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No limits on tuition fees
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
That's what the privately-educated, unelected Lord Browne has urged in a new report.
Not only that, but the increased borrowing caused by this would come with higher interest rates.
If we can't afford to send 50% of the population to university, then send less, and decide based on academic merit, rather than bank balance.
Universities in England should be able to charge unlimited fees, a major review of university funding has recommended.
Lord Browne's review calls for the £3,290 cap on fees, which students borrow in loans, to be scrapped.
Instead it proposes a free market in fees - setting out models of charges up to £12,000 a year for a degree course.
The UCU lecturers' union said the plan was "the final nail in the coffin for affordable higher education".
However, Lord Browne's review makes clear that universities that charge more than £6,000 a year would lose a proportion of the fee to help cover the cost of student borrowing.
Lord Browne told BBC Breakfast: "We have taken off the cap but we haven't taken off the restrictions."
He said all universities were different and needed different amounts of money to retain their world class status, but he predicted that few would put fees very high.
He acknowledged graduates would be paying significantly more back in their tuition fee and maintenance loans but insisted they were not being left with "mortgage-style debts".
"They would be paying the same interest rate as the government uses to borrow. They will only pay it back when their earnings go above £21,000," he said.
"If you choose to go into a job which doesn't pay very much or if you choose to go out of the workforce to build a family, you won't have to pay it back."
The report comes ahead of next week's comprehensive spending review, in which major cuts to higher education funding are expected.
Ministers will now have to respond to the proposals for reforming university funding - with the threat of a Liberal Democrat backbench rebellion.
Universities 'could close'
Increasing fees would mean a direct reversal of personal pledges made at the election by Liberal Democrat MPs - and will cause deep political difficulties for the coalition government.
The Liberal Democrats' own youth section has branded the fee rise as a "disaster".
Greg Mulholland, Lib Dem MP for Leeds North West, said he would vote against the plan.
But Business Secretary Vince Cable, who is trying to reach a deal with the Conservatives that the Lib Dems could support, told the BBC the proposals were "probably on the right lines".
The far-reaching recommendations set out a system in which much of the cost of a degree would be transferred from the taxpayer to the student.
Shadow university secretary John Denham said the report reflected the belief that teaching budgets would be cut by around two-thirds.
"This is a massive cut even when set against the coalition's aim to cut spending by 25%," he said.
The report seeks to balance much higher charges with support for applicants from poorer families.
This more competitive market would also mean that for the first time universities could go out of business, says the report.
Universities must compete over students, fee levels and against new providers, the review panel recommends: "If they fail... they might ultimately close or be taken over."
Not only that, but the increased borrowing caused by this would come with higher interest rates.
Higher interest rates
Lord Browne proposes that the government would guarantee to underwrite fees up to £6,000 per year - but universities would be allowed to charge any amount above that.
Universities would have to pay an increasing "levy" on fees above £6,000 - but even when charging £12,000, they would be able to keep almost three quarters of the fee.
As now, students would not have to pay fees up-front, but would receive a loan.
But they would not have to start repaying it until their earnings reached £21,000 per year, up from the current level of £15,000.
The report recommends that students should pay higher interest rates on these loans, set at the government's rate of borrowing - currently 2.2% - plus inflation.
All students will be able to borrow £3,750 per year - and young people from families earning less than £25,000 will receive an additional grant of £3,250.
There have been warnings that middle-income families will face a particular financial squeeze from such a fee hike.
If we can't afford to send 50% of the population to university, then send less, and decide based on academic merit, rather than bank balance.
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Comments
Maybe in the past it was the unfair recluse of the elite, now it seems it might be hard going to go to university purely for monetary issues?
Why does everything in this world have to be gained by everyone? I get most annoyed when schools seem to indoctrinate kids to think that they will always get more benefit by going to university, when I sometimes think that many will do better and flourish more, if they dont end up doing something they only did just because it was the status quo.
What happens when the new A* A level grade is achieved by just as many people as the A grade currently is?
So do we let anyone and everyone into university?
Also in regards to the debts, you have to earn a certain amount before you pay it back, so even though you might have loads of debt, paying it back in rather reasonable amounts (only when you can afford it) seems not too bad an idea non?
It doesn't. But then being born into a wealthy family shouldn't be the only way to get a decent education either.
And are we really suggesting, in this time of austerity and fiscal responsibility, that the best way to start your adult life is with a £30k+ debt?
Not that I agree with Labour's approach either, for many of the reasons you suggest.
Not sure this works. Modern Western Economies are looking for more graduates (and more with post-grad qualifications on top of that). It seems a retrograde step to go for less.
Secondly there is a massive benefit to being a graduate in pay terms and this would be become even more pronounced if less people go. if the state pays through taxes a small minority of future wealthy are benefitting through the taxes of a much larger group of people who don't benefit. At least with loans the person who benefits (ie the graduate) pays.
