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Maybe all the poorer peoople should send their kids off to private schools? After all, 15k a year for each child would be nothing compared to their future earning potential.
Education, like health, is a basic human need imo, and should not be engineered into the preserve of the privileged.Nor should it be Reet.
Nowadays, if a person is good enough to go to uni, then he goes, whether they are rich or poor. Unlike years gone by.
My mother (daughter of a brick layer in council housing) was even refused a place at grammar school. Despite having exactly the same results of a friend with richer parents, who went.
My brother and I went to a comprehensive school in the 80’s. There was little incentive for me to work hard, as my father wanted me to join him carpet fitting. Did not even go and get my exam certificates. My brother got 10 O levels and 4 A levels and went to uni at Loughborough (Electronics and electrical engineering). In his year, at least 4 pupils of our comprehensive went on to Oxbridge. I don’t believe going to private school neccessarily makes your brain work harder. Fact is those who go to private schools usually come from brainy families who earn enough to send their kids to private schools. Therefore, they are more likely to be brainy themselves. Granted there are good and bad comprehensives, with good and bad teachers and it is more of a lottery.
Brother Jim paid nothing towards his education, and yet I as a trainee carpet fitter paying tax contributed to it in an infinitely small way. He is now a high wage earner with his own company. Shouldn’t a rich git pay for at least some of his education?
Value Is EverythingI’ve just deleted a large swathe of stuff in response to some of the earlier replies as Gingertipster has made the point for me in a subsequent post about his brother.
What I will add, in response to Reet Hard’s earlier post is that healthcare and education are NOT free. When politicians (particularly those on the left) stop regurgitating this lie and realise someone picks up the tab for all state spending, then perhaps we can move on.
Unless you’re unemployed or of school age, you pay TAXES – remember. Taxes – have a look at your wage slip and ask yourself what do your taxes and NI contributions help pay for?
Tax/NI contributions pay for the healthcare of the people until they die (in theory) and the education of their children up until age 18. – it certainly isn’t free. If it wasreally
free, then the country would NOT need to make cuts and we’d not be in financial difficulty.
At what age should we stop subsidising education? 20, 40, 60…until they draw their old-age pension?.
My daughter is 17. Next year she has a choice (assuming she wants to go to Uni).
1) Get good grades – and hopefully go to a good Uni and study for a degree that will enhance her later earnings potential. If it does and she earns good money, why should the taxpayer be they binman or barista have had to subsidise her? (See Gingertipster’s post)
or
2) Get poor grades and scrape into a Uni on a dodgy course that won’t enhance her earnings potential. So, assuming she never earns £21k+ the taxpayer will then kop for the £30k+ cost of it. How can that be fair?I doubt if those who have disgareed with me will change their minds, no matter what I say; that’s fair enough. But it really does sadden me that there may be bright, working class kids who would thrive at Uni and go on to have a great career, who won’t be given the chance because of the scaremongering hyperbole of the left and the chip-on-shoulder rhetoric of so many. The fees are not a burden if you choose a worthwhile degree course. Value for money.
Why do the lefties and "socialists" want the binmans’ taxes to pay for tertairy education for societies future highest earners?
No one has yet, to my satisfaction, answered that – although an earlier poster, to their credit did try to.Why do the lefties and "socialists" want the binmans’ taxes to pay for tertairy education for societies future highest earners?
If a binman wants his kid to go to Unni his child should have the same opportunity as a higher earners child, that is only right. The binmans child shouldnt be ‘put off’ going to unni because his low-life father cannot pay off his massive debt at the end of his 3yr course, I think that, maybe you disagree, I don’t know.
Only joking ..
You have to have a degree to be a nurse. my sisterinlaw is a nurse and her top line is around £30K. A mate of mine’s wife is a teacher, she earns £27K .. not even in the supertax bracket. Hardly high earners.
I have to agree though there are too many daft degrees out there and something needs to be done about all the silliness.
I would think that there must be a fairer way of culling the unni population other than simply pricing people of of the market. Surely the white-van-man types must see that?
A little bird tells me that the fee rise thing with the disgraceful liberals and the odious tories is merely a ruse to cover the dark workings of the european commisariat .. ‘all students from all countries shall be allowed education in all countries which lie within the euro-dominion’ .. the fee rise is designed to stave off the invasion of the bulgars, their coniving lies will come out in the end.
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Insomniac
Of course education isn’t free, neither is health-care; it’s just plain wrong, however, that survival in either should only go to those most able to purchase it, (which is where both services are headed, however you dress it up).
Having borne much of the cost (as it was then) of putting our own 2 kids through Uni at around the same time – and scraping through on a middle-management salary during the meanwhile – I’d doubt we’d have been able to under the proposed regime, or that our children would have wished us to do so.
Scratch 2 bright young professionals from the country’s future (you might find out soon, there’s much more to supporting students than tuition fees), then multiply that by the tens of thousands of households in a similar position, and you may begin to see that we’re talking of something far more basic than politics or prejudice – the simple right of everyone to have an equal chance.Dave Jay – love the avatar.
Reet Hard and Dave J. I’m in agreement with you that it’s easy for the rich to pay off their childrens’ university costs and therefore there introduction (by New Labour) is no disincentive at all to their offspring going to Uni. That that isn’t quite such a straightforward decision for those less well-off (like me) I agree is clearly the case too.
