I remain convinced that the tripling of university tuition fees is regarded as an easy option for government to recoup funds towards the deficit, that today’s brightest young people are being unfairly targeted.
I was also unconvinced by Danny Alexander’s defence of this massive increase on BBC Question Time, and a superb John Sergeant claimed that our government had coped before when we were in a worst situation. There is no level playing field with tuition fees in the UK, and British students are entitled to feel outraged. If the Welsh Assembly can continue to support its students and not increase fees, and tuition remains free in Scotland (albeit it under review), then our government should be following its Big Conversation model and go back to the drawing board on this.
Politicians should realise that it is irrelevant that students will not have to repay their loans until they earn £21,000 as the reality is they fear debt and do not want to start their working life owing tens of thousands of pounds. I believe it’s too steep a rise and and any increases should be introduced gradually, and that our leading corporations should be asked to support universities. As I said before, l believe it is a flawed business plan as there is uncertainty about how the money will be repaid.
I agree with Suzanne Moore’s report in today’s Guardian which asks why we don’t support young people:
A line is being drawn. Romantically, it may be a coalition of resistance. Even if it’s not, I do not understand why we don’t support young people. Have we all been psychically kettled? Something has gone very wrong when pragmatic realism produces the Cable compromise: not voting for a policy you are in charge of. If this is grown-up politics, then we all need to get down with the youth.
I also liked her description of Ed Miliband’s leadership:
The Labour party does not yet resemble an opposition, rather Ed et al seem to be on a collective gap year.
Btw, Cable has just announced that he will be voting for tuition fees rise. And here is a link of a video I made of Nick Clegg defending the rise.
*PR supremo Heather Yaxley voices her own concerns asks why the PR industry isn’t doing much to support university education. And before you all write it off as a soft subject, do read her article first…
English students have a particular reason to feel outraged. These problems wouldn’t be so bad if university weren’t so universal.
University has become a place where we park young people. We park them there because they are not wanted. They know they are not wanted. Just as our old people know they are not wanted either.
What a selfish generation we baby boomers have been. Rather than train our own young in real skills we’d rather import the cheapest labour to undercut them and then leave them festering on the dole or on pointless university courses.
hi Kevin, I don’t “park” my sons at uni. I have seen what a positive difference going to uni has made to my eldest son and he has grown in so much confidence as a result. It is terrible if this is how some people view higher education, and I do think we need many more vocational alternatives. At the end of their education, our young people want to feel equipped with skills to start working, whether it is by going to uni or a work-placed course.
I love the old people in my family and feel very protective towards them, it makes me sad to realise that this is not the case for others.
Ed Milliband is already shaping himself up to be the worst political leader ever.
Utterly agree with Electro Kevin .
We allowed the country to run dry on real jobs ( no industry left to work in as blue collar or skilled labour ) and decided instead to send practically any and everyone to a re-named tech college ( now called ,but not really , universities ) with non subjects such as media studies and management courses .
I suppose this gave government a few extra years to fiddle the unemployment figures .
Of course the problem comes when they have to be dragged from their nice cosy pampered lifestyle of perma student and try and get a job .
With what , second rate qualifications from second rate establishments . As ever employers will pick the truelly bright ones from the top educational establishments such as Cambridge Oxford , Leeds and Bristol .
I dont understand why Cambridge ( proper ) students are playing up , they at least should be able to get the type of jobs ( all over the world ) that will make their fees fade into nothing .
By the way just look at the fees the top American Unis charge , of course most of the students over there do jobs at the same time and dont go doing infantile sit ins .
Ellee – thanks for the link. I just wanted to pick up on the comments from electro-kevin and disaffected who undoubtedly would put Public Relations as a non-subject or pointless degree. The PR degree course at Bournemouth University where I lecture part-time includes a year’s work experience and the students graduate with both vocational skills and an academic rigour based on studying issues that range from economics and politics to psychology and history. They are far more likely to get a good job – a real job – than those studying geography at a long-standing redbrick University. It is insulting to imply they are “parked” as the majority are dedicated to learning and getting a good job at the end of their four years.
The blue collar or skilled labour jobs that are lamented by those who decry modern students weren’t anything to be proud about. Routine factory work, going down t’pit or gutting chickens (nice Norfolk job that) are lauded as “real jobs”. So why did so many of of the generation that did these jobs work hard and educate their children so that they didn’t follow them in these low-paid and soul destroying jobs?
There are still high paid, engineering, design and other high skilled jobs in this country – and elsewhere in the world (since today’s graduates are able to choose a global career not just whatever is the local trade).
The cost of education – school, vocational, higher education, indeed, lifelong development – has to be paid by someone though. The shift towards the student and his/her family taking on more responsibility should force institutions to ensure they are producing graduates who will get jobs. Ironically, that will probably not satisfy the critics since it is the “soft” subjects that they often decry that will attract the students and the funding.
BTW, yes, Bournemouth University did use to be a polytechnic and before that a technical college – but surely this is just semantics. Today’s Universities need to combine vocational and academic education in the main as not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to take a non-vocational subject at Oxford/Cambridge etc and have the contacts or opportunities to then transfer their “brightness” (whatever that means) to whichever employer is more impressed by the fact they attended a “top educational establishment” (again, whatever that means) rather than having the ability to do the job they are recruited to do.