It's a suggestion from a report that Universities be allowed to charge more. It's not yet happening, but given the Government has accepted the report it's likely to happen in next few years.
I've heard this a lot lately, though admittedly not with the qualifier 'massive'. It strikes me as one side of the fence's de facto retort to the other's equally facile 'education will be the exclusive preserve of the affluent'. I hope no one genuinely entirely believes either statement, and that it's all just part of the rhetoric.
http://ww2.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Main_menu___Research/Labour_market_information/Graduate_Market_Trends/Graduate_and_non_graduate_earnings_from_the_Labour_Force_Survey__Spring_03_/p!eLdibF#19848
Admittedly I'm going from Spring 03, but haven't seen anything that contradicts, but the difference between the weekly pay of graduates and those with HE qualifications is pretty big, even at 21-25 there was a difference in over £40 a week and by the time you reach 55-60 the difference is nearer £250 (or approx a third difference).
There are some flaws in the methodology (it doesn't include the self-employed and part-timers), but even so I'd say the trend was pretty clear
So to my mind we need to accept three things;
1 - Further education does cost the country in the short term, but funding it properly is definitely in the national interest.
2 - We need to spend more on further education and most of this needs to come from the government.
3 - We should increase the amount we spend on apprenterships and further education in skills/trades as well as increasing the amount spent per pupil for the academical.
Now whilst I don't agree with the costs being limitless there does need to be a better way of doing things. Either the loan is given out in the form of your rent being paid for and food stamps to stop you pissing it up the wall, or the costs are high enough to put off people like myself who are just going to waste the opportunity.
The way I sees it, we have two options:
1. Continue to encourage this ludicrous notion that everyone should go to university and that merely having a degree is your passport to a job and eternal happiness. This merely serves to devalue the clout of a degree, ensure the fast food and call centre industries are healthly staffed for decades to come, and that the tertiary education budget becomes ever more stretched, requiring whacking great tuition fees.
2. Do a Dr Beeching-style cull of universities which are not worthy of the name. Replace them with techincal colleges (=revert to polys by another name); places that teach practical skills that we actually need. Tis one of many reasons that this country's manufacturing sector has all but died. Higher education should be for the elite - the academically elite. Not for the academically not-bad.
Unfortunately, much as people may whinge, Browne's recommendations, unless a vast overhaul of the education system is undertaken, starting at the very bottom, is undertaken, if Britain wishes to retain its world class research at the Russell Group, then sadly fee hikes are inevitable.
A graduate tax on the other hand is just plain fucking bonkers.
Or the wealthy elite. Not the slightly well off!
I agree that far to many people go to Uni for the wrong reason but do you really think if numbers dropped that fee's would fall? I doubt that would happen.
Higher education should be there for anyone based on their abilites not the abilites of their parents to pay these fee's.
I feel this is one more step along the tory road of keeping the working man down.
Perhaps we could have a system where you get to study for one degree free of charge if you reached a certain level with your A's but any others after that you have to pay the full costs for, after all some people seem to be in education well into their late twenties.
Not at all what I said, but hey, if it suits your argument and your prejudices (*cough* evil Tory, nasty party, etc. etc. reductio ad nauseum), fill your boots.
Yes I do. Fewer institutions chasing the same amount of cash -> more money for unis -> larger research grants -> lower cost passed on to the end 'consumer', i.e. the student.
I agree with this. However, under the current structure whereby the whole world and their wife seem hell bent in going off to the University of the South Circular to spend three years doing Twitter Studies with the misguided belief that it will pave the way to the land of milk and honey, then something has to give. See the two options in my previous post.
Nope. Just a realisation that money doesn't grow on trees. Either systems stays the way it is, and fees go up, or, system gets a radical overhaul, fewer people go to higher education, more people go into practical training and fees go down.
Sounds like fiddling while Rome burns to me. Will that honestly save enough money to balance the books enough to bring tuition fees down to a 'normal' level (whatever that may be)?
I don't doubt that, generally speaking, educating yourself to degree level is likely an advantage when it comes to obtaining a better paid job - that seems to be firmly in the realm of common sense. What isn't the case, though, is: degree == better paid job. The counter of 'you get paid more' to uncapped fees is not only incorrect, universally speaking, but seems to be deeply lacking in understanding why people educate themselves. Among the many reasons I chose further education is the fact that learning is an end in itself, and it'd have been a sad day if I'd have made the decision to cease further education due to the low chance of acceptable remuneration.
As it happens I'm not 100% against the idea of uncapped fees: there are a number of arguments for it that, in theory at least, are quite cogent. I just think that 'you get paid more' is one of the worst and most lacking.
