’m not sure where all the money is going, genuinely. At least the teaching was good, but that was the only decent thing about it. Thankfully that’s the most important thing to me.
Take the NHS.
Apparently 39,000 managers.
800 diversity and equality managers.
All earning shit loads more than nurses and porters no doubt.
True story…
Golfing mate of mine has a sister in charge of a Glasgow hospital ward. Every day, they receive delivery of 24 pints of milk, and pour 18 down the sink.
They have informed the buyer/logistic/procurement department literally several dozen times that they only need 6 pints a day, yet are told that’s the standard order.
That’s one ward in one hospital in a national institution.
How many hundreds of thousands of pounds does this top heavy organisation waste while people wait for treatment due to backlogs caused by lack of funding?
My personal bias, but when something is not getting done that touches the management level it is more likely it because there are too many managers getting in the way than not enough.
This is definitely part of it. Private Eye for years would run stories about the senior administrators in UK universities and colleges paying eye wateringly high salaries. With relatively little going towards the teaching staff or to improve quality for students.
I think I also read that some universities took out large loans to invest in their facilities over a decade ago on the assumption the funding from Student Loans and growth in foreign students would provide them with a consistent income.
