There’s been a lot in the news recently about Tony Blair’s new policy for university tuition fees. Not sure if anyone who reads this regularly is not familiar with how it all works over here at the moment, so before I launch into my opinion on the matter, first I’ll give a brief summary of how it used to work and how it currently works.
Before, a distinct minority went to university and received grants to do this. Universities were paid directly by the government for all the UK students that they had and Local Education Authorities gave maintenance grants to all students (not just those who couldn’t afford fees) for living expenses, textbooks, computers etc etc. The specifics of the grant were determined by a number of factors, including whether you were in London area (more expensive) or not.
Currently, many more people go to university once they have finished A-levels (although not all those who attend school go on to do A-levels post-16) than previously. In my humble opinion, the increase in numbers is partly due to the changing job market in the UK (almost all manufacturing jobs have gone now) and also to the move a few years (??) ago to make all polytechnics (colleges, more vocationally focused) into universities, in name if not in standard. A few years ago “top-up” fees were introduced, which help to close the gap in what the government provides for these students and what the universities actually need. These are paid by the students (or in practice, usually their parents) and are means tested in case of hardship. Someone who really can’t afford them won’t have to pay them. Also, maintenance grants have disappeared and students now get loans from the government, which are automatically deducted from them once they start working and earning over a certain amount.
Under Tony Blair’s new scheme, fees would triple (and possibly really start to close the gap in what education costs and what the universities actually get) for students themselves. They would then be in much more debt (estimates are around ?25k per student, for a 3-4 yr course) and this would be paid off once they are working. It has been shown though, that for certain courses where graduates do not earn significantly more once they have finished the course there will be people who work their entire lives to just pay off the interest on these loans, rather than any of the capital. Obviously not an ideal situation. Most of this is because of the Labour party’s stated intention to have 50% of young people going to university after leaving school.
I can understand why Blair has proposed all this. I can also understand why the National Union of Students is getting so upset. There are a number of problems with this implementation of plans to help ease the burden of further education. Personally, however, I really do think that they are shooting at the wrong targets.
Firstly, if you want 50% of kids to go to university, then your university degree has turned into something that it shouldn’t be. Going to university isn’t about teaching you specific skills for a specific job. Yet for so many people this is why they go to university and what their university course aims to teach them. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t want 50% of our school-leavers to go into jobs that require them to use their brains. Just that possibly bringing back an intermediate qualification (like the “diploma” that some countries have from technical colleges), would be a more useful way of getting these students from A-level to a further qualification and on into the job market. This would massively reduce the number of students going to university (which, traditionally has had a much more academic focus) and make the funding picture look very different.
Now, the first argument against this is that then the university-goers are an elite. Granted, this will happen. I think that this is a “better elite” (if such a thing exists) than that created by Blair’s plans, where only rich kids will feel they can afford university, leaving many able & clever kids going straight into dead-end jobs because they can’t face the risk of that much debt from the outset. An elite created because some want to do a more vocational degree than an academic one would be much less of a social issue, IMHO.
This would also solve some of the funding crisis. I’m currently studying Computer Science, at a traditional academic university. My course takes three years, partly because the focus is at more of an abstract level. If all they needed to do was teach me how to program in C, Java, HTML, PHP, some object-oriented design, databases and a smattering of software engineering, then I’m sure I could be in, educated and out the door into the job market in a year. So this would reduce the cost of getting me educated and into a job by two thirds. I think this could be done for a large number of courses and would do a lot for the university funding and also for the students involved. Even if the government claims to want no stratification in education, there is blatant stratification in the job market and perhaps it would be sensible to stream people a little better earlier on.
Why not do this for all degree courses (or all universities)? Well, because we still need academic development. Some people have a lot to contribute to their given disciplines … we need researchers, lecturers and people to take new developments into the business world. To me, this is the role of a traditional university. The sort of stratification I’m proposing has been implemented with great success in a number of countries, particularly in Europe.
