Big +1. Our tuition fees where very generous for many years and Higher education was heavily subsidised by the state. What do students generally do with their loans aside from tuition and accommodation expenses, they piss it up a wall.northbank123 wrote:Where do you draw the line going the other way? Should the state pay for Masters degrees? PHDs? What about people who want to go back to university at 40 to change career? And if we're sponsoring all of this shouldn't the state also sponsor apprentices to earn a proper wage in their first year of vocational learning rather than less than £3/hour?Theoperator wrote:Totally against them mate- its an investment by the state in the student who will in all likelihood earn more and then pay more taxes back to the state. By your logic why the f.ck dont children at school have to get a loan and pay it back To land students with such a debt And very unfairly not penalise 24 year olds and over with the same degree and loan is a total disgrace.northbank123 wrote:
Can somebody explain to me why students shouldn't have to pay tuition fees? It's a fucking joke.
As it is a lot of people with degrees are SERIOUSLY considering emigrating, and with a £36,000 loan that you avoid paying if you do then its a bit of a no brainer.
About the worst thing ever done by Labour and aggravated more by the coalition.
An education til 16 is a necessity, and further education until 18 greatly benefits the vast vast majority of kids - and they are still kids at 16. A university education is of vastly reduced benefit to a much smaller group of people. The idea that we should be aiming for 50% of students to go to university is a complete and utter fucking joke as a massively lower proportion of jobs in the workplace actually need degrees.
I was in the position of applying to university 7 or 8 years. I went to a good school and people just ended up getting shepherded into going to university because it was assumed to be the next step. Shall I tell you what my mates who all went to ex-polytechnics to doss around doing sports-based degrees are doing now? Working in supermarkets, working at car dealerships, working in call centres. Their shit degree isn't worth the paper it's written on. Shall I tell you what my mates who left school to do apprenticeships to be electricians, plumbers etc are doing? Skilled work for a bloody good wage.
And let's not forget that the student loan repayment obligations are very generous. Earn £21,000 or less? Don't pay a penny back. Earn £30,000? Pay a modest £67/month. Interest of RPI? Hardly going to force you out of your home is it. People's perceptions of student debt is massively misplaced. I don't know where your sweeping generalisation about people wanting to emigrate because of student loans comes from but having spent 4 years studying at university and working exclusively with people with a university education I can honestly say I've never heard anybody say anything like that. Maybe that was because I went to university to do a worthwhile degree though.
University isn't a 'rite of passage' that we should be handing kids nearly £40,000 to go through. We should be aiming to drastically reduce the numbers of people needlessly taking on student debt to go to university to do pointless degrees rather than encouraging more. We should be stopping brainless careers advisers from telling students that they should be going to university when they just don't need to. We should be stopping the plethora of fucking useless institutions out there from fleecing the state (via student loans) to offer fucking useless courses. We shouldn't be feeding the beast just so that students can afford to go out two or three times a week and pop to the odd lecture on a course that does nothing for their career.
I know one particular student who learned how to play on line poker, and instead of completing his degree has been around the world playing poker to a very high level. Now tell me that this or any other individual is deserving of reduced tuition fees. University used to be a privilege not a right, and that's the way it should be.
Also try looking at the tuition fees to go to an American college, they make ours look like peanuts in comparison.