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Willet rules out unlimited University fee's

kaya'08

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The Universities Minister David Willetts appears to have ruled out allowing universities to set unlimited fees.

He has said such a system would be neither sustainable nor sensible.

A review by Lord Browne recommended universities in England be free to set their own fees, but face a levy on sums above £7,000

BBC News - Unlimited tuition fees 'not sustainable', says Willetts

This recommendation by Vince Cable stunk. And it was ironic coming from a Liberal Democrat, from the same party who promised no rise in tuition fees would take place. A £4,000 rise on the University cap is just unsustainable, unrealistic, and above all, discriminatory against class divisions. And of course Lord Browne is no better, as he dictates his want for an unlimited university fee as he sits in his manor house somewhere in Eton or wherever these snobs come from.

The competitiveness of our education system will slip through our fingers if we do not compromise on this issue and once again give a fair advantage to all classes, and not just the higher ones. In light of current credit crises, increasing tuition fee's is a mistake. I hope Willet can smack Cable's wrist on this one.
 
--A £4,000 rise on the University cap is just unsustainable, unrealistic, and above all, discriminatory against class divisions. And of course Lord Browne is no better, as he dictates his want for an unlimited university fee as he sits in his manor house somewhere in Eton or wherever these snobs come from--

In truth, the public didn't want to keep paying the taxes for universal grants. We loved the idea of free HE education opportunity for everyone but weren't willing to pay for it. I benefitted from the old full free grant system and was lucky to do so. I would much prefer that modern students also had free education.

Lord Browne's report isn't just about dealing with fees and the shortfall, my understanding is that a necessary element of free market supply and demand will come in and underperforming Universities will be allowed to fail and die.

My biggest concern is that Labour may have said "education education education" but they also brought in employment laws that made it difficult for smaller specialist centres of excellence to survive. Many were financially sound but the new employment laws forced them to become taken over by bigger universities that raided their funds and killed off their reputations. This went into further education too - the Education dept wanted a smaller number of contracts but these contracts would be bigger.

In effect, the range of options or choice of learning provider for students are becoming limited - when Browne's recommendations allow these places to fail - more students than before are affected.

Education policy for the last 20 years has been a political football and the small high quality centres have all gone now. If you had choice, if you allowed those specialist institutions to survive - people would pay to go, students would provide real financial impact locally and when they went into employment.

All we're doing now politically is fiddling at the tidal after effects of where our recent policies have been taking us for 20+ years.

Browne should be encouraged to really think differently and make some serious recommendations about the whole of our education policy - not just the cost cutting measures. This is another opportunity to turn things around that is wasted.
 
I'm not too sure what you mean by local specialist institutions. Regardless i believe it is fundamental that the coalition government reaches a compromise on this issue that does not see university fee's skyrocketing.
Allowing universities to charge an "unlimited fee" only serves to drive talent away, and secure education for the high class. It is truly a wasteful and discriminatory prospect. Universities cannot be allowed to act like a bank. They should be treated as institutions that should offer every student in Britain an equal and realistic chance of entering and thus cannot be expected to charge responsible rates without government regulation.

Lord Browne's report isn't just about dealing with fees and the shortfall, my understanding is that a necessary element of free market supply and demand will come in and underperforming Universities will be allowed to fail and die.

If the government withdrew all fiscal support for polytechnic universities by 2020 and instead allocated this money to expand and subsidize the ever decreasing (and highly useful) foundation year courses, the British government would be able to extend education prospects to thousands of British students who under performed and want to be given another chance, as well as attracting students from abroad who wish to seek entry into a university on GPA alone (since they did not have access to the required educational boards such as IGCSE and GCE levels). The true universities that under perform and should be allowed to die are the polytechnic universities. Though they provide a second chance to under achieving students, i believe foundation courses could sufficiently substitute polytechnics while upholding higher standards and providing students with better employment prospects after graduating.

But back to the costs of the University, i certainly think they should be allowed to rise, but not above £4,500. I do not see why higher class income earners should not be expected to pay a graduate tax, with the government covering the rest.
 
