Student tuition fees?
Nov 29 2007 02:28
any good and short overviews of the movement?
preferably something I can print out quickly before a meeting tomorrow morning at 730am english time 
Nov 29 2007 12:24
#2
So you pretty much base all your views on the situation in the mid 1950s then?
Nov 29 2007 12:39
#3
no, i pretty much base my view on student tuition fees on my own bitterness at having not been so lucky, and on having to go against people better educated than me for god knows how many jobs. and having worked in places where ive had to train people fresh out of uni to be my manager while theyre earning more than me. and because i live in an area where theres a lot of students and so that affects how much rent costs, and then it affects the local shops because it seems like every other place is turned into a bar or an offy and full of students, or a charity shop but everywhere else is pretty much shut, and i just dont really recognise their 'struggle' as being particularly hard. so its just a bundle of things that all seem connected to me, that point towards them not having it that bad really, i just dont really think its a priority. but then i dont have an awful big respect for university either, and thats partly out of bitterness and partly out of knowing so many students who do such little work or dont seem to have to put in all that much effort really. and you see the names of some courses, like a lot of the business courses, and i just think, ffs what is the point of that?
so yeh, not a popular view amongst you lot maybe but not really that uncommon amongst people i know who left school before 18.
Nov 29 2007 12:43
#4
Tube drivers get paid quite a lot, should we ignore them when they go on strike because they earn more than you?
Nov 29 2007 12:52
#5
no cos its not about what they get paid. and i didnt say they shouldnt be supported either, i just said i find it hard to care, it just doesnt seem like a priority to me. i mean tube driving is a job, whereas a uni education is a luxury, isnt it?
Nov 29 2007 13:01
#6
I don't think you can call a university education a luxury - it's required in order to do a lot of jobs (including most professional librarian jobs I think) it might not be necessary for some of them, but it's necessray to get them. Some of these aren't well paid at all, and having a degree can leave you a lot worse off than if you start work at 18 and get experience instead.
Now, degrees are worth very little in practice (and even less with certain subjects) and yes there are plenty of rich kids who go, but if it's a luxury, then so are 'A' levels, NVQs, BTECs and the rest of post-16 education. Being trained to be a hairdresser (and there's looooads of people learning how to do that post-16) is a bit lower on my scale of usefulness than training to be a nurse for example. I could get by cutting my own hair, or getting an untrained friend to do it, but I'd rather not get a mate to take broken glass out of my arm and stitch me up thanks.
It doesn't mean I think you should give two shits about the issue, but your arguments so far could be applied to a whole bunch of young and/or moderately paid people.
Having said that, do I think student tuition fees are the most important issue at the moment? No of course not. And I'm not really sure what information Jef's after, did I miss something?
Nov 29 2007 13:23
#7
Quote:
I don't think you can call a university education a luxury - it's required in order to do a lot of jobs (including most professional librarian jobs I think) it might not be necessary for some of them, but it's necessray to get them.
well thats part of the problem from my pov - there are lots of jobs that dont themselves require a uni education but they wont go to anyone who doesnt have one. so in that way, its like youre buying a certificate that will give you a huge amount of privilige over those who cant afford to buy it. its a way of keeping a whole heap of jobs and money among the same families and groups of people and keeping the rest of us out. sure a few people get to crossover but not many.
Quote:
if it's a luxury, then so are 'A' levels, NVQs, BTECs and the rest of post-16 education
well yeh id agree with that. id also say that stuff like NVQs are a bit of a racket to be honest. i mean i have some NVQs and i worked for a while for an NVQ training company. theres a whole lot of money being made there for very little of value. on one NVQ i had to write essays on how to use a fax machine, and how to answer the phone and how i chanhged my response for different times of the day. NVQs that are work based rather than colleged based (i cant speak for college based cos i have no experience of that) dont really provide any sort of help, training, or anything like that to the people who are on them - theyre just an extra hassle on top of work for a while, someone comes in occasionally to watch you work, you tick lots of boxes and write some unbelievably useless stuff, and then you get your NVQ which allegedly will help you get better work or promotion. but it also makes it more difficult for everyone else who does the same quality of work but who isnt with an employer who lets you do NVQs, or who isnt in permanent work at all but temps to different employers. And on top of that they run out, my NVQs are out of date already, whereas degrees dont run out, your certificate doesnt become void if you got it five years ago.
