Stop the Cuts - National Demonstration

Of course this will ruin him. His life is over.

He might get through it ok, he's pretty young.

While in prison he ought to read The Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist by Alexander Berkman. That would give him some food for thought.

Bit of a resurection
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12499265
"David Willetts has warned that there will be more cuts to higher education if too many universities opt to charge maximum tuition fees"

So uni's can charge up to £9000 if they meet the criteria but if the average charge (across all uni's) goes above £7500 then they all face more cuts, which is why the need to charge so much in the first place (£7000 just to cover the initial cuts). Doesn't seem like they thought this through.

What you talkin bout Willets?

The man with two brains, but hasn't got a heart.

What you talkin bout Willets?

Entirely this.

Like, just.. what?

Well, makes sense really.

Even without the fee rises there is suddenly going to be as hole in the budget, as up to now many people paid at least some part upfront, with the new system all fees are only payed once graduates are earning.

And then adding the increase in fees just makes this much worse.

But at the same time the increase in fees had to happen, and deferring the payment was the only way it was realistically going to happen, many people couldn't afford it otherwise.

So in the short term it's a bad thing for the budget, but in the long term it's better for everyone.

Bit of a resurection
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-12499265
"David Willetts has warned that there will be more cuts to higher education if too many universities opt to charge maximum tuition fees"

So uni's can charge up to £9000 if they meet the criteria but if the average charge (across all uni's) goes above £7500 then they all face more cuts, which is why the need to charge so much in the first place (£7000 just to cover the initial cuts). Doesn't seem like they thought this through.

Sounds like a classic prisoner's dilemma.

Interesting analysis from the Guardian (in an article about Grayling's Bloomsbury experiment):

I blame the Liberal Democrats. Their impact on every coalition policy has been dire, but nowhere more than in abolishing university fees while still pretending they exist. By converting the student cost of a university education into a postponed surtax, and loading the immediate cost on to the Treasury, the coalition relieves thousands of families who could well afford fees from doing so. Why should any parent meet their offspring's future tax liability at age 18?

Yet by implying that fees still exist, the Lib Dems must have deterred thousands of poorer students from applying to university. The policy is as cruel as it is mendacious. To alleviate the mendacity, the Lib Dems have insisted that the government and universities offer extensive bursaries to relieve the nonexistent "fees". Even the president of the national union of students admitted on radio that bursaries were not needed to pay fees but to ease "the perception" of future poverty. This is even if those who are poor need not pay back the fees. The bursaries must be the weirdest tax relief in history, benefiting a class of English person defined not by their own income but by that of their parents long ago.

Nor is this all. Fee abolition will now impose a heavy burden on the Treasury, rising from £25bn to £70bn in three years' time. The student loan company, which carries this debt under government guarantee, forecasts that a full third of it will be unrecoverable. As a result, individual universities have been banned from taking extra students, a nonsense in a recession. The nation finds itself paying a higher bill for fewer students, purely so as to relieve the rich of paying fees. Intake is curbed, with a bias against humanities and "softer" subjects that tend to favour poorer students. The bias is elitist.

The article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/09/ac-grayling-caricatured-british-university-fuming