First of all, I would like to express my sincerest apologies for this departure from the fantastical world that is usually inhabited by my blog. This is not a half-hearted piece of fiction, nor is it a Vogon-worthy piece of bad poetry. Np, dear readers, I am about to set foot into the murky, dangerous depths of current politics, may God have mercy on my soul. I am fairly certain that I'm not prepared for the angst and argument that this sort of subject stirs up, but since my readership is fairly limited, I'm going to risk it anyway. Take a deep breath, then. Here comes the serious bit.
My topic of choice today is the palava about student tuition fees. Now, I wouldn't normally get into anything this controversial, apart from some House of Lords-type mumbling (Here Here! muttermutter what he said). But what with the protests, and with the memory of my student days still fresh, I feel like I have a lot to say and a lot to ask.
First on my list is this. What the hell good is a university education if we can't find a better way to protest than marching on Parliment? The only reason the protests have been in the news so much is becuse of the violence, and while some people have been saying that's a good thing (not the violence, per se, but the publicity it brings), people have been hurt, and no argument over any amount of money can ever justify that. Now, I'm not exactly putting forward sugestions myself - an archaeology degree hasn't really prepared me for a life of bullying the government - but surely someone out there is a bit more bureaucratically-savvy. Surely someone can find a way to take our message to the right people in a way that will make them take notice. I may be showing a deep level of ignorance here, but has there ever been a protest march that has worked? it didn't work for the anti-war protestors, it didn't work for the miners back under Thatcher, why should it work now?
My second point - more of a question really - is what extra services will students receive for their money? I've heard a lot of stories about lecturers too busy for any one-on-one time with students, exams that are practically identical year after year, and central university services which do everything except help their students. That doesn't sound like it's worth £6000+ a year. And since universities are just money-hungry businesses, what is there to stop them charging the full £9000 to everyone, for the same half-hearted service?
I should mention at this point that I went to a pretty good university. Well, a very good department in a bit of a crappy university. The archaeology department wasn't very big, as departments go, and it was clear that the university didn't really want us there. But the staff always did everything they could to help, and the support staff - receptionists and stuff - were great. They were worth the £1000-odd I was paying a year at undergrad, and they were worth the £3000-odd I was paying as a postgrad. I'm not sure the department will be able to provide a good enough service to justify £6000-£9000 though, and I'm certain the university itself won't.
On to my third point - employment after university. These fee rises seem to be based around the fact that, as university graduates, we will be earning significantly more than non-university graduates once we finish our studies. I'm sure there are a lot of subjects where people will be earning more but, since this blog is from my perspective, I'd like to point out that archaeology isn't one of them. So here is the scenario: student goes to university, obtains an archaeology degree (which is pretty much essential to get a digging job, despite the fact that graduates have little to no experience of digging upon leaving uni. But that's another rant for another day). Student works as a digger for four to five years, is promoted to a superviser, and a few years after that, is promoted to a Project Officer. With salaries as they are (and with little chance of them changing if the commercial archaeology world stays as it is) our student is now just about at the level to start paying their student loan back, approximately a decade into their working life, assuming they went straight into work and have had no periods of unemployment.
This next bit might get a bit heavy, so please try to bear with me.
According to this (http://stephengilbert.org.uk/pages/tuition-fees.html) page, repayments will be in the form of 9% of your salary over £21,000. According to Mr Stephen Gilbert, monthly repayments will be lower than we're paying now (his example shows £7 per month instead of £45). However, once you reach that magical repayment barrier (be it the £15,000 we have now, or the £21,000 it's changing to) they start charging interest on your loan. For the three months I was repaying my loan, I payed £25 a month, and was being charged £50 a month in interest. An online repayment calculator told me I would never pay my loan back in my lifetime.