The Lib-Cons have funny ideas of priority. The likes of they complain (or gleefully boast) that open-door immigration must continue, with only a minor adjustment in the form of a small cap. Apparently we're all so useless and lazy that we need direct competition for jobs and culture right on our doorsteps.

Then they make it even harder for our own homegrown (ie - born here) to get something.



Infinite Chaos says people like the idea of free further education but don't want to pay for it. I've often heard that to justify attacking moaners who speak out against things like tax rises. But one reason some people may indeed not want to pay for it is because they feel short-changed. (That and the fact people had become used to too many kids living the Student Grant lifestyle).

People got the idea from somewhere (our masters?!) that youngsters would leave the education system brighter and better than ever, with the entire world of work at their feet.

But in reality it's harder for people with good degrees to get top-flight jobs because of either the foreign competition or that they just flood the marketplace anyway.

The Government should divert certain ring-fenced monies and invest in our own crumbling systems. Build more technical colleges and encourage kids to become tradesmen, then they'll be set for life!


________________________________

UK taxpayers funding EU students at our universities as British children miss out | Mail Online

EU students who leave Britain get a 'free' university education by dodging repayments | Mail Online

Graduate tax 'would discriminate against British students' - Telegraph

I am surprised: Bogus foreign students free to flout new laws - Times Online


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Firms face bids for foreign workers in skills auctions | News

Skilled and highly-motivated Poles 'push British graduates to back of the jobs queue' | News



BBC - Have Your Say: Is competition for graduate jobs too tough?

When governments foolishly aim to have nigh everyone getting a degree, instead of limiting the opportunity to those academically gifted, then of course the market is saturated with graduates.

What is an employer to do to find those who are really capable, except raise the minimum achievement level ? The concern will be over qualification, but that's possibly better than taking on someone who is going to find the job difficult.
 
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I'm not too sure what you mean by local specialist institutions.

I can only think of places like Cranfield (3000 students), London School of Economics (1500 students) and a tiny minority of others that still exist. These operate in highly specialist areas and can cover the costs brought in by Labour (under EU ruling) of some of the employment laws that have now made it so expensive to run small higher education and further education specialist colleges.

In my area I can think of Wimbledon School of Art, Kent Institute, Winchester, Cumbria Institute, Rose Bruford, Camberwell, Central St Martins, Norwich School of Art, Blackpool and the Fylde, Falmouth, London College of Fashion, London College of Printing and Cleveland College of Art & design.

These all now exist as faculties in larger universities. Some have flourished as their names were kept and the larger university looked after the valuable product they had. Others were subsumed and either had to take on vast student numbers or marketing failures killed them off.

Universities cannot be allowed to act like a bank. They should be treated as institutions that should offer every student in Britain an equal and realistic chance of entering and thus cannot be expected to charge responsible rates without government regulation.

Every university aims at what you say - they would laugh at your accusation of acting like a bank. If you investigate further you'll find quite a large number of universities are financially crippled - and this because of fees as well as EU employment laws.

London Metropolitain, Leeds Metropolian, Brighton, University of Cumbria to name a few have huge debts and are on the verge of collapse. They are not the bottom universities by entry standards - just for financial status.

-- If the government withdrew all fiscal support for polytechnic universities by 2020 and instead allocated this money to expand and subsidize the ever decreasing (and highly useful) foundation year courses, the British government would be able to extend education prospects to thousands of British students who under performed and want to be given another chance

You misunderstand what a good Foundation degree is - some of these are excellent courses with really high employment prospects. They also offer excellent vocational and industry experience which normal degrees cannot match unless they become 4 year sandwhich courses.

Foundation degrees weren't decreasing last time I looked - they were the only type of degree a University could develop if it wanted to offer new courses. There was (and is) no new money for new B.A. courses unless the university can find that money itself.

The Lib-Cons have funny ideas of priority. The likes of they complain (or gleefully boast) that open-door immigration

For about the 900th time - open door immigration is from the EU only and this is a discussion about education - not immigration.