Nov 29 2007 14:32
#8
arf wrote:
Quote:
I don't think you can call a university education a luxury - it's required in order to do a lot of jobs (including most professional librarian jobs I think) it might not be necessary for some of them, but it's necessray to get them.well thats part of the problem from my pov - there are lots of jobs that dont themselves require a uni education but they wont go to anyone who doesnt have one. so in that way, its like youre buying a certificate that will give you a huge amount of privilige over those who cant afford to buy it. its a way of keeping a whole heap of jobs and money among the same families and groups of people and keeping the rest of us out. sure a few people get to crossover but not many.
Around 40% of people in the UK go to university now, the government target is/was 50%. I don't think you can call this the "same families and groups of people". In "Obsolete Communism the Left Wing Alternative" the Cohn Bendits argue that the ruling class absolutely needs working class kids to go to university, because they simply can't produce enough people to run the technical/administrative apparatus without them. i.e. that although many students end up in managerial positions (although more don't), university was becoming an engine of social mobility and making serious attempts to avoid keeping people out. That was 40 years ago.
Now clearly rich kids find it easier to go, some working class kids find it very hard to go, but in the view of both the universities, and employers's associations etc. this is seen as a weakness - since they actually do need competent people for at least some jobs, rather than rich imbeciles. Increasingly fees (and withdrawal of student grants etc.) are used as a method to discipline workers once they leave as well - '00000s of debt and not necessarily great job prospects is worse than 0 debt and not necessarily great job prospects.
Quote:
id also say that stuff like NVQs are a bit of a racket to be honest.
Yeah definitely. For a start, fist level NVQ hairdressing students don't even get to cut model hair. They're just taught to type up price lists etc. in what is essentially a basic numeracy, literacy and ICT class masquerading as hairdressing. In fact pretty much all NVQs are along these lines that I've seen.
Quote:
on one NVQ i had to write essays on how to use a fax machine, and how to answer the phone and how i chanhged my response for different times of the day.
Like that.
Nov 29 2007 14:49
#9
yeh, it was a total joke. that was on my admin NVQ 2. and there was a big emphasis on how i had to write "a page" about it, but it was okay to use a gigantic font - basically it didnt matter that i only wrote a sentence as long as that sentence filled "a page". 
all the stuff about poorer kids going to uni - if the whole no tuition fees thing instead was, "no tuition fees and more help for those that need it, but people who can pay should pay" then it would be different. but thats not the case, and even if you had 50% of school leavers going to uni, that still means 50% wont, and its a fair bet that most of those people, like me, come from families where our parents dont have degrees and etc.
the other thing is that the "education not for sale" lot for a start, i havent seen them talk about the other 50+% at all, except to use us as an excuse. like "if you make us pay then it will be more difficult for them". which yeh true, but not making them pay doesnt really us any favours either, does it? ive not noticed them giving a shit about access to education that isnt higher ed for the rest of us, or access to educational resources like our badly underfunded libraries. thats the thing, i just find it hard to take them at all seriously cos it seems as if, if they got their way and fees got removed, theyd just lose interest. i find it difficult to believe theyd be kicking up a fuss about how their free-to-them education might have negative impact on those who dont have it, or about providing ways for the rest of us to access those sorts of educational resources, or of deprofessionalising jobs that dont really need it.
i just cannot imagine them protesting some interview for a job that requires a person with a degree but doesnt actually require a degree, iyswim. they get an unfair advantage and theyre not protesting that, so why should i be bothered about supporting them getting that unfair advantage in the first place?