The 'average' starting salary for graduates in 2008, according to the Prospects website (http://ww2.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Main_menu___Research/Labour_market_information/Labour_market_FAQs/What_is_the_average_graduate_starting_salary_/p!epmglcg) was £24,048. This, of course, doesn't reflect the truth of the matter, since the information was taken from the Association of Graduate Recruiters, and probably doesn't include students who go simply cling onto whatever bar/supermarket/cleaning jobs they had through their studies. It might not even include archaeologists, although, lets face it, they won't make up that much of the population. According to a survey of university leavers, those people who responded, and who were in full time work, earned an average of £19,677 (again, a result which is informative, but probably also completely useless). Assuming that the lower figure is more accurate than the higher, then a graduate has a number of years of work before reaching a level where they begin to earn enough to pay back their loan. After that, they pay a small amount each month, while the interest they're suddenly earning probably increases their debt by more than they're decreasing it, and 30 years later, the debt is wiped away. Using the example above, and assuming it took the student 10 years to reach the £21,000 barrier, they would pay back an average of £7 a month, which makes £2,520 over the 20 years.
Now is it just me, or does £2,520 sound pretty reasonable for three years of higher education?
I don't see how, exactly, the government is going to benefit from these changes. Sure, there will be plenty of graduates who start on an uber-high salary and pay the whole lot off before they're 40. But considering the level of tuition fees (anywhere between £18,000 and £27,000 for a three year course, and probably closer to the higher end) plus the maintenance loans, surely the average graduate will never pay the loan back. They say they're cutting government support for universities, but doesn't this system mean they'll be paying just as much to each university, but via a different route?
I think, in conclusion, that I'm not sure what to think. For me, these changes are probably for the good - it'll be years before I find myself earning enough to pay my loan back, and when I do, I won't be paying very much. For those students starting university in 2012, I think a lot is going to depend on the subject they're studying, and what they're planning on doing with their lives. Heading into low paying careers, including archaeology, will probably be okay as long as people think about the realities of their finances. £6000 a year might put a lot of people off going to university, but if you don't pay it up front, and only pay back a fraction of it during your working life, I'd say you're probably better off than you would be under the current system. Heading into high paying careers will probably be okay too, since you'll still be earning a lot, even with repayments. I think it might be the careers in the middle that suffer the most from this. Still, I never was much good at predicting the future, so we'll see. All in all, I think we'll be okay. That is, until they change the rules again, or some smart arse decides to privatise the loans and we all go bankrupt.
On that cheery note, I'll sign off. Although I will just say this - at the start of this blog, I was quite adamantly against this rise in fees. Now, I'm not so sure. It hasn't even taken that much research to bring about this change of mind. What I am against, however, is the fact that the government is appearing to place the burden of financing a university on the students shoulders. Students 'pay' the fees, and the governments writes off any debt that isn't paid off in 30 years. All its doing is delaying the inevitable. In 30 years, the government will pay for all the tuition fees that haven't been paid back, all the education that the graduates haven't earned enough to pay for themselves. In 30 years, we might have problems. But today, apart from the protests, I think we're actually okay.
The end (thank goodness). Feel free to pick holes. Just be nice about it :)
My topic of choice today is the palava about student tuition fees. Now, I wouldn't normally get into anything this controversial, apart from some House of Lords-type mumbling (Here Here! muttermutter what he said). But what with the protests, and with the memory of my student days still fresh, I feel like I have a lot to say and a lot to ask.
First on my list is this. What the hell good is a university education if we can't find a better way to protest than marching on Parliment? The only reason the protests have been in the news so much is becuse of the violence, and while some people have been saying that's a good thing (not the violence, per se, but the publicity it brings), people have been hurt, and no argument over any amount of money can ever justify that. Now, I'm not exactly putting forward sugestions myself - an archaeology degree hasn't really prepared me for a life of bullying the government - but surely someone out there is a bit more bureaucratically-savvy. Surely someone can find a way to take our message to the right people in a way that will make them take notice. I may be showing a deep level of ignorance here, but has there ever been a protest march that has worked? it didn't work for the anti-war protestors, it didn't work for the miners back under Thatcher, why should it work now?
My second point - more of a question really - is what extra services will students receive for their money? I've heard a lot of stories about lecturers too busy for any one-on-one time with students, exams that are practically identical year after year, and central university services which do everything except help their students. That doesn't sound like it's worth £6000+ a year. And since universities are just money-hungry businesses, what is there to stop them charging the full £9000 to everyone, for the same half-hearted service?
I should mention at this point that I went to a pretty good university. Well, a very good department in a bit of a crappy university. The archaeology department wasn't very big, as departments go, and it was clear that the university didn't really want us there. But the staff always did everything they could to help, and the support staff - receptionists and stuff - were great. They were worth the £1000-odd I was paying a year at undergrad, and they were worth the £3000-odd I was paying as a postgrad. I'm not sure the department will be able to provide a good enough service to justify £6000-£9000 though, and I'm certain the university itself won't.
