Higher Education - Free for all or Fee for all? Reviews

I count myself as lucky as I was in the last wave of students who recieved a grant and a loan that I understand comes with less onerous pay back provisions than the current loan scheme. Still whilst at university I felt like a pauper in comparison with everyone who received 'money from daddy' every month. I found myself having ...

The abolition of the student grant and the introduction of the fees systembased on parental mans testing was the most savage and ill thought out act by this Labour government. The obvious solution was a graduate tax. However, Malcolm Wicks, and education minister, last week suggested that students got into debt because they had ...

Fancy a bespoke suit for £30? It's a one-off, tailored exactly to your requirements. Select the material, and it'll be ready tomorrow, sir. How about a five bedroom house, with a maid and gardener? Of course, they don't live in. After all, I'm just a single parent, so things are a bit tight. Who are these ...

Education is an investment that govenments make on the basis that they will a get a return on this investment via taxes etc. Now education should be free for all up to a certain age. Up to A-levels is perhaps reasonable. A degree is completely different. This should be self funded. Obviously provisions need to be made for those that ...

Let’s not beat about the bush here,University has always been a middle class right of passage and now with the “New Universities” are becoming middle class finishing schools and financially geared towards those social groups. If you don’t have a parental contribution the chance of studying away from home to get the full ...

As a student I think the Further Education system has become harder and harder. Not only have you to gain top grades to gain entry into the top universities but you have the added financial pressures on top. If you have one child at university then maybe it's ok, but if you have three it's very difficult to pay fees, ...

UCAS application is a fast reasonably effective method of sorting out candidates for university. Although I disagree with certain elements, such as the fact that personal statements are either valued or not, the system is geared up so that universities no longer have to call each candidate out for interview. Having to do this would involve expense ...

The education system in this country is most definitely NOT “free for all”. It should be, but it patently is not. The education system in this country has for too long been weighted in favour of the socially acceptable. The recent proclamation, that the government is seriously considering paying ...

The Labour Government did a wonderous thing, they introduced tution fees after eighteen years of Tory rule and managed to make the Torys looking bad doing so. I was already at uni when this happened so it had no direct impact on me, however I was generally sickened that it happened. Whatever the Torys did wrong in eighteen years (I'm sure if ...

Should people be given free access to higher education? Without doubt the answer to this question is YES. There is no doubt in my mind that education should be free for all people and that the government should pick up the bill. This should be regardless of your parents income and there should be no means testing for the right to free ...

This is an abridged version of a discussion I had with some friends recently (@ http://pants.virtualave.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl), and I found myself out on a limb as the only one among a group of ten or so students with this opinion. For a change, though, I found I'd expressed myself pretty well, so here's how my argument went. ...

The introduction of university fees was the worst decision ever made by the Labour Government, on the one hand it wants to get people in to education, and on the other hand it puts a price tag on learning. Surely educating the population is wortwhile for the government, an educated population means a better workforce who can produce more ...

The fee for all is a dreadful statement to suggest as many clever students with promising futures are not given a proper chance at a going into higher education due to the size of their parents pay packets. As i rule rich people usually have clever kids , put them through private schools and whisk them off to university not missing the 10 grand a ...

I think that most students would agree that it should be grants, not fees. However, despite the possible changes in Scotland I think it is unrealsitic to expect an immediate reversal and abolition of the tuition fees system. Loans are all well and good, but hardly up to the job and nothing like free money as we may be led to believe. There has to ...

In view of the coming elections I thought I'd completely overhaul this opinion. I will leave what I wrote before, but underneath it I am going to write about what I think in a bit more detail. ******* Many countries charge fees for university, but the UK happens to be a country which is supposedly proud of its free public ...

I was only able to attend university because I received a full grant. Without it there would have been no way I could have managed. My parents certainly couldn't afford to help me out and the student loans would have barely covered the rent payments let alone tuition and living expenses. Despite the Government's declaration that ...

I was pretty lucky in that I went to University when there were at least full grants and tuition fees; although we certainly thought we were hard up and campaigned long and hard for grants to keep pace, at least, with earnings and inflation. Looks like that wasn't the most successful campaign I've ever been involved with then! ...

I think it was America that tried education fees first, and it didn't work so it was dropped. And then in the typical British style, we introduced university tuition fees as well. Top marks to whoever decided. OK, tuition fees can help unis give a better education, but they managed alright before didn't they? Sky-high tuition fees ...

I think that it is ridiculous the way the our education system is set up. If you are going into univerisity you have two main options, firstly you can take out a loan and pay the whole of fees and accomadation. Or you can be means tested this means you have to declare everything to the goverment, many people would argue that it doesn't really ...

When I couldn't go to University because I just couldn't afford to, it absolutely never occured to me that 20 years later the system would not only not have improved, but would have got a whole lot worse. The folks who argue that we have an open and meritocratic University admissions system clearly don't come from ...