Student Fees Increases

[font=Verdana][color=green]In posting this topic, I am well aware that this will effect a small minority of people on these forums, and not many people might not be aware of what this is concerning.

So, for those who don't know what I'm talking about, I will provide a brief summary of the facts. Basically, for many years now, the price of tuition in the United Kingdom -for British students- has been hovering around the £3000 mark. Compare that with international students studying in the UK - £20000 - you'll soon realise that there is an inconsistency. Where does the extra £17000 disappear? Answer; the Government pays for it.

As such, the current Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition Government has decided enough is enough. They proposed to increase the cap of student fees to an astounding £9000. This met fierce opposition from students. Naturally, trebling of the fees is too much too fast in many people's opinion. Indeed; many people fear that this drastic increase will lead to a further fractured society.

However, this does have it's positives. It will certainly fill up the Government's money pot. Also, it will help curtail "Mickey Mouse" courses which have always been met with much criticism. Of course, it goes unsaid that it would certainly make students value their course a lot more; as such quality of students should increase.

I, for one, both support and oppose the rise. I support it as, doing a Law course, feel that other courses are much weaker degrees than mine. Also, it is important to cut back Government spending. However, the rise is simply too drastic too soon. If it was done gradually i.e. over 2-3 years, then it would be a lot better.

What do you think about this highly debated subject? Please feel free to say whatever you wish.

Can't say much, didn't research the topic into a whole lot of detail. I heard about the protests, pretty crazy stuff going on there.

I do agree that tripling the tuition fee was indeed too sudden and drastic for the UK society to handle. However, most students are protesting out of self-interest, not thinking about how the tuition rise will affect society as a whole.

Yes, it would've been smarter for the government to slowly, but consistently put small increases on tuition rather than this gigantic thing. I wonder if they had a legit reason to do it. I mean...the people who proposed this really would have seen these protests coming. Perhaps they never thought the reaction would be so intense.

Now, is it good or bad for the country? I can't say. Something I would have to look more into.

Oh...and you must really love this forum. Your number of posts jumps like crazy. :P

I'm sufferring the full impact of this and i'm not happy.
My dad is willing to pay luckily, but it still all depends on what the university itself is charging. As it stands, chichester university is still around £3k-£3.5k

I'm not sure if it will make students "value more" their courses.

And just because something is expensive, it doesn't mean it will be high-quality.
More like only rich (or specifically, the rich-as-fuck) will be able to afford higher education...unless, of course, someone likes to pay off the loans for rest of their live.

Although, it's not impossible for people now to put more effort to get into scholarships.

Well either way, I now know where not to study for certain, at least.

Yeah, I've seen a lot of the protests. To be honest I don't really have an opinion. It's hard to give an opinion on something you aren't directly affected by. Sure I could give an opinion in one fashion or another, but I don't have the whole picture. I know what the students think, but I don't have all the reasons why the government believes this is a necessary course of action.

Ironically it would be one of the easier things to formulate a solid view on. I hate talking about events that directly affect me because no matter how non-biased or judgmental you try to be, or act as though you are not, your opinions are being swayed by personal feelings. That's not bad, but it's not good either. It's necessary to have both subjective and objective feelings when looking at a situation. That's why it's often easier to be a third-party looking in, they can be subjective based on how they would feel if it were occurring to them, and hopefully able to look at it objectively as a person of a neutral party.

Here are two of the big problems. People are angry because the money is going to replace funding that these universities will no longer be getting. Students are having to pay a disproportionate amount to repair the damage of bad banking. The second problem is that despite already having some of the highest fees for students from overseas, they are also going up, when countries like Wales and Scotland are not only maintaining free or cheap higher education for their own residents, but are also granting it to these groups (the cost is made up in raising them massively for the English).

I have no doubt that something needed to be done, and it should be considered that fees will hardly be tripling everywhere - it works out as an increase in fees for 75% and a decrease for the other quarter - and poorer students will get plenty of help and won't have to pay it back until they earn a reasonable amount. Nonetheless, the prospect of paying back that much over decades is a huge spectre looming over you upon leaving university.