-- Infinite Chaos says people like the idea of free further education but don't want to pay for it. I've often heard that to justify attacking moaners who speak out against things like tax rises. But one reason some people may indeed not want to pay for it is because they feel short-changed. (That and the fact people had become used to too many kids living the Student Grant lifestyle).

And here we have the rub - people want our young to have a great education and the best opportunities but equally read some newspapers that try to depict the young as useless layabouts living a student grant lifestyle. I'm talking about the people (not you RoP) who want education to be free but are not willing to pay for it - one excuse is the fake picture of all students laying in bed till 3 in the afternoon then heading to lecture for an hour or two before the pub and drug flamed parties all night.

-- But in reality it's harder for people with good degrees to get top-flight jobs because of either the foreign competition or that they just flood the marketplace anyway.

The Government should divert certain ring-fenced monies and invest in our own crumbling systems. Build more technical colleges and encourage kids to become tradesmen, then they'll be set for life!--

Firstly, lack of competition led to the self inflicted industrial collapse of the car industry here in the UK. We only have 17 Universities in the World top 200 universities this year - we need competition and we need to provide the best value for money education in the world. Ring fencing and hiding won't help.

What ring fencing I totally agree with is for industrial trades / crafts training - not education - but training. We have many technical colleges now but they operate in Further Education and FE is the worst treated (by any political party) area in our education sector.

Teachers in FE work the longest hours for the least pay in comparison to school (primary or secondary) teachers or university teachers.
 
...this is a discussion about education - not immigration.

Immigration can impact on everything, as examples point out.



...one excuse is the fake picture of all students laying in bed till 3 in the afternoon then heading to lecture for an hour or two before the pub and drug flamed parties all night.

...Latter-day witch hysteria and highly profitable lie, I suppose. Of course there have been lazy and petulant students, just as much as there have been the good ones. (Just like there have been appalling teachers, typically those who care more for NUT block-voting than helping kids.) There was even a groundbreaking alternative-comedy series lampooning such students during the '80s.


Author despairs of 'lazy' teachers and students | News | guardian.co.uk - Ooh, the Guardian!

One in 4 students, young adults binge drink: CDC | Reuters

These other kids cram though, in more than one sense of the word: The Rundown | Student Living - It's official: students are lazy and overweight

Sheffield's night of student carnage

Students Tell Vision: “I Quit University Sport Because of Binge Drinking Culture” « York Vision

Alcohol Help: Binge Drinking college students

The moment a student urinated on a Sheffield war monument - The Star

Inquests told of Leeds students' booze deaths - Yorkshire Evening Post , etc.


No wonder: Stop booze tours, plead Scottish students | Education | guardian.co.uk




Still foreign students can be worse: Student protesters clash with riot police | World news | guardian.co.uk

Annual student riot even worse than usual… « Slugger O'Toole

French student riots : 1968 , etc.





Student grants were apparently abolished partly because too many students just didn't want to do any proper work, rather than simply improve their education and earn degrees. But it's the idea of kids who want to learn being penalised which annoys the likes of us:

Thousands miss out on student grants - Telegraph

A-level results 2010: sick with worry or ready to party, students take stock | Education | The Guardian




Hmmm, not that I knock the Student Grant lifestyle this time: Lazy Students: Earn £1,000 For Sleeping / Money Watch

Aah, for science too: Lazy students get perfect excuse to spend more time in bed - Telegraph




Lastly...

Socialist Party : Students must fight back

Socialist news and socialist policies, with Marxist analysis, socialist campaigns, anti-war campaigns, support for workers' struggles, ...




Historically student strikes have been one of the most effective ways for young people to fight back. Two of the most notable examples in the UK were when hundreds of thousands walked out internationally in the 2003 school students' strikes against the Iraq war and the successful 1985 student strikes against Thatcher's Youth Training Schemes (YTS).

The 1985 student strikes against the threat of conscription to the YTS, which involved 250,000 young people, won a massive victory against the government.

