Since when has an education in the UK been a birth right? Since when did people in the UK think they have an unquestioned right to a cheap/free high level of education?
Okay, before I go any further let me say something. The following post may cause controversy. It’s a subject which may hit a few raw nerves at the minute and let me just point out it’s merely an alternative viewpoint on a recently much-discussed subject. I’m simply playing Devil’s Advocate here so don’t jump down my throat if you disagree with what I’m suggesting – debate with me, don’t argue with me.
So, tuition fees are going up. Students are going to have to pay far more for their higher education and are going to be left with larger debts after it. Yeah? So? Every single child in the UK is entitled to a state education from the age of three right up to 18, free gratis. It’s a good level of education so surely anything beyond that is up to the individual to source and make provisions for of their own accord?
The way the changes have been proposed would mean that despite tuition fees rising dramatically, the student wouldn’t have to pay for them straight away. They’d be given the opportunity to fully complete their education and get a job paying a respectable wage (£25k) before they had to start repaying the debt at a relatively low rate (earning £25k a year would mean a monthly repayment of £30). If they don’t earn enough, they don’t start paying it back. It’s like giving a degree a money-back guarantee – “if you don’t get a better job after completing a degree you don’t owe us a penny, we guarantee it!”
Is this not a good thing? Surely it’s making efforts to restore value to higher education, it’s making a degree worthwhile and valuable as it should be. It could be argued that in recent years degrees have become two-a-penny: everyone has one and everyone has the financial means to get one and it’s running the risk of drastically devaluing academia.
I know someone who went to University in the early 1990s at a time when students got full fee grants as well as living expense grants so they basically got to complete their degrees with not a scrap of student debt to their names. Now this person freely admits they wasted their time at university. They dossed around for a few years, managed to scrape through at the end and now work in a job 100 per cent unrelated to their degree.
What was the point? Surely that’s just a waste of taxpayer’s money. Considering how much the government contribute to tuition fees, having so many people attending university who don’t use the opportunity to its full potential is just worsening the ever-burgeoning budget deficit.
When I first decided to begin studying with The Open University back in 2004 my first module cost just under £500. That was a heck of a lot of money for me at the time as I was living alone, barely earned £12k a year and had a lot of debt hanging over my head. But I decided that a better and brighter future was something I had to invest in if I wanted to get out of that situation.
As it turns out I got a financial award and didn’t have to pay the fees, but that’s beside the point: I knew that I had to speculate to accumulate and was fully prepared to do that. I never expected that the state would fork out for me to achieve one of my ambitions.
As a tax paying adult why should I have to pay towards someone dossing about at University for three years to come away with a bare pass in a subject they’re only half interested in? Surely my money would be far better spent on my OWN education? I’ve taken on a second job to help improve my own future so why should my hard-earned and then reluctantly deducted tax dollars go towards paying for someone else to do what I’m doing but without the added complications of having to pay my mortgage and utility bills alongside working two jobs?
That tax money would be better put towards improving the education which IS provided free in our state schools. If money was focused on coherence and consistency of provision throughout the country and on ensuring a better minimum standard then the whole country would benefit as a result by producing happier healthier children, who then turn into happier, healthier, more productive adults (unsubstantiated, but I’d bet my socks that there’s evidence to prove it). Isn’t that a better use of tax payers money than paying for some students to slob about in crummy student digs for three years, making empty beer-can towers in their lounges and earning a fortune in Tesco Clubcard points on baked beans and value bread (again, unsubstantiated, I have only a student ex-boyfriend to use as reference).
What’s really so bad about students having to pay their own tuition fees? The cost would be equivalent to that which American students have to pay for an undergraduate public university degree and thousands upon thousands of US students manage...
Granted there’s the argument about it creating a divide between us normal working-class folks and the middle/upper class students who’ll be able to easily afford the increase, but to be honest, doesn’t the divide already exist and wouldn’t it continue to exist, fee increase or no fee increase?
I’m not saying I agree with the increases, but then I’m not saying I disagree with them either. I like to remain ambiguous with things like this seeing as I’m one of the Four In Ten students in the UK who studies part time while working – meaning I a vested interest in the direction that the discussion about tuition fees and availability of loans for part time students takes in the coming months AND in how my tax money is spent.
What do you think?
(2 votes)
Comments
I will stress again that this is NOT my personal opinion, playing devil's advocate means I'm arguing it from a point of view I don't have to agree with.
As an ex-philosophy student, for 2 modules I HAD to argue things I didn't agree with.
I find myself thinking back to 1968/9. The expectation at home had always been that I would go to university. I scraped some 'A' levels but didn't get a university place sogot a job instead. During that year, I decided I did want to go to university and to my surprise got an unconditional offer. I enjoyed university, met lots of interesting people and did a lot of growing up. I did not enjoy my course, but I wasn't the sort to drop out and it wasn't costing me anything. I was able to use my degree to get a good job and have since studied at postgraduate level doing things I am actually interested in and have paid whatever charges were levied for those courses.