But the proposals will be voted on soon … and such massive reform of the entire system is likely to be hugely expensive and not something Labour will embark on lightly. So what happens if the plans go ahead? My prediction would be that exactly the same thing will happen. People will figure out for themselves that not everyone needs to go to uni for 3 years and that possibly vocational training would be a better bet. Unfortunately many will be scared off and this will be a bitter loss for the UK economy. At first the rich will form an elite and eventually steps will be taken to re-open the academic experience to those with the brains to match, rather than the wallets. And in ten years time we’ll be working under the sort of system I describe … where a school-leaver has a number of choices …. and hopefully a lot of help deciding what will be the best plan for them.
[NOTE: I’m classed as an overseas student for fees purposes, so none of this affects me directly. I already pay very significant fees and get no student loan, so have bank debt to face rather than the lovely repayments my fellow classmates face. I’m trying to take an objective look at the education system in the UK and look at possible solutions, not support a particular party or whatever. Just FYI so flames are well directed 😉 ]
Comments (6) Permalink
January 12th, 2004 at 9:51 AM
It’s already possible to do a substantial chunk of a degree in one year. See, for example, the Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science:
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/DeptInfo/Diploma/
Of course, you can’t do this unless you’ve already done a degree in something else, and such a degree will teach you an awful lot of skills that appear on no syllabus, such as the ability to learn effectively from textbooks or to write good essays.
January 12th, 2004 at 11:07 AM
Fair point, Rich. I think that this sort of thing will get more and more common and that undergraduate equivalents will appear as well. And personally I found those “extra skills” potentially the most valuable things I ever learnt (I taught myself A-levels and also haven’t got the most fantastic lecture attendance rates, because I always have at least one part-time job so I can stay at uni…)
January 14th, 2004 at 6:45 AM
I seem to remeber from the fees forms filled out at the begining of Uni (unless government policy has been playing BB with the past/my brain is fried) that universities are not just getting the 1K, that the “full fees” that overseas students pay, are actually payed by all students, however the LEA of the student subsidises this money. Therefore I would like to ask how a university can burn the ammount of money that someone going to public (paid) school on university students. Admitedly the requirements of the departments may be more than that of a well equiped high school department. But what a public school provides for this money is far more than what the university provides for the same money, so I would like to ask where this money is going and why they are asking for more.
(For a figure for you, if there are 3000 undergraduates at Bath, that’s 30 Million per year, just from UGs, not including research grants, patents, accomodation profits, fees from postgraduate programs, leasing university facilities to outside organisations).
January 14th, 2004 at 7:25 AM
This is a second completely different point talking on the value of university. Speaking from personal experience, the academic and status symbols of university to me are secondary to the benefits of merely being at university. The people I have had the privalage of meeting, the whole life experience of being in university has been like a flowering for me. It has been an oppertunity like no other and I know if I had gone straight into the job market, I wouldn’t be here as I am today.
I am not knocking my academic gains at university, which are also useful in the capitalist world. The teaching style as mentioned gives a far more adaptable skill base than a specific skill based course.
What I am trying to say is that university is more than just a course, its a life experience, that should be open to everyone.
I believe that all who can go to university(or some kind of higher education built within a university system) should have the option to do so.
January 14th, 2004 at 9:34 AM
Yes, but if its costing you ?25k is it really worth it just for the experience? To be in debt until you’re 40? I think that many people will think it is not worth the price.
In relation to your first point, according to the first article (I think — or possibly some other info; ask Google) the universities are actually only getting around ?5k total per home student. They reckon that uni year on average costs them ?8k … so this means that all the overseas students are subsidising, but there still isn’t enough money. This is because the government has reduced funding whilst increasing the number of students.
I agree that in an ideal world everyone who wants to go to tertiary education should be able to do so. But unless taxes are raised significantly (as some countries, for instance Sweden, do) or universities find other forms of funding (e.g. Cambridge and the William Gates agreement), then it’s unfortunately just not possible.
January 20th, 2004 at 12:30 AM
I seem to hav come to a similar conclusion, before reading you piece, here.
If only my writing didn’t suck!