Nov 29 2007 19:50
#10
by the time student tuition fees came into being, I think that most students had given up .
when student loans were first introduced students were actively opposed and there were quite a few demonstrations, with students being bused to London
and that was when the amount yopu could borrow was only about £400 and for maintenance costs.
Nov 29 2007 20:28
#11
thanks late.
Nov 29 2007 20:41
#12
hope it helps
Nov 29 2007 21:00
#13
well it was for this morning so not much but thanks anyway, should have asked a bit earlier
Nov 29 2007 21:11
#14
but you said tomorrow morning at 2.30am on a Thursday, I make that Friday morning
Nov 29 2007 22:33
#15
I don't think I can be expected to be 100% accurate at that time (it was 3.30 here)
Nov 30 2007 21:07
#16
i'm surprised you made it to your meeting
Dec 1 2007 00:02
#17
I made it and contributed.
I stayed up as late last night and slept till 3 today so I did miss potentially a big showdown which was really crap of me.
Dec 1 2007 00:13
#18
a showdown as in argument/disagreement?
Dec 1 2007 00:45
#19
this should be in the thought forum if you want a serious answer. moving.
arf:
Quote:
the other thing is that the "education not for sale" lot for a start, i havent seen them talk about the other 50+% at all, except to use us as an excuse. like "if you make us pay then it will be more difficult for them". which yeh true, but not making them pay doesnt really us any favours either, does it?
in the brief period i was a student i didn't care about any of the anti-fees stuff, because fees were means tested, my parents were/are poor so i didn't have to pay any, and thought it was fair enough that better off people did.
now i realise that not only is education a basic right for everyone, but the means testing bar is way too low, and punishes most people on average or above poverty-line incomes, or even quite well off workers if they have more than 1 kid.
and arf if you're upset about a small number of people having access to uni, making people pay to go isn't going to increase access to it is it? Especially as it's just the thin end of the wedge. First no grants, then low fees, means tested, then higher fees, means tested, and eventually astronomical fees, with no means testing, like the US.
Dec 1 2007 01:00
#20
It seems as if we already are in the same position as the US. iirc most tuition fees charged are now comparable with US colleges and there is no maintenace grant at all unless your parents, or you are on benefits.
Dec 1 2007 01:07
#21
Basically the law students are mostly cunts and have always argued against the blockades. Today there was a pla to blockade ther building (which has only been done once so far this time I think)
I doubted they'd have enough people but I shuld have gone anyway.
Especially as I found that my colleagues and some law teachers were holding a meeting against the blockade (almost certainly to incite students to attack it.) But I found that out at about half four.
Cunts, hopefully they'll vote to continue striking monday, I think I'll have to help them take the building. Have to remember my hat and scwrf though getting sacked would be a bad move.
Fuck I hate law students so much.
Dec 1 2007 01:08
#22
late wrote:
It seems as if we already are in the same position as the US. iirc most tuition fees charged are now comparable with US colleges and there is no maintenace grant at all unless your parents, or you are on benefits.
No they're not - elite US colleges charge tens of thousands of dollars a year. Here the max is still £3,000 isn't it? And it's still means tested, so people with poor parents pay nothing, and you can get grants and low interest loans.
Dec 1 2007 01:17
#23
We were talking about this at the meeting. I remember being told that tuition fees were the end of payment, that they'd go up with inflation and that was it.
I was always in favour of a graduate tax rather than loans, obviously reformist but it would have raised a shitload more money and hit working class people a bit less.
Fees were about disciplining workers with debt and about pulling money from the middle classes IMO. A university education doesn't advance you like it used to, now they're asking for one for jobs that don't need one.
late: fees in England compare with the crappest US colleges. We might pay a lot compared to other but we pay fuck all compared to americans at decent colleges.
Scandinavia has the best system, I knew someone from Sweden who used to get £7k a year in loans. More than a london weighted loan by a big amount. It's still pretty good up there, they're probably the next in line to get fucked.