If I had been told as an 18 year old that I would have to pay to go university, I would incur debts, and I would have to pay them off over the following 30 years, I'm pretty sure I would have made different life choices. I had been brought up to be debt averse by parents who had known poverty.
If I was 18 now - and I have an 18 year old son who is facing this dilemma currently - I would be very unsure whether I wanted to risk university without being sure it would benefit me. He is unsure what he wants to do and what course would make sense for him. His priority, and I think mine would have been, is to get a job and earn some real money.
If, a system such as that currently proposed, had been the norm for a number of years and I was 18, I would probably do the same as I did when I was 18, just accepting the system without questioning it.
I can see arguments on both sides of the proposal. I am becoming more sanguine about the fees. What I am much less happy about is the withdrawal of much government funding of universities, but that is another issue.
Good point Lizit, I wonder just how many students who COULD do very well at uni and set themselves up for a better career but will be put off by the prospect of a mortgage-length debt hanging over their heads at the end of it (as an aside, the expected level of debt for students following these changes is actually greater than the mortgage I took out at 19!)
But then if they fail to earn a set wage following the completion of their degree then they'll never have to pay the loan back so it's essentially like getting to go to university for free...
I can't get beyond the morality of decisions that mean our generation is making our children pay for our mistakes. I was thinking this morning about my parents' generation and the sacrifices they made (war included) because they wanted a better world for their children.
The push, over the last two decades, to persuade us all that debt is a Good Thing, whether we accumulate it on silly mortages (so house prices can rise and rise), on credit cards (so High Streets can flourish and we can all pay ourselves more), on loans for new kitchens and insurance on everything, would have that generation turning in their graves.
Nor can I get beyond the double-thinking of a government that says being in debt is such a bad thing we have to make swingeing cuts across every sector so we don't pass it on to our children. Well what's making them rack up £40k plus of debt on tuition fees/accommodation etc if not passing debt on to our children?
Elsewhere on this site (www.open.ac.uk/platform/guestblog) is evidence that while having more money doesn't make us happier, having money worries does. I listen to my children's generation talking about how much debt they will leave uni with (already) and how they will ever afford a car or a place of their own, and that's before fees go up. And I think to myself we are setting ourselves for a society that will experience even higher levels of stress and anxiety than we are already seeing.
Every ounce of common sense in me says higher fees will put off huge swathes of our young people from having an experience which our politicians enjoyed.
Mind you, if the mess we're in is evidence of where a uni education can take you perhaps I ought to consider swapping sides in this debate.
None of the changes are going to tackle the real problem. There isn't enough employment available to university educated people in this country. I didn't go to university, but left school at 16 for a 5 year apprenticeship in the printing industry. Only a few went to university, but then there were plenty of skilled jobs which were often accompanied by part-time training at college. The training was funded by business because they would benefit from a skilled workforce.
During the 1980s the decline of industry led to many of the vocational college departments closing due to the reduction in young people securing jobs and apprenticeships. Since then, competition for decently paid jobs has gradually increased to the point that more and more students choose to go to university for entry into jobs that would normally be filled by school leavers and that could more suitably be coupled with vocational educations.
IMHO, there needs to be a greater link between commerce and universities. I see plenty of arguments about individuals picking up the cost of studying. By contrast there is a total lack of any discussion about obtaining greater investment from commerce. This is an area where the OU can really make a difference by encouraging businesses to sponsor young people to study alongside employment. In fact, I believe it increasingly does, designing modules fit for purpose!
Finally, for the record, I am against the increases. The problem is that the last government, and this one, have chosen to carry on borrowing to to fund an insolvent banking system, rather than invest in our children's future.
