Don't think you're right. I think maintenance grants have been scrapped and now it's just loans, and if you come from a poorer family you can apply for a bigger loan and wait to be accepted for it. Everyone can get the (roughly) £4k loan and some can apply for an extra 3 and a half thousand to bring it up to 7.5k. That's why I think they should be scrapped, it's unfair if students have to get themselves in more debt just because their family is poorer than others.
Ah, you are correct, apologies to Sean - hadn't registered with me that it had changed, even looking it up on the government website it's very confusing. I'd still say the system balances out in that students with wealthier parents have to have that money to hand right away which puts more pressure on those households in the short term. As some have already said that longer tail of debt is unlikely to get paid and if getting a degree is that important then it should be worth it.
People have mentioned on these last few pages that degrees have become worthless. Isn't it possible that getting rid of tuition fees will actually make degrees have more meaning? Universities could reduce available spaces per course and therefore make it more competitive to students applying. Just a thought
Herein lies the problem. Scrapping tuition fees is being done in the name of making HE more accessible to lower income families, but if Universities need to limit space then arguably it should be done on a merit basis based on academic merit. That raises the point people have made on here about wealthier families being able to afford private tuition to coach kids through any tests they need to take. It becomes a messy situation wherein to guarantee that lower income kids are getting in that a quota system needs to be enabled (VAST generalization I know that lower income kids wouldn't get in on academic merit, but furthers the earlier argument about private tuition.) and that then means the best aren't actually getting in.
But, its not the student numbers that are the problem per say. Societal attitudes are the reason that Universities are becoming increasingly redundant. Firstly, it's almost expected that a Student should go through university and get a degree like some kind of participation award. Students believe that the are owed a degree for going through the process and act accordingly. What's made worse is that everything depends on the daft Student Satisfaction Forms that get filled in each year which affects stuff like funding etc.
So basically, to keep students happy courses are getting far easier and more less academically challenging courses are being offered. That means the end results are worthless. As an example of when I was lecturing was that a student complained that I'd given them a lower grade (about 54%) and felt they deserved higher (they really didn't.) But they complained to a student support officer, who then went to my higher up who brought me in for a chat. Despite the fact we both sat and looked at the paper and agreed it was probably at the right level the conversation basically turned to 'Well, this could be something that crops up if they are unhappy, so we will give them what they want to keep them happy.' So, we basically gave a student something they didn't deserve and that's a situation that became far too common.
So, the current state of universities aren't based around developing excellence, they are there to keep everyone happy. Without a shift to seeing the award of a Degree as a reward, not as a right, it'll continue to be a turgid system.