The issue is that the scale of current cuts is (arguably) unnecessary. The current government is following a slash and burn policy, whereby every department is being stripped to the bare bones in order to induce economic recovery ASAP. This is as opposed to the previous government's plans for steady cuts and investment to spur growth, which naturally seems the preferable option, whether it would have worked or not. Young people also naturally dislike the Conservative Party, and most pressingly, the leader of the minority coalition party the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, promised that they wouldn't raise tuition fees pre-election but has done it anyway, showing vociferous support along the way. It's the lies of the young people's party that have pushed many into action.

Wow, that Is a sudden increase!

I have the same problem where I live. When I first started, the tuition was $1,500 a semester ($3,000 a year), something I could afford. It is now my 3rd year at the same University and the tuition is now $2,443 (Almost $5,000 a year). The university is now going to raise the tuition by 5% (that's another $105 for full time students). This doesn't even cover the costs of Books and Supplies. Although that ranges from $50 to $300, it still a big chunk. I'm not even mentioning the other increases around the different Colleges and Universities where I live.

Some of the Universities are even thinking of becoming private, meaning that tuition will be sky high.

And the fee increase is not helping the number of courses we have. Classes are getting larger, with rooms becoming crowded, while the quality suffers because of budget cuts. Students don't value their education, but now demand better grades because of how much they are paying and the lack of quality in the course. Not sure if that counts as students realizing the value of their education or not.

I agree that the tuition increase because the quantity and quality still needs to be up to par with the past, but it seems that the burden is being put on the students (and the professors who now have to cut out and edit their way of teaching because of time/budget restrictions while taking pay cuts).

A buddy of mine was talking about how the president of the University, as well as his advisers make huge amounts of money, but refuse to take a pay cut themselves, only giving the pay cuts to the rest of the employees. Some even lost their jobs, or looked elsewhere because of the lack of opportunity.

I think the only positive I can take from the Fees Increase is that I now can get the Government to help pay my tuition, but it is sad to see that the acceptance rates are lowered, while some students drop out because they can't pay the tuition.

Move to Finland, solve all your studying problems.
Schools are free here, in fact YOU get money if you attend to them.
Oh and ofcourse we have free meals aswell.

Isn't there immigrant laws or something?
And wouldn't I have to learn Finnish?

I think that like 8-10% of all people living in Finland are immigrants.
And probably less than half of them attend to any kind of schools.
But that's probably because if you are an immigrant in Finland, you can basically live on welfare better than people who work.
"It's a jackpot to live in Finland as an immigrant." goes the saying around here.
Not to mention the immigrants who do work, Turkish pizzerias. As an immigrant you do not have to pay any taxes as far as I know (I'm not sure about this), and that's most likely why all the Turkish people making pizzas drive around in expensive cars and have a shitload of money.

And I'm pretty sure there's alot of schools here for people who speak only English, people who speak only Russian, Swedish, etc.

Edit: I'm not 100% sure about any of this since I'm too lazy to browse teh internets, but I'm atleast 70% sure.

Edit 2: Oh and I have no idea about how it's like to be an exchange student in Finland, but who knows, that might be free aswell.

[font=Verdana][color=green]Well, I know sure as hell if I had to pay £9000 a year for my course, I would make sure I get the best damned degree I could possibly get. Not that I'm not doing that at the moment, but I do learn to relax every once in a while.

I never said that the quality would go up with the price raise. However, if less people go to University, there will be more time for you to have interaction with your tutor, less people taking the books you want from the library and a higher proportion of people who really value education.



[font=Verdana][color=green]Paraphrased.

Very well put. I agree with you entirely on the first paragraph.

I, however, believe what they are doing is necessary. Unlike what you said, I'm a Young Person who supports the Conservative Party, as such have always thought that Government spending has been way to high. It is due to this frivolity that we are in this situation now. Of course, the banks are to blame ultimately, but it can't be ignored that we had no rainy-day fund.