Dec 1 2007 01:38
#24
But what has happened is that education for it's own sake has become devalued,
taxes and money could have easily been raised from big business etc but instead Murdoch and a few other papers started propaganda campaigns about lazy students and the government decided to raise money from them instead so they could use the money raised to protect people like the Northern Rock shareholders.
Dec 1 2007 01:40
#25
Education for it's own sake is something that is seriously under attack here.
In England do different degree corses have different fees?
I was under the impression that all undergrad courses at a university were charged at the same rate, but my friend reckons differently.
Dec 2 2007 18:15
#26
They used to be charged differently, science courses were more expensive that arts courses for example because it costs more to teach somebody science
than it does to teach arts subjects.
Now though I think they are all more or less the same
Dec 2 2007 21:09
#27
John. wrote:
in the brief period i was a student i didn't care about any of the anti-fees stuff, because fees were means tested, my parents were/are poor so i didn't have to pay any, and thought it was fair enough that better off people did.now i realise that not only is education a basic right for everyone, but the means testing bar is way too low, and punishes most people on average or above poverty-line incomes, or even quite well off workers if they have more than 1 kid.
im not sure how to answer this. if the means testing bar is way too low, surely that should be an argument for raising it, rather than just making higher education free to everyone, regardless of personal wealth?
re education being a basic right. it is, to a certain level, but all the way to higher education? above? for second degrees? where do you draw the line? i think the money invested by the state in higher education would be better spent elsewhere in the education system, for example making resources available to all who could use them rather than a few. so in libraries and learning centres that offered any number of different courses open to people of any age who were interested. id like to see more emphasis on learning for learnings sake than on getting degree certificates to get jobs. i see universities as hoarding resources which are only made available to a select few.
Quote:
and arf if you're upset about a small number of people having access to uni, making people pay to go isn't going to increase access to it is it? Especially as it's just the thin end of the wedge. First no grants, then low fees, means tested, then higher fees, means tested, and eventually astronomical fees, with no means testing, like the US.
it would be terrible to go the way of the US system, but i dont think it has to be down the slippery slope in that way. so yeh ill agree with you that the means testing bar should be higher, with dependents taken into account. I still think that people with large personal wealth should pay their way through uni, the funding they provide should allow universities to provide less affluent students with access to their courses and facilities, and the government can allocate less money to higher education and more to community learning resources.
i know a fair few well off people who only did uni because mum and dad would have been disappointed otherwise, and on the other side i know a fair amount of people like myself who didnt get the opportunity. i actually did at one stage, i wanted to go do physics and i got accepted on to one course that had a foundation year, cos i dont have a levels or anything like that. i think it wasnt a very popular course so theyd take anyone 
but i couldnt go cos i was working but i didnt have savings or anything like that, id have had to relocate with no pennies and whatever i could carry on my back, get rid of all my junk, etc etc, then find some way of supporting myself for four years while doing a proper science course (as opposed to an eight hour week business course like some of my friends have done). it just seemed so difficult at the time, so unlikely, and on top of that everyone i knew was really unsupportive, basically they all thought i was either getting snooty by wanting to go to uni in the first place, or they just thought it was hilarious that someone like me would even try. and i had seriously low self confidence so after a couple of months of trying to save and sort my shit out, i gave up, and that was that. the lack of support i had personally would have been much less of an issue if finances werent such a big deal, and this is before tuition fees came up. the fact is, a lot of people were unable to get anywhere near uni way before tuition fees were an issue, and noone gave a fuck then. its only when the fairly affluent started crying about their future wages that people started to care. so im just not feeling their pain as anything more than entitlement getting indignant.
