Get a job in McDonalds or a pub and stop moaning. (Student Debt)

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	Student Debt
Date:	13/10/09 (114 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Student life is fun!

Disadvantages: Debt in life in general

It's always baffled me why middle-class students whinge about having to pay their way through college. Some even bemoan the fact WORK is even on the 'to do' list to get through a three year course in recession. If you want to study away from home guys and girls and enjoy that exciting "student life" at the taxpayer's expense then you will now have to pay for the privilege of that liberation, simple as. The only reason you get to enjoy that advantage and fun time in your life is because working-class kids generally can't afford it. It's not really about intelligence anymore. The average course is less than twenty hours a week and ten hours of that is dodgeable lectures. You are not required in the lecture rooms more than two days a week and you can easily wing a degree by using the internet, or indeed the lecturers themselves, under orders to make sure you pass so the uni climbs the league tables and retains funding. Only 3% of students who complete a degree fail it. The day of the three year pi** ups on the taxpayer is well and truly over. In fact I would make them all wait one year after A-Levels before they can go to university. In that way they have tasted work and have some money in the bank and some may decide work and a pay packet is better than doing a Mickey Mouse degree.

The big problem over funding this year has been the Student Loans Co, failing to get at least 40% of the grants out on time, first years hit hardest, those most likely to claim the full £3,145-a-year. Sadly at least one-in-three students now won't be able to blow their first payment in thresher's week, perhaps a blessing in disguise. £3,145-a-year is half the money you need to live on in the big city universities if studying away from home and the bank of mum and dad usaully picks up the other half, paying much sonner than they hoped this year.

The Student Loan Co admitted this time last year in a memo they would be around 40% behind on calls for 2009 because of poor staffing levels. Why they are short of staff is because they introduced a new bar-coding system for this year, the idea being the data in-putters would have half as much work to do so they could get rid of half of them. But the barcode readers malfunctioned and the reduced staff were stuck with last years work load plus 14% more applications. You would have thought with all those students in need of part-time jobs they would have been snapped up here. Alas only two jobs are being advertised on their website so you will have to keep waiting Neil, Rick, Mike and Vivian! The good news is Gordon Brown is selling them off now and so privatisation should sea leaner system.

The SLC dealt with over one million claims for loans and as usual, students being students, many left it late expecting it to be done on time. Middle-class parents tend not to admit they or their kids are at fault for anything and many had to do the loan application for their son or daughter because their kids hadn't done it. The SLC also have to filter out the vast amount of fraudulent claims for the loans. With over 3000 bogus colleges closed down in this year alone, mostly for immigration scams, they do get lots of false applications. There were over one million applications alone this year for loans and grants.

One in four students here are now foreign nationals and London School of Economics, one of the top ten universities in England, now has a majority ethnic intake. The big universities are under funded and have now decided on block to go for fee paying overseas students and back off local intelligent working class kids who can't pay, the ultimate sin for any state education system. But because some of the big guys are dumbing down entrance to scoop up rich foreign students with poor English skills their position on the Russell Group league table is falling. We are now seeing huge numbers from China, India and West Africa taking those places. With just 90 British Caribbean's gaining places at Oxbridge last year from state schools there seems to be no educational bar on ethnic students if they can pay hard cash.

EU students are actually allowed to claim through the Student Loan Company system when studying in the UK and, apparently, one-in-five don't pay them back on time or not at all, some £3.8 million outstanding. 59 per cent of those due to start paying back in 2007 and 70 per cent of those due to start last year did not do so, a total of 1,580. Thousands more from the EU are currently at university here, having borrowed £124 million to cover tuition fees. Once they are home in Spain or Poland etc they are hard to chase up and so the SLC tends not to bother. Intriguingly the foreign kid's parent's wages are much lower in Eastern Europe and so write the mum and ads non adjusted salary in the application that doesn't account for cheaper living standards over there, meaning under EU law they don't have to pay them back. British students could feasibly do the same of course but somehow you can't see them letting us get away with it so easy. They actually put up the interest rate in 2007 on the loans to cover unpaid and fraudulent claims. Once you have graduated you have to pay the money back once you earn a certain amount of salary. I think its currently 13 grand.

Once the grant does come through students, alas, are the most likely to spend it just as quick, threshers week seeing the highest number of burglaries across the country as local thieves loot student houses bulging with new lap tops and Playstations whilst the wet behind the ears kids are out getting drunk. It really is an Aladdin's Cave of brand new Sony and Vodafone out there. Students of today are fairly rich in comparison and have many of the mod-cons, the luxuries of bottled water and contract mobile phones essentials now.

Although students love to claim poverty one-in-four are moneyed enough to drive a car at college and one-in-five don take a student loan. Some take the loan and invest it in a high interest account and cash it in when they leave. In fact when I was backpacking around the world after doing three years of tedious warehouse work to pay for it the vast majority of travellers out there were graduates or 'year outers', able to find two grand, a week after taking the mortar board and gown back to the haberdasheries.


Recently the first full league tables were released on which graduates have the most earning power. Cambridge Economics graduates were top with an average of over £30,000 whilst Teesside University (cough) was bottom at £12,000. Whilst those Cambridge grads see their money go up to £38 grand after just six months on average they are the group least likely to have borrowed from the Student Loans people of course. Interestingly I.T students from Imperial College London were in second place for big first salaries alongside the predictable medical degrees.

http://www.slc.co.uk/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7912548.stm

Summary: SLC suck