On to my third point - employment after university. These fee rises seem to be based around the fact that, as university graduates, we will be earning significantly more than non-university graduates once we finish our studies. I'm sure there are a lot of subjects where people will be earning more but, since this blog is from my perspective, I'd like to point out that archaeology isn't one of them. So here is the scenario: student goes to university, obtains an archaeology degree (which is pretty much essential to get a digging job, despite the fact that graduates have little to no experience of digging upon leaving uni. But that's another rant for another day). Student works as a digger for four to five years, is promoted to a superviser, and a few years after that, is promoted to a Project Officer. With salaries as they are (and with little chance of them changing if the commercial archaeology world stays as it is) our student is now just about at the level to start paying their student loan back, approximately a decade into their working life, assuming they went straight into work and have had no periods of unemployment.
This next bit might get a bit heavy, so please try to bear with me.
According to this (http://stephengilbert.org.uk/pages/tuition-fees.html) page, repayments will be in the form of 9% of your salary over £21,000. According to Mr Stephen Gilbert, monthly repayments will be lower than we're paying now (his example shows £7 per month instead of £45). However, once you reach that magical repayment barrier (be it the £15,000 we have now, or the £21,000 it's changing to) they start charging interest on your loan. For the three months I was repaying my loan, I payed £25 a month, and was being charged £50 a month in interest. An online repayment calculator told me I would never pay my loan back in my lifetime.
The 'average' starting salary for graduates in 2008, according to the Prospects website (http://ww2.prospects.ac.uk/cms/ShowPage/Home_page/Main_menu___Research/Labour_market_information/Labour_market_FAQs/What_is_the_average_graduate_starting_salary_/p!epmglcg) was £24,048. This, of course, doesn't reflect the truth of the matter, since the information was taken from the Association of Graduate Recruiters, and probably doesn't include students who go simply cling onto whatever bar/supermarket/cleaning jobs they had through their studies. It might not even include archaeologists, although, lets face it, they won't make up that much of the population. According to a survey of university leavers, those people who responded, and who were in full time work, earned an average of £19,677 (again, a result which is informative, but probably also completely useless). Assuming that the lower figure is more accurate than the higher, then a graduate has a number of years of work before reaching a level where they begin to earn enough to pay back their loan. After that, they pay a small amount each month, while the interest they're suddenly earning probably increases their debt by more than they're decreasing it, and 30 years later, the debt is wiped away. Using the example above, and assuming it took the student 10 years to reach the £21,000 barrier, they would pay back an average of £7 a month, which makes £2,520 over the 20 years.
Now is it just me, or does £2,520 sound pretty reasonable for three years of higher education?
I don't see how, exactly, the government is going to benefit from these changes. Sure, there will be plenty of graduates who start on an uber-high salary and pay the whole lot off before they're 40. But considering the level of tuition fees (anywhere between £18,000 and £27,000 for a three year course, and probably closer to the higher end) plus the maintenance loans, surely the average graduate will never pay the loan back. They say they're cutting government support for universities, but doesn't this system mean they'll be paying just as much to each university, but via a different route?
I think, in conclusion, that I'm not sure what to think. For me, these changes are probably for the good - it'll be years before I find myself earning enough to pay my loan back, and when I do, I won't be paying very much. For those students starting university in 2012, I think a lot is going to depend on the subject they're studying, and what they're planning on doing with their lives. Heading into low paying careers, including archaeology, will probably be okay as long as people think about the realities of their finances. £6000 a year might put a lot of people off going to university, but if you don't pay it up front, and only pay back a fraction of it during your working life, I'd say you're probably better off than you would be under the current system. Heading into high paying careers will probably be okay too, since you'll still be earning a lot, even with repayments. I think it might be the careers in the middle that suffer the most from this. Still, I never was much good at predicting the future, so we'll see. All in all, I think we'll be okay. That is, until they change the rules again, or some smart arse decides to privatise the loans and we all go bankrupt.