Student Strikes can win results ...if you call a self-denuded education by deluded kids, for the sake of exploitative communists, a result!





chestore.jpg

Che Guevara Store

Yeah, posters of Karl Marx, Che Guevara worship and charging at Nick Griffin will help them achieve all they're capable of!


Revolutionary Students - Pfft! And to think these people kicked up such a fuss about the National Front!!








....we need competition and we need to provide the best value for money education in the world.

We'd better get the best of young talent properly trained, post-haste so we don't have to rely on foreign imports. That way we can stand on our own two feet again.



What ring fencing I totally agree with is for industrial trades / crafts training - not education - but training.

The comps are terrible. Just chucking guaranteed money at them with no reforms or self-improvement first won't motivate them. And certainly, trades training is in greater need than ever, enough to have funds ring-fenced.
 
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I can only think of places like Cranfield (3000 students), London School of Economics (1500 students) and a tiny minority of others that still exist. These operate in highly specialist areas and can cover the costs brought in by Labour (under EU ruling) of some of the employment laws that have now made it so expensive to run small higher education and further education specialist colleges.

Ah right i understand now.

In my area I can think of Wimbledon School of Art, Kent Institute, Winchester, Cumbria Institute, Rose Bruford, Camberwell, Central St Martins, Norwich School of Art, Blackpool and the Fylde, Falmouth, London College of Fashion, London College of Printing and Cleveland College of Art & design.

I know a couple of lads that go Winchester.

These all now exist as faculties in larger universities. Some have flourished as their names were kept and the larger university looked after the valuable product they had. Others were subsumed and either had to take on vast student numbers or marketing failures killed them off.

The thing with creating specialist universities is the standards they usually expect from students. I believe aiming high and achieving good grades is important, but i also believe a country with universities that offer realistic prospects of getting in for the average achiever is just as important. Anything less and you don't have much business in a competitive degree anyway. Universities with large faculties and a wealth of courses provide a greater choice of universities to choose from. For example, i was looking for a university that offers a law degree. The specialist law schools that i had found were in area's such as London and Nottingham and other places that i did not wish to go to due to living expenses and crime levels. Now one could argue an emphasis on the creation of specialist schools in favour of the more general ones would obviously expand them into other places around the country. But for people who seek to do dual courses will likely not have that option in a specialist university (like my mate who is doing Law and Software Engineering, for example). If we cut polytechnics out of the equation, funded foundation years and help improve the quality of both generalized and specialist universities, your laughing. :)

Every university aims at what you say - they would laugh at your accusation of acting like a bank. If you investigate further you'll find quite a large number of universities are financially crippled - and this because of fees as well as EU employment laws.

It wasn't an accusation but a prediction. Such important institutions surely cannot go unregulated. The reason for there regulation is to keep them open to the British public, regardless of class or financial situation.
You misunderstand what a good Foundation degree is - some of these are excellent courses with really high employment prospects. They also offer excellent vocational and industry experience which normal degrees cannot match unless they become 4 year sandwhich courses.

Foundation degrees weren't decreasing last time I looked - they were the only type of degree a University could develop if it wanted to offer new courses. There was (and is) no new money for new B.A. courses unless the university can find that money itself.

Are you talking about the same "foundation" year as i am? I am in favour of them if you read what i wrote, and think they are innovators for academic success. And they most certainly are decreasing in numbers.
 
Are you talking about the same "foundation" year as i am? I am in favour of them if you read what i wrote, and think they are innovators for academic success. And they most certainly are decreasing in numbers.

You mean a year "Zero?"

It's right they are dissappearing, some universities use them to entrap prospective students, making them pay for another year of education. Students also tend not to be looked after very well on a year "Zero" - all the focus remains on year1, 2 and 3.