I finished my degree a couple of years ago. I studied full time at Northampton uni and worked part time to make up my money. I am now around £18000in debt and struggling to find anywhere I can use my wonderful degree... which is why I am paying for more education with the OU. Now, higher tuition fees... the argument about being in students being in debt, under the current system a student could easily end up £20000 in debt anyway and be starting to pay it back when earning a relatively low wage of £15000 a year... so to me £20000, £30000, £40000 in debt whatever its still a large chunk! anbody getting into a degree at the mo is going to end up in a load of debt regardless and should be aware of that. Paying it back at £15000 or £25000 would help cushion the blow but its no biggy really... It would be great if university education was free or heavily subsidised so our best and brightest could go regardless of financial background... unfortunately its not just our best and brightest that go but obviously a large chunk of people! So... do we make the entry requirements harder and reduce the numbers that go to uni so the costs to the taxpayer are more reasonable?? This would reduce the numbers making a degree more valuable therefore and it'd be easier to get a graduate job or on funded PhD places. But... without actually researching this, I'd guess that people from 'less advantaged' bckgrounds will get on average worse results at GCSE/ A' level due to the pressures of their 'environment' shall we say... so if we make places more restrictive then it will not help this section of society, leaving the richer kids at private schools to enjoy the perks of free uni education... and there will be a host of talent that may not have done well academically at school but would flourish at degree level and beyond. So... whats left? Economics are tight so do we as hard up tax payers keep paying for other people to go uni on the cheap? I know that a number of students do waste their time at uni and scrape by and never use their degree, I watched the numbers dwindle by the end of the first term.. and I watched other drink away the rest of their degree. IF it was more costly to go uni it really should only put off the 'wasters'. The ones that are afraid of the debt would not have gone anyway. More funds and the competition between uni's for students will increase the standards so just leaving those committed to their future to get the best for their money, money they wont have to pay back until they get the well paid job their degree should get them. Its not ideal but nothing is these days, free education would be marvellous unfortunately thats not the world we are in. Something I think would be a grand idea though... those that reach a certain level, maybe a predicted 2:2 or above should get their final years fee's covered by the tax payer/ univesity. What an incentive that would be!!! chopping around a thrid of a potential debt for the ones that really worked hard at their degree!! !
Great post - and I agree with almost none of it!
I've been ranting on and off about the coalition's approach to the funding of tertiary education on my own blog (www.tenpencepiece.net) for the last few months and rather than repeat all of the arguments I've made there, I'll try to sum up why I think we should fund tertiary education from general taxation, rather than having (former) students pay for it by themselves.
1. Direct government funding of tertiary education pays for itself on both economic and social measures, according to a recent study by the OECD. Their stand-out conclusion in the press release which accompanies their report is:
2. The UK public, even in the current financial climate, overwhelmingly back the funding of tertiary education through general taxation. The HEFCE's summer 2010 survey shows that only 2% of the population back a substantial reduction in funding for tertiary education (which is certainly what the £2.9bn/year cut in teaching budgets proposed by the coalition is by anyone's standards).
So our investment as a society (through the taxes the government collects on our behalf) in tertiary education pays for itself in economic and social terms, and is thought to be a good thing by all but a few headbanging economic libertarians.
Personally, I'm so pleased that we have graduates who are now the scientists, doctors, social workers and all the other professionals who add to our wealth and well-being as a country because they decided that studying wasn't too hard. They took the time and made the effort to succeed. We should be supporting all those who aspire to join them, not condemming them to years and years of debt repayment (or additional taxes for being successful) after graduation.
Fair points... though not all people that go uni aspire to do anything!! Thats why I'd want to see a system that supports those that really want to achieve and doesnt throw good tax money away (though how that would happen I dont know).
Anyway, where I'd like to see extra (some!!) funding is beyond first degree level i.e Masters and more on funded PhD. (though I might be being biased towards my own situation here.)
I want to take my education further, I worked hard for my 2:1 and now i am struggling to go any further as there is virtually no support for masters level science students (that I can find) and I cant afford several grand a year on fees as well as trying to support myself and study. If there was a real effort to support the scientists, etc. of the future doesnt this obstacle between graduate and research level need to be overcome?
Personally I have spent the my last bit of savings on an OU masters module, if that doesnt get me a (highly competitive) funded PhD placement then I'm really going to struggle to go any further.
Every word Tim writes is true - apart possibly from his side-swipe at libertarians.
Higher education is not a private advantage - it is a public good. And that remains the case regardless of any dodgy arguments founded on extending the personal habits of one's ex-boyfriends in order to stigmatise students generally. Jokes about baked beans may have their place - albeit usually in the acts of elderly stand-up comics or the works of Mel Brooks - but a debate over funding is possibly not one of them.
But I was also interested by the failure of the article to address any of the difficulties these specific proposals will pose a considerable number of our fellow OU students. Older students, financially disadvantaged part-timers presently in receipt of grants, middle-incomers who will in fact be paying a relatively high interest rate on loans (if we get them), people taking 30 pointers and of course just about all Humanities students are ignored.
Finally (!) I really do think that if one is going to write a piece arguing for increased fees it simply isn't good enough to end with the sort of cop-out that infests all too many Level 1 and 2 TMAs. In the real world we are presented with choices and the need to have an opinion.
"Higher education is not a private advantage - it is a public good"
How so? I'd be interested to hear your reasonings.
"But I was also interested by the failure of the article to address any of the difficulties these specific proposals will pose [...] financially disadvantaged part-timers presently in receipt of grants"
You mean people like me? The article was never intended as a comprehensive answer to the problem, it was just a light-hearted look at it from the other side of the fence.
"just about all Humanities students"
Again... Like me, I was a Humanities student until I started this latest module.
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