Nick Clegg is such a joke. Absolutely no-one had heard of him before he got to be leader of the Lib Dems; and ever since the General Elections he's been a political metronome.

It's free in sweden to be an exchange student and when asking them why they chose to come to sweden a lot of them give that reason. They're thinking of changing it tho.

Considering that my education won't reward me with a well payed job I'd probably drop out if they added student fees.

Ps. I want free meals to :s

every College students dream.

Sorry, I'm well aware that it was a generalisation, but in the same way that most young people in America would be categorised as liberal and supporting the Democrats. I agree that government spending has been too high - and like the deregulation of banks, both parties were equally to blame - but I don't personally agree with the 'hard and fast' approach. A bit of a moot argument seeing as it's all theory. :p

[font=Verdana][color=green]Well, we're going to have to agree to disagree on this point. We're each entitled to our own opinions; personal and political, and I won't think bad of you for it. In fact, I envy your morality =P.

Just one point; it's called a "moot point". A moot is an argument, so a "moot argument" could either be an "argument argument" or a "moot moot" =P Not that a "moot moot" doesn't sound awesome B)

That is certainly true, but it's not a "unanimous" truth. There will be some people try harder, but some won't.

It's something of a double-edged sword really.

And people can be really creative when it comes to wasting time.

I do admit that rises where sort of necessary evil - every barrel has it's bottom; but I do also think they were done too fast. Many more people have gone to the universities currently than in other decades, and English boarding/private schools encourage their students (mostly foreigners) to come to England to study.

So you have all those people coming to England to study, and then suddenly they get a three time fee increase slammed into their faces. To put it gently, that's not nice.

What about the people who will have to drop out? Has anyone given a thought on what to do with them? Not all of them are just lazying around, some want to genuinely study hard. And not every will be able to take a loan either.

[font=Verdana][color=green]Paraphrased.

One thing you've seem to innocently misunderstood; this Act will not affect international students. They will stay pay more than British Student, but they won't be tripled to £60,000. Which is very fair.

Another thing you've misunderstood is that the fees rise won't affect students currently in University. We made a contract with the Universities to pay roughly £3000, subject to inflation. They can't change the prices for us; hence people won't drop out due to that reason. However, a different fabric is weaved for other students.

Moot stipulates something which is inherently questionable or open to debate. 'Moot point' isn't the only turn of phrase to which it can be applied, and I don't believe that I'm wrong there, but I might have worded it better. Anyway, carry on.

@SamRavster
Thanks for clearing that up then.

Although, I was pretty certain that people from EU had to pay around same as native English, with non-EU (Russians, Americans etc.) having to pay much more. But I digress.

I wonder if it will mean a new program of stricter scholarships for those gifted, but without the money to sign up.

Seeing as economy is still shaky (Eurozone in particular), I do wonder if all sponsors will be willing to adjust to new prices...I guess, only time will tell.

Just out of curiosity though, if this doesn't affect students being currently in universities, only new ones, than why is everyone protesting so much? I would understand high school students getting mad, but those already attending?

Unless, I'm still missing something. Or news are missing out here.

[font=Verdana][color=green]Thanks to your first sentence, I've got something else to burn with rage at. I just double-checked my self, then I saw this absolute joke of a fact; EU students will pay LESS than English students! Absolute joke. My opinions on the EU are for another day too; one sentence - crappiest system of unelected bastards ever.

Well, that is a good question regarding sponsors. Of course, the obvious answer would be "Oh, with all the money they get extra from Uni fees, they'll be more than happy to pay out some scholarships!". However, that would be very naive and doesn't consider the fact that the extra money they get from the students is only replacing money that they would've got anyway from the Government.

Why did people protest? Well, it'll be under the label of "It's only fair to the new students" or "Right to Education!", but to be honest it's just an excuse to be arseholes. I didn't see the point in protesting.

To doswillrule; again we'll have to agree to disagree. =P