Dec 3 2007 10:12
#28
arf wrote:
John. wrote:
in the brief period i was a student i didn't care about any of the anti-fees stuff, because fees were means tested, my parents were/are poor so i didn't have to pay any, and thought it was fair enough that better off people did.now i realise that not only is education a basic right for everyone, but the means testing bar is way too low, and punishes most people on average or above poverty-line incomes, or even quite well off workers if they have more than 1 kid.
im not sure how to answer this. if the means testing bar is way too low, surely that should be an argument for raising it, rather than just making higher education free to everyone, regardless of personal wealth?...
well it could be, but I'm not part of the government, and anyway I don't think government can solve problems on behalf of working people - even if it did want to.
In any case, means testing systems are hugely inefficient and require vast bureaucracies to administrate, which would be very wasteful.
Quote:
re education being a basic right. it is, to a certain level, but all the way to higher education? above? for second degrees? where do you draw the line? i think the money invested by the state in higher education would be better spent elsewhere in the education system...
the government can allocate less money to higher education and more to community learning resources.
Here you're falling into the trap of "fighting over crumbs." That argument's mimicking things like the media complaining about people getting disability benefit while schools are underfunded, say, or people getting sex changes on the NHS while some life-saving treatments aren't funded.
You don't run the state, so you don't have to choose to cut one thing to fund something else. It's fair enough if you think something should be given extra funding, but any argument you make saying something gets too much funding is just used as justification for the constant cuts to everything. Looking at the bigger picture, resources for education aren't finite in that you should cut uni funding to pay for learning centres - why should resources to pay for these not come from cutting military or weapons funding, or from subsidies to big business?
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and arf if you're upset about a small number of people having access to uni, making people pay to go isn't going to increase access to it is it? Especially as it's just the thin end of the wedge. First no grants, then low fees, means tested, then higher fees, means tested, and eventually astronomical fees, with no means testing, like the US.it would be terrible to go the way of the US system, but i dont think it has to be down the slippery slope in that way. so yeh ill agree with you that the means testing bar should be higher, with dependents taken into account. I still think that people with large personal wealth should pay their way through uni, the funding they provide should allow universities to provide less affluent students with access to their courses and facilities
Well that might be nice, but it doesn't reflect government's priorities. The government isn't something good that wants to help poor people. The UK will move closer to the US system, with everyone made to pay more and more - unless people can fight it.
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i know a fair few well off people who only did uni because mum and dad would have been disappointed otherwise, and on the other side i know a fair amount of people like myself who didnt get the opportunity. i actually did at one stage, i wanted to go do physics and i got accepted on to one course that had a foundation year, cos i dont have a levels or anything like that. i think it wasnt a very popular course so theyd take anyone
was this before fees, and while there were still grants as well as loans? i mean doing a full-time course for 4 years is always going to be hard cos you can't work much. If you couldn't do a f/t course could you do a part time one? what about the open university?
Quote:
its only when the fairly affluent started crying about their future wages that people started to care. so im just not feeling their pain as anything more than entitlement getting indignant.
Again, I don't think saying stuff like this is going to get you much sympathy - someone in Africa with no clean running water, malnutrition and HIV might read your post above and say "boo-fucking-hoo." On a relative scale you're not much worse off than any of those people you're slagging off. I also don't understand your point at all, as you're saying you don't care about people "crying" about the cost of uni when that's what you've just done yourself 
Dec 3 2007 13:11
#29
i cant seem to reply with a quote? i think something might be broken..
anyway -
Quote:
Here you're falling into the trap of "fighting over crumbs." That argument's mimicking things like the media complaining about people getting disability benefit while schools are underfunded, say, or people getting sex changes on the NHS while some life-saving treatments aren't funded.You don't run the state, so you don't have to choose to cut one thing to fund something else. It's fair enough if you think something should be given extra funding, but any argument you make saying something gets too much funding is just used as justification for the constant cuts to everything.
Fair enough.
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Looking at the bigger picture, resources for education aren't finite in that you should cut uni funding to pay for learning centres - why should resources to pay for these not come from cutting military or weapons funding, or from subsidies to big business?