Ellee and Heather,
I was using ‘we’ in the broad societal sense. Of course you don’t ‘park’ your own children in university or your own elderly in austere care homes. But as a society this is exactly what we do.
It has now become mandatory for a job applicant to have a degree whereas a few years ago ‘A’ levels would have sufficed. Instead of paid apprenticeships we now have unpaid internships – more degrading than working down a pit for a wage in my view.
Instead of waiting 4 years to get a ‘good job’ what was wrong with the old system of school leavers (aged 18) getting paid on-the-job to learn their skills instead of mum and dad having to carry them into their twenties ?
It’s quite obvious that the education system has been used to keep unemployment figures hidden and that exam inflation has taken hold. I now work with train guards and drivers who have degrees. I myself have 2 ‘A’ levels and a professional diploma. When I first joined the railway 20 years ago I was considered the exception. Now my qualifications look very hum-drum – and if you think a degree will get you promoted then think again … and get to the back of the queue behind loads of other BAs and BScs while you’re doing it.
Now this may be lauded as a successful higher educational system in action, whereby learned office juniors and manual workers often have letters after their names. But it’s a sad fact that those letters no longer have the same import – further examination of those qualifications and where they’re from is required before they do.
And why is Britain – by almost every measure – slipping down international league tables in inverse proportion to the amount of graduates we’re producing ?
Perhpaps my view of it all is skewed. But it does seem that most of my social peer group are either lecturers or teachers (or lawyers !) and their kids are students of PR, law or business studies.
Few people seem to create wealth. I know only one production engineer and he works for Proctor and Gamble in the USA.
How long can we go on doing each other’s washing ? And how long before our youth start to realise that we’ve sold them down the river ? Judging by the student riots it seems to me that they’re starting to wake up to it.
There are two sides here. I actually agree that tuition should be, if not free, at least at a price which can be afforded. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want to subsidize those anarchists.
Well said E kevin , spot on as usual.
As for the PR industry its about as close to the pits as you can get nowadays as it spin spin spins .
As for the ” looking down your posh nose ” type comments regarding those who worked in factories in the past , clearly someone who has no idea about what they are talking about .
Anyone who ever did have knowledge of the shop floor will tell you of the often happy and jolly atmosphere that there was on such .
Those so employed were often intelligent but family needs dictated that they needed to be working to bring in a wage and near home to support their extended families .
There was often neither money nor the expectation of going further with schooling but do you know they didnt constantly go on about how unfair it all was .
Many indeed did get qualifications , this was usually by going to night school for years or day release at the local tech or an open university degree at home , again you didnt keep harping on about how unfair it all was you just did it .
Lets get back to the real world where uni places are limited to the educational elite and the rest of us arent expected to pay for a load of kids to have a jolly three years at a tech at our expence.
I’ve never seen a problem with subsidising the education of clever people through my taxes. Not if it adds to the general wealth and betterment of the nation.
Heather makes the point that talented young people have more opportunities in the wider world and this is true. But shouldn’t we be making sure that ours is a place that they don’t feel the need to leave ? Are we really paying to educate people for the benefit of other nations as it so often seems ?
On the subject of tuition fees, the “I don’t see why I – a lowly worker – should pay to educate a doctor, ’cause they’ll earn more than me.” attitude is as idiotic as it is damaging to our country, but it’s the one being adopted by the political classes.
We’re being mislead on two issues:
– That the politicians are doing us a favour by removing the burden from the taxpayer onto the student
– That the real reason for educational overspend has nothing to do with the fact that we’re putting too many people through university on courses that do not benefit the country
Yes, I think the students are having a very hard time. If a nation does not invest in its young people, what hope is there?
Kevin, I agree with your points, though young people tend to not need the NHS, yet they pay for it with their taxes. And I worry about overseas students benefiting from our universities and not repaying tuition loans because they can easily vanish into thin air when they return home.
disaffected, I think your view is negative and cynical re PR courses, but I agree universities should only attract those who genuinely want to study and have the ability to do so. It’s far too costly to be regarded as one long party. But we do need lots more active vocational support from industry too. As a journalist, I was trained on the local paper, yet now they have to already have a degree in journalism to set foot in the newsroom and they have to fund this themselves whereas I was funded by my employer. This no longer happens, or very rarely.
I believe the government could also recoup its debt by charging for admissions at art galleries and museums. Why should it be free when it is normal to pay in other countries? Even if a charge of £3 per adult and £1 concessions was introduced, it would still be affordable and rake in millions.
Ellee I dont know what you mean by ” negative ”
Im simply living in the real world where far too much money has been spent by various colours of gov for too many years on too may useless or daft policies ( whos only real intention was to get votes )
Buy the way Id also immediately get rid of bus passes ( go to any Cambridge park and ride and see all those ” poor ” pensioners getting out of their very nice cars , covered in nice warm expensive coats and getting onto buses with their free bus passes paid for by much more hard up young families )
By the way what about that clown Ken Clarke ” lete’s let them all out of goal”
Are there any real Tories left in this country ?
As a teacher I see the effect of tuition fee increase to my students. Some of them misses a few class because they have to work part-time just to pay for their school. It’s sad that education nowadays is becoming exclusive.