If you want a proper year "Zero" - look at the Scottish Universities - it's part of a 4 year degree course and taught properly. On the flip side, Scottish students don't have to pay fees so an extra year of good teaching is great for you.... or have I got the wrong "Foundation" again? (The only other one I can think of is a Foundation Course that Art & Design students do after A-Levels - but that's because A-Level Art subjects are such rubbish)

-- The thing with creating specialist universities is the standards they usually expect from students. I believe aiming high and achieving good grades is important, but i also believe a country with universities that offer realistic prospects of getting in for the average achiever is just as important--

I think it is important to have the right number of Universities - I'd prefer a smaller group of higher standard Universities and then a whole load of technical / trades / practical courses that are funded properly and are focussed on training real skills and trades properly.

I looked at the Times Top 200 Universities - the US has a boatload of high standard Universities, we have 17, Australia has 16 / 17 - but so what I asked myself... What about the UK's nearest competitors on a global scale?

Germany has 3-4 universities in the top 200, France has a small handful, Japan has 4-5 and China has 2: which begs the question "what do all those universities and what does all the expense on them achieve?" With that, you wonder about the money spent on those universities and the students who go. How can Germany, France, Japan and Italy or even China maintain or even increase development levels when they "may not" be producing as many high calibre graduates as we and Austalia may be?

I am now switching to considering a real reduction in University numbers and places but I need to read up more on this.
 
If you want a proper year "Zero" - look at the Scottish Universities - it's part of a 4 year degree course and taught properly. On the flip side, Scottish students don't have to pay fees so an extra year of good teaching is great for you.... or have I got the wrong "Foundation" again? (The only other one I can think of is a Foundation Course that Art & Design students do after A-Levels - but that's because A-Level Art subjects are such rubbish)

Scottish Universities are brilliant! No doubt the Scots have the finest institutions in the country.

Yes, you have the correct foundation year.

Its a year zero for a particular degree that helps students to achieve the necessary criteria to enter the university if they did not initially. For example, my situation is such that i studied abroad during my GCSE/AS exams but in a country where the system required me to take mandatory native lessons of that country (also in their language) and that i pass them at the end of the year (the school exams) - or face repeating that year. That meant i had to juggle out school exams, a foreign language and the cambridge/edexcel examinations.

Even if i was not taking Chemistry GCSE or AS exam, i would be expected to attend every class and pass the end of year school exam. As a result, my GPA has suffered and so has my GCSE/AS results. And due to the sheer mandatory workload imposed on us by the state education system, i was driven away from taking A levels.
The foundation year has given me that second chance to achieve.

I mean i sit here debating with you on an adult to adult, intelligent basis. And we are both exchanging and debating complex and intellectual ideas. I am only 18 years old. I'm not too sure if such exchanges are common with people of my age. I like to think i have the capability, intellectual mindset and drive to enter a law degree and thrive, but unfortunately i was not given the chance to demonstrate this in my results.

I got 3 C's, 1 D, 1 B and 2 A's. In my AS exams i got 1 C and 1 B. My GPA (excluding this year) stands at 7.1 - i have nothing to show for my talent or passion for politics and law and i fear the universities i have applied too will see my grades and not me as a person.


Germany has 3-4 universities in the top 200, France has a small handful, Japan has 4-5 and China has 2: which begs the question "what do all those universities and what does all the expense on them achieve?" With that, you wonder about the money spent on those universities and the students who go. How can Germany, France, Japan and Italy or even China maintain or even increase development levels when they "may not" be producing as many high calibre graduates as we and Austalia may be?

As you are aware, it is not necessarily the universities that produce the innovators of today, but rather the minds themselves that took the course. You need not enter Oxford to become a solicitor, and you need not enter Oxford to become a notable solicitor either. Japan has a highly innovative scientific society as does Germany and the UK. Yet numbers of high profile universities within these countries are not significant. Also, taking into account the huge demand for entrance to these universities and the minuscule percentage of the population that has ever attended them as a result, surely we can see that our development as a nation is not dependent on such high grade universities alone, but more on the availability of education and universities to the general British public.

I am now switching to considering a real reduction in University numbers and places but I need to read up more on this.

I'm sure you read about the staggering demand for university places this year. I don't see how a reduction in places would benefit us. Maybe a reduction in foreign students that are accepted into university?
 
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