True, but as you say, i dont work for government and I dont decide where money goes. They set an education budget and I would rather see that spent on community resources and earlier education that serves everyone than on higher education for a relatively wealthy minority. It's not even about their -50% versus the 50+% who dont go, from my point of view. It's about funding for learning resources that are open and available to everyone in the community versus funding for learning resources that are open to -50% of that years school leavers plus a sprinkling of mature students.
And I do have this bitter and unimpressed thing that goes off in my brain when i see wealthy kids (and im sorry but to me students tend to look pretty well off) whining about needing more cash, when i live surrounded by students. Yeh there are really poor students and they are covered by the means testing, and as you say the bar should be higher, but there are a lot of students driving very nice cars and hanging out of the bars that seem to have taken over round here. Why shouldnt those students that are wealthy enough pay towards their education, which puts them in a position of privilege over the rest of us? You say that these days degrees arent worth as much, that even jobs that dont require them will only hire people with them, as if that only affects the students with the degrees. But there are loads of us who dont have degrees, how do you think it affects us? The fact is, even if degrees are less useful than they were, its harder than ever for people without them to get decently paid jobs, because even at low levels we're in competition.
I can see what youre saying, but ive done my time training recent uni leavers while they earn more than me, to work as my manager etc. Ive seen time and time again people -my brother, me, my friends - be overlooked for promotions in shitty jobs that we know inside out and that we rely on for money, to employ the recently qualified in something totally irrelevant. Im just not feeling their pain.
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someone in Africa with no clean running water, malnutrition and HIV might read your post above and say "boo-fucking-hoo." On a relative scale you're not much worse off than any of those people you're slagging off.
True but i dont buy the Africa argument, because we're not competing for the same jobs and they arent part of this countrys class system. On a relative scale I am worse off than those people, and Im better off than others. You cant seriously believe that there is no scale there - that people with no gcses are no worse off than those finishing their second degree, for example? We're not really all at the same level, and no amount of academic theorising that we are all miserable together is going to disguise that. You said back up the top that: "I don't think government can solve problems on behalf of working people - even if it did want to." But you want the government to pay for higher education for all those lucky enough to get there in the first place? I dont understand.
The other issue for me is that I dont really think all degrees are equal, in use or in effort required, and I dont like the way that all jobs seem to be moving towards requiring some sort of professional qualification. I dont like NVQs, i dont like that people cant just teach each other the stuff they know and can do without getting some certificate in teaching adults or whatever, cant just access a free room somewhere to host a course/lecture/training day/debate/whatever just because they want to. I think uni is useful for some stuff but I think really id rather see free education all the way there and all the way through for the important stuff, medical stuff or whatever, for those who prove ability and dedication regardless of background or wealth, and other than that, no more degrees! just community resources for people to learn whatever they like and is relevant to them. to teach whatever they know to whoever wants to listen Less people in uni not more, is what id prefer to see. I dont think the higher education system is healthy in the first place and im really not convinced on the urgency of paying for more of it.
Dec 3 2007 13:28
#30
arf wrote:
id like to see more emphasis on learning for learnings sake than on getting degree certificates to get jobs.
arf wrote:
Why shouldnt those students that are wealthy enough pay towards their education, which puts them in a position of privilege over the rest of us?
the latter is part of undermining the former though. the drive is to turn education into 'an investment in your own human capital' and away from the (unrealised) ideal of universal access as a good thing in itself.
they always seem suspect to me. but thats mainly cos i left school at 16, so it always looks to me like rich kids whining about nothing. i know its not that simple but it still seems a bit not right, i mean ive not noticed them really kick up a fuss or give a shit about the lack of access to either higher education or decent libraries and other resources for all of us who wont likely ever get near a university. our central library here is dire, seriously, they just seem to have the tiniest budget and such limited facilities, and i guess i find it hard to care very much about the kids of wealthy parents having to pay back a fraction of what their educations cost, spread out over several years and only once theyre earning a reasonable wage. i know its not a particularly popular viewpoint, but it just seems like a lot of wailing about entitlement from people who mostly havent noticed theyre actually quite lucky.