One of us seems to be confused and I can't rule out it being me. But you seem to accept that degree is an advantage when it comes to better paid jobs, but then say degree doesn't equal better paid job. If you're saying there are exceptions eg the Richard Bransons of this world, I'd agree but I'd also say in a subject such as funding for hundreds of thousands of people a year we're going to have to talk in generalities. If there's some other nuance in what you're saying I am genuinely missing it.
That said you're argument that you didn't enter education for a better paid job is, to the Government and other taxpayers irrelevant. I went because I heard the beer was cheap, the women were easy and I could play lots of Rugby - and two out of three of those turned out to be true
However, to the Government the end result of Degree Level Education is that in most cases, not all, but most you will earn more than a non-graduate. This is true whether you shagged you're way through Uni and ended with a 2:1 or lived a life of Monk-like dedication to the pursuit of education and got a 2:2. The question is why should Bob the Builder who left school at 16 and is barely above minimum wage have to pay for you to fulfill yourself and earn more than him?
I think the fact that he's unelected is more of an issue, although the fact that we're talking about a man who's mainly in the position he is through money and contacts, when his recommendation will potentially harm those without such advantages, is relevant.
Incidentally, you talk about an academic elite, as if that's what we ever had. When only 10% of people went to university, we weren't talking about the brightest 10% of minds in the country, we were talking about the 10% who had the opportunity. Sure, you had to have something about you, but there were millions of equally bright people who for whatever reason didn't go. I think a very quick explosion of university places will only result in a drop in standards (which is possibly the case), but I think you can increase university courses without effecting standards if you do it gradually. The more people who take a course, the more are qualified to go into academia, and the more are then going to be of the standard to teach the next generation, as well as carrying out valuable research. I believe the Scandinavian countries all have very high levels of people going into further education (although Finland have something similar to our old Polytechnic system, I believe), and it only seems to benefit their economy. If the money is there, I would definitely support increasing the numbers going to university, as long as the standards remain. But if given a choice between funding fewer places and giving people huge debts with interest, I think I'd take the former. After all, America has been doing the latter for years, and they have nowhere near the number of people going to uni as parts of Europe.
But anyway, the short-sightedness of this government on such issues has already been revealed, with Vince Cable's pledge to remove funding for research that is not beneficial to the economy. Firstly, how the hell do you know whether research is economically beneficial before you've done it? And secondly, if there's an obvious economic benefit, then the private sector will already be all over it. Surely the whole point of government-funded research is to fund areas where the private sector sees no obvious short-term benefit? But anyway, this kinda highlights the ridiculousness of it all. They want more people in the sciences, and then they cut research funding. This is far more likely than anything else to cause top academics to go elsewhere, and contribute to some other country's success instead.
What's well off families got to do with it? People should support themselves through university, rather than rely on their parents. If I go to uni in the end, I know my parents wouldn't even dream of paying a penny of my fees or living costs. I'd have the same opportunities as the child of a rich family, or someone who lives in a cardboard box.
Having the government pay £30k+ to the university of your choice on your behalf isn't really supporting yourself.
I think that might be just about do-able at the moment but the sort of fee's that are being introduced along with accomadation etc are going to leave students with massive debts that they will still be paying off into their forties.
Some of the more intensive courses mean there is little time to hold down a part time job people without financial help will struggle and will leave with debts that would frighten most people.
My point is it is not an even playinf field the wealthy have the advantage no matter how talented or hard working the student is.
They dont pay back until they earn over a certain amount (which may be due to rise as well), if you are sucessfull you pay more back, if not, then not so much.
My student debt stands at about £8k, im going to be 35 before I clear it at the current rate, but as my wage goes up, so does my payments.
Do you know what the level of earnings is set at now and what it is going to change to, i heard it was 21k which seems likely to catch most people with a degree surely.
It's currently set to £15k, IIRC. I've been paying a percentage of everything I've earn over £15k since leaving uni. Of course the proposed £21k is an attempted shank-softening device that aims to distract from the fact you're likely to be leaving uni in about 4 times as much debt as before.
I get around £1,500 a month after tax and national insurance (I see less due to accomodation which my employer deducts) and I pay about £69 a month. I'm pretty sure that if the threshold of paying back raises to around £21k a year, then I will be about £40 a month better off.
I also pay back more on top of my student debt, which was originally £8k when I left uni, however it is considerably less now.
If you started your studies in 2006 or later, the Government will write off any part of your student loans left unpaid 25 years after you leave your course.
Is the new 21k threshold likely to apply to people with existing student loans? I can't imagine it will, but it'd be pretty sweet for me if it did.
I rely on my parents to support me through university. I've had jobs before going, and I'll try and get a job in the summer, but there is no way I could work during term time and as a result, I need their help. I'm really lucky as they are just about in a good enough position financially to provide me with that support.
I really hope that it doesn't go back to being about much money people have. Some places have worked really hard to widen access to courses, and I believe that is really really important.