Monday, Jan 22, 2007
Parents and students hammered
BBC: Tuition fees 'may rise to £6,000'
1997: Education, Education, Education
2007: Inflation, Inflation, Inflation. Triple fees for science courses as well.
Posted by sovietuk @ 10:31 PM (168 views) Add Comment
27 Comments
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1. sirgoogle said...
Well this is a very good way of killing off the engine that is the UK economy.
Lets really discourage the bright people who want to do science and engineering. Lets make them pay 3x what a totally worthless art student (or journalist) has to pay in fees and then give them a really crap wage and career when they graduate.
I work in an international community (I left the UK after the last Crash - probably never to return - could not afford to now anyway).
Asked by a German colleague why we get so many high quality UK candidates for internationally advertised posts - such that Brits out number by a factor of over 2 for all the other nations applying for the posts put together (and nearly none from the US) - I answered (from my own experience) that the wages offered were nearly double what you could get in the UK. Note that the wages offered are on a par with what a scientist or engineer would get in Europe and less than what a US scientist or engineer would get. I always joke that the only people who make money in the UK are the accountants and bankers. Scientists and engineers are paid at a level just above a toilet clearer (I am greeted with amazment from my foreign colleagues who ask "so who adds value to your economy??, how does it work?" I do not know .... I just do not know.....money changers that is all - that why we cannot give up sterling and adopt the Euro.....without the City of London and its currency transactions we would not have an economy.
2. sovietuk said...
The whole pantomine gets more and more ridiculous everyday
3. uncle chris said...
What happened to the New Labour promise of legislating to prevent the introduction of student fees - more labour lies of course from one of the most corrupt governments of the past 200 years.
4. harold said...
Sirgoogle
"totally worthless art student..."
Sorry, but I have to take you up on that. It's not that I disagree with your point about Science and Engineering, but it's not true to say that art students are totally worthless. For example, the pop music industry (which of course employs many many sound and light engineers) generates billions. GB is a creative place - okay so we don't always like its creations, be they unmade beds or pickled cows, but at least it brings in money to the UK and provides employment for otherwise unemployed engineering grads.
5. tyrellcorporation said...
Harold, I got a 1st in Product Design back in 1990 and my course had 16 people on it. The same course now has 65 people on it. This is being replicated all over the UK as youngsters are conned into believing they are the next Philippe Starck. The drop out rates are in the region of 50% on some arts courses. Out of the people on my course only two (including myself) went on to have a career in the creative sectors. Although it pains me to say it, Art courses for many are an easy way to a degree, nothing more - after all it's far more fun designing stuff that'll never see the light of day than wading through text books and doing exams.
Tony's obsession with getting 50% of kids into higher education is expensive, unnecessary and in many ways cruel (as they waste time and get into debt). When I started my course in 87 all my materials, tuition, etc were provided free, because the course is so over-filled now kids have to stump up about 1000 quid a term - madness!
Sure, the UK is an incredibly creative place and its sector is very successful but my experience is that in a downturn, design is one of the first things to go and my fear is that new graduates coming into the market will be stuffed (just like I was in 1990-91).
How many Media Studies graduates can the World employ?!?
6. talking rot said...
So, because I could not join the home-owners club earlier in my life I now have to find approx £6,000 to educate my offspring - who are incidentally the next generation of tax payers. Too poor to find their education and too rich to qualify for free education.
Unless I'm Scottish, of course, who get it all for free.
At least I'll never suffer the embarassment of having an Arts graduate as a child being told to serve the customer Big Mac and Fries.
7. paul said...
"How many Media Studies graduates can the World employ?!?"
The BBC online news has openings in the Property Promotion Department I hear.
The bar is being raised by this process but I have to wonder at what cost. These new sets of skills make UK graduates' skills very portable, especially those combining engineering with languages.
Personally, I did Economics and a foreign language, followed by Computing at postgrad level. The minute I find myself short of work here I can up sticks and move abroad with ease (not being a homeowner). This same flexibility can be continued by other graduates meaning less tax revenue for the UK.
8. Tara747 said...
"At least I'll never suffer the embarassment of having an Arts graduate as a child being told to serve the customer Big Mac and Fries."
What ages are your children? How do you know they won't study an Arts subject??? :o
9. inbreda said...