On that cheery note, I'll sign off. Although I will just say this - at the start of this blog, I was quite adamantly against this rise in fees. Now, I'm not so sure. It hasn't even taken that much research to bring about this change of mind. What I am against, however, is the fact that the government is appearing to place the burden of financing a university on the students shoulders. Students 'pay' the fees, and the governments writes off any debt that isn't paid off in 30 years. All its doing is delaying the inevitable. In 30 years, the government will pay for all the tuition fees that haven't been paid back, all the education that the graduates haven't earned enough to pay for themselves. In 30 years, we might have problems. But today, apart from the protests, I think we're actually okay.
The end (thank goodness). Feel free to pick holes. Just be nice about it :)
Comments
Second, I think the reason they're loaning the money to students rather than giving it to unis is a simple accounting fiddle - it counts as an asset, rather than a liability if you just fund the unis. From what I've heard they've massively overestimated the amount that they'll get in repayments, and that's been cut further by the concessions they had to make to get the bill passed, so they can claim they're cutting the deficit when actually they're spending the same amount.
Thirdly, fees for postgrads are likely to go up, a lot (according to Cathy, and she's amazing). Partly because it makes no sense for PG courses to cost less than UG ones, partly because they're cutting the number of student visas issued so it'll be harder for unis to subsidise us with international fees.
Fourthly, poorer students will be put off from going to uni. If you're not sure if HE is for you, then even the living costs are a massive financial commitment. Having your fees covered is great, but the bursaries available tend to be small, and the eligibility criteria often rather arbitrary. I could talk more about access to HE if you're interested.
Fifthly, and last, I promise, the services provided are likely to get a fair bit worse. The fee increase is to make up for an 80% cut to the HE teaching budget. That means less contact time or massive fees. A lot of teaching will probably be farmed out to PhD students as well, like in the US. But that's possibly the only way we'll be able to maintain PG student numbers, since the STEM research councils have been promised a frozen budget (yay?) and the AHRC is likely to see hefty cuts.
Bear in mind, when you see how much university costs, that it's a public system. We currently have some of the best universities in the world, paid for through the taxes our parents paid. The funding system has changed every couple of years since 1997 though, so the unis no longer have the stability they used to.
Second, I think the reason they're loaning the money to students rather than giving it to unis is a simple accounting fiddle - it counts as an asset, rather than a liability if you just fund the unis. From what I've heard they've massively overestimated the amount that they'll get in repayments, and that's been cut further by the concessions they had to make to get the bill passed, so they can claim they're cutting the deficit when actually they're spending the same amount.
Thirdly, fees for postgrads are likely to go up, a lot (according to Cathy, and she's amazing). Partly because it makes no sense for PG courses to cost less than UG ones, partly because they're cutting the number of student visas issued so it'll be harder for unis to subsidise us with international fees.
Fifthly, and last, I promise, the services provided are likely to get a fair bit worse. The fee increase is to make up for an 80% cut to the HE teaching budget. That means less contact time or massive fees. A lot of teaching will probably be farmed out to PhD students as well, like in the US. But that's possibly the only way we'll be able to maintain PG student numbers, since the STEM research councils have been promised a frozen budget (yay?) and the AHRC is likely to see hefty cuts.
Bear in mind, when you see how much university costs, that it's a public system. We currently have some of the best universities in the world, paid for through the taxes our parents paid. The funding system has changed every couple of years since 1997 though, so the unis no longer have the stability they used to.
As far as cutting the deficit is concerned, I read something today that said it was actually worsening the deficit, but because of the way they're handling it, that particular bit of debt isn't being factored into the deficit calculations, and so 'doesn't count'. Fiddling indeed.
The IFS have estimated that just under half of all students won't pay off all of their debt if they pay fees of £6000 (or just over half with fees of £9000). That's an enormous amount of money that the government is having to pay for itself, albeit in 30 years or so.
The impact on postgrad courses is something I hadn't considered, but I guess they are going to be put up in line with undergrad fees. I don't know about other courses, but there weren't many of us that were self funded, so I guess the main impact is going to be the numbers of grants issued to students. Whatever, it's still going to mean fewer people going on to postgrad education. Maybe the job market is looking up for us :)
I guess it was a bit optimistic, but I'm an optimistic sort of person. But I don't think it's as bad as people are making out, at least not for the undergraduates. The country will be screwed in 30 years, but by then I hope to be living in my completely self-sufficient brock, and I won't have to deal with it. ;)