| Product: |
Higher Education - Free for all or Fee for all? |
| Date: |
20/10/01 (54 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: More money for the Government
Disadvantages: Less money for us
Prompted by an invoice delivered through my letterbox this morning I have decided to give the dooyoo community the benefit of my views on Higher Education Fees. I shall try to be succinct and to the point:
1) The universities need funding, they are lagging behind other European countries in their development and what was the nation with arguably the best universities in the world is in danger of becoming a second rate provider.
2) The Government can’t afford to fund universities because they have other priorities, mainly tax reductions and certainly not the National Health Service, Education in general or PublicTransport.
3) They have therefore introduced student loans and tuition fees to bridge that gap.
4) This has the effect of reducing the appeal of universities to students whose parents aren’t rich enough to subsidise their education and who are afraid of leaving university with a huge (£12,000+) debt.
5) Alternatively the students will spend much of their university life working to make ends meet to the detriment of their studies and possibly their eventual degree.
6) The situation is made worse by the Government’s apparent wish that everyone should go to university.
7) To do this, and because the universities need the students and hence the funding, the grades required to enter university are lowered, or to put it back a stage, the number of students getting top grades at A level are increased.
8) Because university funding is broadly based on the number of students they have universities are competing for entrants and like any other businesses they have to use all sorts of tactics to attract students. Such tactics include making degrees easier to get and providing degree courses in subjects which may be novel and interesting but not necessarily of much practical use when applying for a job.
9) The Government, in order to encourage access to university is crea
ting universities all over the country by upgrading technical colleges to university status.
10) Students will be attracted to these because they can study and still live at home, thus significantly reducing living costs and the associated debt – this will be detrimental as one of the main benefits of going to university is to learn to cope for yourself.
11) The result of increased access and more and more universities is that soon everyone will need a degree to do even menial jobs.
12) The policies are working against one another – as more people get degrees from colleges with falling standards, the salaries paid to graduates will fall which means that they will find it more and more difficult to pay back the enormous debt they have been saddled with to get to university in the first place.
13) One last point - How come the Scottish parliament has abolished fees – good luck to the Scottish students but this seems grossly unfair to me when we are all paying the same taxes.
MY SOLUTION
Firstly let me acknowledge that the Government knows its got its sums wrong which is why it is talking about replacing loans and fees with a graduate tax – but does anyone believe that will be any better?
A) Forget this preoccupation with sending everyone to university – restrict it to students who want to go rather than have to go, and who are capable of doing the work.
B) Restrict the number of universities and give them more generous funding. If, as with the NHS, Education in general and Transport this requires us to pay more tax so be it. All the tax concessions over the last few years haven’t exactly changed my lifestyle substantially.
C) Significantly reduce the fees and accommodation charges, - don’t get rid of them altogether but eliminate the need to go into debt. Inexpensive access to all should be the criteria.
D) Introduce more vocational
opportunities – you didn’t used to have to go to university to become an accountant, surveyor, lawyer or architect – why should you now.
E) Develop the technical colleges into vocational study centers for professions and trades rather than the goal of university status – there is a genuine need for people to train for all sorts of jobs. Get the employers to contribute, its them who will gain the benefit.
You may feel this is a reactionary point of view or just sour grapes because I’m having to pay my son’s £1,000 tuition fees. To an extent you may be right, but I genuinely believe that the Government should have a much more broad based strategy for higher education with far more emphasis put on vocational studies or on the job training alongside inexpensive access to university. This would increase opportunity for all rather than create a nation with a plethora of people with degrees.
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