A little off argument but I hear that council tax will be rising by 3%+, and that even then there will have to be cuts in services. I thought inflation had been nearer 2% for the last neu labour term?
Is it me or is it a blatant attempt to reduce government debts by keeping interest rates low and covering up the real rate of inflation? I only ask because it scares me that the best place to be might well be assets - or at least anywhere but cash.
10. monty said...
The sooner people start to realise the true cost and value of a tertiary education, the better off we all shall be.
Why should my hard earned tax £££s go to subsidise some pimply teenager's four year beer fueled Media Studies degree just to make up Tony's 50% quota? Get the parents to pay for it and just see how many more school kids suddenly want to become nurses, doctors, lawyers, accountants, teachers, engineers and scientists.
Sorry if this means that you'll have to forgo the bi-annual holidays in Spain and Florida and the kids may have to stop jetting off to Ibiza over the summer - gosh they may even have to stay home and get a holiday job! Despite NL's best efforts we still have a phenomenally high standard of living in this country. Expecting the tax payer to educate your children to that level is simply ludicrous.
11. tyrellcorporation said...
I particulalry liked the comment by the Ernst & Young Item Club which urged everyone to take 'target inflation' pay increases this time round. Yep, 2% will be fine, I like getting poorer every year!
A88holes!
12. Lvmreader said...
Did you know that 1979 has exatcly the same dates as 2007.
Jan 23rd 1979 was also a Tuesday!
13. george monsoon said...
Wow the chat is really anti - student.
Just for the record, any decent job advertisment today will always want a high level of education, so the kids are snookered. I am regularly on the interviewing panel when recruiting at my place of work and as a pre-requisite, all applicants must be educated to degree level. That's company policy, and because this seems to be the norm across the board for most places in the UK, school leavers are having to look to study for a degree in "something" just to get to the interview table. A degree in media studies is better than a kick in the teeth in today's job market.
14. Mininidge said...
Monty
"Why should my hard earned tax £££s go to subsidise some pimply teenager's"
Because that pimply teenager will pay your pension (assuming there is still one) when your old and grey. And the trained doctors and nurses will wipe your.....
15. tyrellcorporation said...
I don't think it's anti student at all, in fact quite the opposite. I'm very much anti this governments approach to education - bums on seats and dumbing down.
16. harold said...
Monty, stop ranting.
Anyone can make the asinine argument "Why should my hard earned tax £££s go to subsidise some ..."__________ (fill in the blank, e.g. illegal war, people who have been made redundant, art student, etc.). The benefit of education to society (even one as disparate as ours) is not a simple equation: education = good job. It's more complicated than that. A decent level of education in society can have all sorts of hidden benefits that are not immediately apparent to those educated in the knee-jerk school of Daily Mail politics.
17. Retiredbanker said...
sir google-
Right on the nail. Nothing has changed in this country since I stated work nearly 50 years ago.
When I left school I joined a major UK electrical company in Enfield ( joined with Harry Webb, but he didn't stay very long, and is now
Sir Cliff; lives fairly near me but in a somewhat better house! ). After 5 years training and qualifying as an electronics engineer, I ended
up working in a development/test laboratory. The pay was pitiful ( about half as much as the electricians in the factory were getting, but
they had a strong union ), and it was obvious that even with a promised promotion, things were not going to improve very much.
Job adverts in the New Scientist showed that it was much the same everywhere in the UK, and I had approached Australia House
with a view to emigrating.
However I had recently married, and my wife's family suggested a complete change of career. Her grandfather had been a director of a
well known British bank, and two uncles were senior managers in other banks, another uncle a dental sugeon, her father a Chartered
Accountant, etc,etc.
I could not help but contrast the vastly higher standard of living enjoyed by my wife's family with my own lower middle/working class
background, and did not take much persuading to move into banking, which I have never regretted.
It was a different world; regular upward progression through job related pay-scales, non-contributory pension, mortgage loans fixed
at 2 1/2%, longer holidays, excellent working environment, great social facilities. Even though I was retired early after just over 27 years
with the bank, there was no actuarial reduction to my pension, and I also received a quite reasonable cash pay-off. I feel (almost)guilty for receiving more than the average wage for just keeping breathing.
Like so much of British industry, the electrical company that I used to work for, now hardly exists.
18. sovietuk said...