As I’ve said before, equality-of-opportunity is what we should aim for. Educationally, the opportunity to go to uni is based on academic acheivement not parental wealth – ie get the grades to get the offer for the University course; your family wealth won’t come in to it.
I repeat – UK uni admission is based on grades not wealth.
The rich can always pay off debts.
Any argument against charges based simply on the mantra that "it’s not fair, the rich won’t have any trouble paying it" is muddle-headed. It’s always the case that the rich won’t have any trouble paying "it" – whatever that "it" might be (rates / mortgage / trainers fees /university fees etc.). The intellectual case for expecting the binmans’ taxes to pay for the tertiary education of others doesn’t exist. Providing the charges aren’t prohibitive and are payable on an "ability-to-pay" basis -as they are – then the students (and/or their families) should bear the cost. University is NOT compulsory; if you make a choice to do a degree course – choose one that is value for money and take the financial responsibilty for that decision yourself. Choose a cr@p degree course that’s worth two-fiths of naff-all and you’ve even less of a case to expect the binmans taxes to pay for it.
The days of getting something for nothing are gone (if they ever existed at all). New Labour by their rash, unthought-through expansion of universities and student numbers have reduced the value of many degrees so that they’re not value-for-money ; rather like the Jockey Club quadrupling the number of Group One races.
We, as a society, seem to be wedded to the idea that we can suck on the state (or rather the taxpayers’) teat for anything and everything. The NHS and education up to 18 yes, fair enough, the taxpayer must fund this. But University Degree courses for those expecting (by virtue of their priviliged tertairy eductaion) to be higher than average earners? I don’t think so.(With regards to the degree for nursing and the wages a nurse might expect to earn. Can’t say I know that much about Nursing, but a number of things spring to mind, some may be illogical/impractical but here goes):-
i) It should not be necessary to get a degree to train as a nurse
ii) For essential services that DO need a degree but where potential earnings aren’t significantly rewarding
(nursing perhaps) – maybe – just maybe – greater subsidy for university tuition than for other subjects.
iii) Up Nurses’ wagesSome have argued that the fact that nurses have to be educated to degree level is behind a lot of the neglect in hospitals these days. They have been educated to be "mini doctors" (cheaper than an actual doctor,) and now don’t want to do the basics like making sure the patients are fed and have clean bums.
I think that University education should be subsidised to some extent but that it is ludicrous to aspire to 50% of young people going to University, they are not all intelligent enough, the drop out rate is too high – but hey it keeps them off the unemployment figures for 3 years which is why it is popular with governments past and present.
Liddlebidapolitics
Under the current system, university fees for nursing degrees are paid for by the NHS.
As I understand it this will remain the same.
My daughter has just been accepted (subject to her A Level grades) for Nursing College next year – so she won’t be paying a penny for her degree
does that come with some kind of "pay us back if you drop-out / don’t pass / don’t work as a nurse after qualifying" ?
around the world, military scholarships are often a way to get an education paid for by others, though restricted to "useful" subjects.
Wit, there appears to be no conditions to the fees being paid or being required to be paid back under the circumstances you list (the missus and daughter know all about it so I could ask them, but as they are both experts in using 50 words when only 2 will do and as it’s Christmas I can’t be doing with it
) – in fact there is nothing to stop someone from graduating then becoming a ‘Bank’ nurse for a private company and being sub contracted to the NHS.Student nurses are also entitled to a NHS Bursary, although this is means tested and in our case she will only get about a grand a year – still better than a kick up the ass and the 45K debt that these working class Tories/petite bourgeoisie
are happy for their kids to start working life with.Nice one Pete !!
.. although I’m sure a few of our liberaltive posters on here will be livid that she’s not getting landed with a life stopping amount of debt lol.
I still fail to see how 45k is a life stopping amount of debt at such an early age with the potential to earn a decent salary for many years..
21k a year is not a bad salary at all for young people just starting out in their working lives, it took me well over 10 years to get above that salary….
Instead of looking at it and thinking their life is over with a 45k debt before it has even started, why not look at it and forget about the figure of a 21k salary and the 45k debt… knock off 2k of that what you are going to be paying back per year and think to yourself you are starting out with a job with great potential future earnings and prospects and starting at 19k. Through all the time you are repaying you are just going to be on a salary 2k a year less than you would have been…
There is millions of people up and down the land who would give their right arm for a salary of 19k a year, I’ve friends, family, neighbours, etc…who are struggling to get jobs and struggling to provide for their families and would love to be on that kind of money and could do a hell of a lot with it.
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I’ve friends, family, neighbours, etc…who are struggling to get jobs and struggling to provide for their families and would love to be on that kind of money and could do a hell of a lot with it.
And how many of them will be sending their kids to university?
None
I was under the impression that the kids were the ones who would be paying for it, out of their 21k salary (or 19k) if you look at it the way I am.
When they’ve paid the cost back and are instantly 2k a year better off they can then start helping their broke parents out aswell….
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There’ll be thousands of kids from similar backgrounds who won’t be going to university, and it has little to do with academic ability – (nor New Labour, for that matter, Insomniac).
) – in fact there is nothing to stop someone from graduating then becoming a ‘Bank’ nurse for a private company and being sub contracted to the NHS.
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