University Fees

Now back in the day before there was all this talk of paying fees, top up fees and student loans to pay for going to university there was this thing called a grant. Hard as it is to believe you applied to go to university and if you got accepted then you also applied for a grant, the amount dependent on your parental income and whether or not you were studying at home or further afield, and this maintenence grant was given on top of your university fees being payed for you.

I was quite lucky in that i caught the tail end of those halcyon days, was the autumn of 1996 that i began my university adventure. I recall my mum and elder sister talking about how pitiful the grant was these days, barely more than in their time(possibly exaggerating a touch), a sign of things to come. By the 1998 intake that grant was gone and people had to pay for their fees and take out student loans. I think that the current situation in Scotland is that you can now get fees paid for you but still for most students loans are what pays their way.

Now i'm led to believe that the number of people that attend university has increased greatly over the years, so it is no suprise that the price of paying for them has become something of a burden for governments. Access to university is a good thing and while it has brought problems paying for it, isn't university education meant to benefit society as a whole as well as the individual?

I don't forsee any return to getting your fees paid and a maintenence grant on top in the forseeable future so i'll concentrate on the current debate. It was an opinion piece with the byline, "'Free' education is a tax on the poor to benefit the middle class and will not help Scotland in a competative global market, writes Steven Schwartz," that got me thinking about all this. Free education a tax on the poor? Surely free education is more likely to benefit the poor? I guess it can only benefit people from poor backgrounds if you get them into university in the first place, there was no figures on this but i reckon less people from poor backgrounds are getting into university than those from middle class or more affluent ones. Ok i can see some logic in that theory. If we add to this the rising cost of funding university education then possibly we do need to have individuals pay something towards the cost. Although i might add that if the government can find billions for nonsense like ID schemes, waste money on the millenium dome, nevermind the millions it spends on export credit guarantee department(ECGD) then it coul possibly better served going into higher education and at least minimise the cost for those wishing to go to university.

I could probably live with such a system if it was fair, you go to university work hard and graduate with a degree and get yourself a job once you leave the academic world. You start earning more than you could have possibly got without going to university and begin paying back the cost of the fees over a period of time. The money goes back into upkeep and running of universities, you've got yourself a good quality of life and the universities are well funded and can continue to provide quality education for all.

However the amount you earn which triggers of loan/fee repayment is currently set at about £15,000 per year. This for me is a rediculously low figure, you can easily be £15,000 in debt before you start work. That is an amount that will make many people think twice, particularly if they are coming from a poorer background, can't rely on much parental support, absolutely need to work part time to support themselves while trying to meet the demands of full time education. One can quite easily get work in a call centre for not to dissimilar amounts of money, in my view £15,000 a year triggering repayment is just to low an ammount. Indeed someone who graduates as a teacher is far less likely to make the same sort of money as a lawyer or business graduate who goes into even the heady heights of middle management. If there is to be repayment on fees when you start earning a certain amount it should be the kind of money that doesn't make fee/loan repayment look like a daunting prospect. Say 22,000 plus per year?

Certainly it should be a figure that most people will think, i can't earn that without going to university, therefore it is definately financialy worth my while to enter higher education. So much for learning for learning sake, i guess that everything nowadays has a price.