Once upon a time a few people went to University because the industrial base provided proper training for everybody else. Now that this is not the case young people are expected to load themselves with £30k + of debt prior to starting to work as a good way of hiding them from record numbers of people who are out of work and who want to work. A SCAM AND A FRAUD. .
19. inflation is eating my savings said...
The University I lecture at has recently provided ample evidence for why extra tuition fees are required, and this relates strongly to HPC.
The University (headed by a former head of the NHS....) decided to build several hundred luxury flats for undergraduates and charge them approximately 50% above market value. There was also the deal that the builders were paid directly by independent owners, who stood securely in the knowledge that the University will guarantee their rental income (period unclear). Nor realising that undergraduates (especially undergraduates in decaying Industrial towns) do not want luxury flats, but require only cannabis, sex and a launderette once every month, 55% of the flats are still empty. The university is now commited to paying the money to the landlords. There is now no spare cash for research or anything else for that matter. There will also have to be lay offs, presumably of the useful staff rather than the greasers. The principal (Sir....CBE) is now greasing us with bullshit about the changes being necessary and helping bring in extra research and tuition money. All it is doing is sucking away our research and teaching money.........
20. rich said...
>> The University I lecture at...
What relationship do the landlords have with "Sir... CBE" and how did they manage to get a guaranteed rental income? Surely that man deserves to lose his job over that.
21. tyrellcorporation said...
Former Head of the NHS? His CV would have hit the cylindrical filing cabinet immediately!!! Probably a dead-sack who's worked his way up from Junior Pillow-fluffer in creaking pre-fab hospital outside Hull.
22. monty said...
But harold, I'm only just warming up. Note that I specified tertiary education, not healthcare nor housing for the destitute.
Do you really think that the government should be spending money on useless degrees in order to gain some hidden benefit at a later stage? Just what is the point? Interesting conversation at dinner parties, perhaps? I think that money would be better spent on apprenticeship programmes for plumbers, joiners, builders, electricians and nurses so that we didn't have to rely on stealing skilled people from the third world in order to fulfil our own labour requirements. But it's too late for that, the polys are long gone. Banished in the name of some poncy liberal ideal of an egalitarian education system where simply everyone can have a degree - "because you're worth it". :-)
While we're on the subject of immigration. Is it the arts and political studies majors or the scientists, engineers, accountants and doctors who are headed abroad for a better life? Just who paid for their education and who is reaping the benefit now? The 21st Century reality is that the better your qaulification the more mobile you are. If their parents had paid for it all I wouldn't give a t*ss.
23. enuii said...
I am in the revealing position of just having a post 16 teen and have a circle of friends with older and younger teens. The overriding impression I get is that the government is using higher education to mask real youth unemployment. Most small towns are now running 'uni' courses at their local colleges that kids can enroll on with appaling A-level grades at their own and their parents expense. Perhaps now that there is no slack left in this little NuLabour wheeze and real unemployment is starting to rise is half the reason why there is talk of raising the real school leaving age to 18.
I know I am right but it is unfortunately not PC to criticise somebodies little darling doing a 'token' degree.
24. Northernlad said...
Sir Google -
too true. Engineering is a poor profession here. The UK sucks.
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27. Hyrax said...
My kind of debate. I have worked in R&D around the world, academia and industry, USA, Oceania & UK, Ivy league/Oxbridge. I have had millions in research monies to manage overseas, but never managed a penny of research money in UK.
After my research helped save a $200M/yr division of a US Fortune 200 (5 US Patents) returned to UK after 8 years overseas. Could only secure an academic science job in a new university paying less than 18k. Taught 2nd year undergraduates the equivalent standard of A-level chemistry of 20 years ago. 7 students attended lectures, 23 took the exam..god knows the final pass rate. Last few years involved on management team of a biotech startup, bought out and closed down by a US company for £36 million, production now in USA, UK jobs lost. Still into research: research interviews in the UK last year = zero. Nanotechnology papers published in USA last year at my own expense = 3 (More than Oxford and Cambridge combined). UK doesnt need engineers or scientists as the UK is a 'Service' economy. By which I assume they mean financial juggling or is it now to be a 'Servicing debt' economy? What a shambles, the UK is starting to look like the Devon beaches populated by wreckers. The answer I suppose is to look on the bright side of life... de-dum de-dum.