Current Affairs 2017 General Election

[ToffeeTim]

Yeah and why don't we start making people pay to go to school while we're at it.

All kids go to school. Not all kids are able to go, or suitable for university. I support grammars to take away the idea of paying school fees. But I support adult graduates paying back tuition fees. It's wrong to make kids and their parents pay for something which is essential and compulsory. But it's proper to make adults pay for something that has brought them benefit, once they are in a position to afford it.

Also you don't pay one penny until you've got the benefit of your degree. Not wanting to pay back once you're in a position where you've benefitted with a good wage is weird. It's a hugely regressive policy. Something I'd expect the tories to do. Too much entitlement these days.

Should well paid graduates help fund our universities, or should even more of the burden be put onto hard working taxpayers payers who in the main, didn't get the chance to go? That's the question.

 

[Brennan]

^ a quintessential summation of the penny-wise pound-foolish attitudes that are driving our bleak and stupid future.

yes, obviously everyone should contribute to the cost of their education.

but there's a much smarter way of doing it than saddling new entrants to the workforce during their prime productive years with spiraling interest rates on student debt (to say nothing of the stifling effect this has on consumer spending). this is why, as I said before, we don't also present parents or teenagers upon graduation with the full bill (plus interest) for their primary and secondary education.

just pay your taxes. the state wouldn't have to keep borrowing so much if we didn't keep counter-productively cutting them.

no, not everyone was privileged enough to attend uni, but many more would be if tuition was made affordable again - which, I hope is obvious enough that I don't have to explain again, has a multiplying beneficial effect for everyone, even those who didn't or won't attend.

in an age of relentless global competition and automation, improving the quality and breadth of its inhabitants' education is just about this country's only prayer of a sustainable long-term economic future. it is likely the single most critical factor in any society's prospects of attaining or maintaining future prosperity.

if we can't even recognise the collective value of mass public education anymore, we're utterly sunk.

Your language and argument is utterly disingenuous.

Nobody is "saddled" with the costs of higher education. I pay more back per month as a graduate under the older system than newer graduates, but I do not feel "saddled" by debt at all.

The current system is essentially a graduate tax, which is totally fair.

Anybody who says they're put off going to University by the tuition fees is either misinformed or stupid, or is attending for the wrong reasons.

 

[tsubaki]

I am a recent graduate. I think I should pay back for my education. Not other workers who weren't privileged to go. It's a better way of funding universities than more tax rises and borrowing.

No, it isn't.

If you want graduates to pay for their education then the only fair way of doing it is a graduate tax, which would encompass the considerable numbers of people in the jobs market who got a free education and who (for the next twenty or thirty years at least) compete against those who didn't.

To put it another way - if there was someone with the same job as you, with an equivalent degree as you, with the same take-home pay as you but who happened to go to University in a time when they got free tuition and a maintenance grant, then the burden on them is far less than it is on you. It is demonstrably not fair.

 

[Mrk]

Boris makes a reappearance. It did not go well.

lol oops

She needs to get a grip by the sound of it though.

 

[ToffeeTim]

No, it isn't.

If you want graduates to pay for their education then the only fair way of doing it is a graduate tax, which would encompass the considerable numbers of people in the jobs market who got a free education and who (for the next twenty or thirty years at least) compete against those who didn't.

To put it another way - if there was someone with the same job as you, with an equivalent degree as you, with the same take-home pay as you but who happened to go to University in a time when they got free tuition and a maintenance grant, then the burden on them is far less than it is on you. It is demonstrably not fair.

It is fair. Just because others got preferential treatment in the past doesn't mean it's unfair on me. Things need to change. Things need properly funded. The culture of give nothing back and get everything for free isn't sustainable nor is it fair.

Also the current system is a graduate tax in all but name. It's only not fair if you believe in a society where the government owes you everything and you owe it nothing.

 

[Brennan]

I don't understand how asking every taxpayer to fund the elective studies of the few is fairer than asking those who receive that education to fund it directly.

 

[DualityNSNO]

I don't understand how asking every taxpayer to fund the elective studies of the few is fairer than asking those who receive that education to fund it directly.

A mixture of both would be the ideal though, no?

You actually have both situations now - UK with tax, US with students being in debt until they die. A middle ground might be a decent solution?

But what do I know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Bruce Wayne]

I don't understand how asking every taxpayer to fund the elective studies of the few is fairer than asking those who receive that education to fund it directly.

Especially as its espoused by supporters of a party whose very motto is about looking out for the many, not the few.

 

[Seanjd]

@abelard very well said with your recent tuition fee comments. I couldn't agree more that graduates benefit society so much, that their tuition pays for itself.

 

[zzr45]

I couldn't agree more that graduates benefit society so much, that their tuition pays for itself.

I'd massively disagree there. We already have a system that is pumping out too many graduates to the point where a degree is essentially worthless. Furthermore, the actual degree itself is becoming more and more meaningless. What we need are young people who can contribute meaningfully, whether that be as Doctors, Engineers, Programmers or Plumbers, Electrians and Builders. What we don't need is a surplus of Baristas with English Literature degrees.

 

[Brennan]

@abelard very well said with your recent tuition fee comments. I couldn't agree more that graduates benefit society so much, that their tuition pays for itself.

There are a huge number of graduates who end up doing a job that has nothing to do with their degree. It's absurd to ask the taxpayer to fund their three year drinking session.

 

[Seanjd]

There are a huge number of graduates who end up doing a job that has nothing to do with their degree. It's absurd to ask the taxpayer to fund their three year drinking session.

I think, at least, the government should be providing substantial grants for those from poorer backgrounds.

 

[Bruce Wayne]

I think, at least, the government should be providing substantial grants for those from poorer backgrounds.

More students from poor background have gone to university since fees were introduced than ever before though?

 

[roydo]

I think, at least, the government should be providing substantial grants for those from poorer backgrounds.

They already sort of do. Its not like student loans/tuition fees act like a dead weight of debt around their necks, but they do enable anyone from any background to go to university.

My lad went, and the general feeling I get from him and his mates re the "debt", is a massive Meh.

 

[ToffeeTim]

I think, at least, the government should be providing substantial grants for those from poorer backgrounds.

They do. You get a grant, not repayable. It's more per year than the loan others get.