EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

But students only have to pay back if they earn above the income threshold and unpaid loans expire eventually too. Not everyone will actually pay the full amount. Plus, free university education disproportionately benefits the middle class, because their children make up a large part of the student population and the saving is meaningfull to them.

I got the impression the Lib Dems would have communicated it in those terms if they had been able to do so. But they basically got bullied in the coalition, and no doubt it suited Cameron and Osborne to secure the revenue from a 'graduate tax' as a contribution to austerity, while also taking the opportunity to let Clegg get a kicking for it all.

Yes, it was considered that, on balance, the middle classes might be able to afford fees, and that reinvesting that money into early education could potentially have a significant impact on the lives of those who traditionally might not have benefited from much schooling. So, genuinely a redistributive policy.

Correct but a £24K student loan is not insignificant.

Where I studied (Netherlands) years ago your parents must give you X if they refuse the government gives it. Then you can borrow Y for cheap at the government. Uni fees were £2000 they are a bit more now.

So in most cases parents paid part, the loans did the rest, I had to pay back £500 for 10 years. My parents paid the fees. But £8k a year they could have just about managed, maybe but I can't. I'm saving just in case my son goes to uni.

I agree with fees and redistribution but the middle class also is the main tax base and there's only so much squeezing one can do.

I wonder if it pays off in the end with defaulted loans. Maybe free education with more progressive taxation fills the pot better.

Lfgss economics chat then :)

I heard something on the radio about it recently. According to the show, the fact that all these loans are being made but most will never be fully repaid is just kicking the can down the road - it means that the books are balanced for now, but future governments will have to deal with the shortfall of all the loan money that was given out but not repaid in however many years' time.

Government expects (source https://www.nao.org.uk/report/the-sale-of-student-loans/) that only 55% of loans will be paid back. At 52% or so (IIRC), it no longer becomes a positive thing on the balance sheet.

That's interesting. I benefited from a free university education, and admittedly would find paying for tuition now a less-than-welcome prospect.

The reason I raised the point is not so much to champion the idea itself, but rather to show a different perspective on a policy that has been universally criticised. Its overall intentions were never articulated at the time (for whatever reason), and had I not heard Nick Clegg talk about it, I would not have been able to appreciate it in a different light.

This is interesting (as ever) from John Curtice's crew

https://whatukthinks.org/eu/a-question-of-wording-another-look-at-polling-on-a-second-referendum/

(And more generally interesting on how the wording of questions influences survey outcomes, and the difficulty of determining trends from different sets of polling data)

Paying off an actual student loan is just like paying a higher rate of tax. I earn fuck all, so am currently paying £20 per month. This won't cover the interest on the loan, so I doubt it will ever be paid off.
My issue is the publicity and naming of it, to deliberately put off potential students from low income backgrounds.

My understanding was that it was designed so that a reasonable % of the loans are eventually written off, but provide an ongoing income for a good period in between, and the increased fees helped to balance that.

Selling off the loan books once most of the easy to collect bits, and people who are just going to pay back have done so is also a part of the plan (see the sales for the 2 tranches so far) as far as I can see.

I'd be very wary of believing any of Clegg's retrospective justifications. He simply showed appallingly bad political judgement throughout all of this.

There was some research on fullfacts (not a bad site, though always read more than one source) that lower income students were not put off by the loans.

Perhaps counterintuitive, I would be, but there you go :)

It's a negative in terms of perception of what a University education is for, in that it encourages students to believe themselves customers who are investing in themselves in order to make more money than if they did not go. University should be about an education - not about a future financial transaction.

If I was looking at University now I would assume that I'd be balancing the average student debt of 50k against my chosen course being 7 years instead of 3 (Architecture), and therefore a total debt load of 100k before I started working properly. An average salary for an Architect is ~77k, which isn't bad - but that's a lot of debt to shoulder and a significant tax burden to pay it back.

Contrast that with Fine Art BA then MA - same debt load, unsure what the salary/earning potential would be.

my experience is all anecdotal but I work with a lot of people without degrees that discourage their children from going to Uni because its not worth having the debt 'hanging over your head' because 'you'll never pay it off and be able to save for a house' - this is all bollocks, and the idea that its designed so that you may never it pay off, you just pay what is affordable, and it doesn't affect credit ratings etc is just not known by a lot of people.

If I was looking at University now I would assume that I'd be
balancing the average student debt of 50k against my chosen course
being 7 years instead of 3 (Architecture), and therefore a total debt
load of 100k before I started working properly. An average salary for
an Architect is ~77k, which isn't bad - but that's a lot of debt to
shoulder and a significant tax burden to pay it back.

Contrast that with Fine Art BA then MA - same debt load, unsure what
the salary/earning potential would be.

Indeed. What happened to education for the sake of education? Everything is now viewed and valued only through an economic lens and, thats, like, just wrong, man.

Try fucking up an engineering degree for 3 years, then doing an Archaeology BA, then an MSc. Luckily I only came out with £18k of SLC debt (Masters was a £2k postgraduate bank loan).

Were I still an Archaeologist, I'd probably not have paid anything off, even at 36. As it stands I have a very decent job and cleared my SLC loan last year.

Had I taken the same education path today, that loan would have been many times greater.

we can't have working class people going to university willy ruddy nilly in much the same way as you can't expect someone with a public school education to sign up for a plumber's apprenticeship!

etc.

I heard from friends who worked in government that for a period of time there was an idea in policy-making circles that a bit of student debt would desensitise students to taking out loans and make them more entrepreneurial. I kid you not.

Fine Art BA then MA

I have this

what the salary/earning potential would be.

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The universal currency!

Aside from everything else, it seems like such a terrible way to teach 18 year olds how to manage cash: borrow a fuckton of it, but don't worry, nothing bad will happen if you don't pay it back.

A lot of uni degree requiring jobs don't pay that well, so if you want to make uni a business transaction, it is a loss making one (loan never gets paid, person also can't save up as leftovers are for the loan) so then why study anything that is not IT/Engineering/some other studies?

Or then it becomes for rich kids only. I am too practical a person and studied IT as the NI wages for IT VS cost of living are good. But I draw for fun, I would never study it as you can't make a living (aside from teaching, maybe) so if everybody approaches it that way [no rich parents here], bye bye art schools.

Nursing: The wages are so low, it doesn't pay off really. And that is the NHS we are talking about, not exactly that we don't need it!

The Open University is loads cheaper btw and pretty good, but you have to be able to go it alone. I would not have minded an apprenticeship but there are few here in IT (more coming) and usually only for under 25s (though there are a few exceptions) and maybe more will come.

I also don't understand why so often an HND is not accepted, a lot in IT is learned on the job. Ah well.

One of the problems IMV with the UK's employment system isn't so much the education system itself but the value put in degrees by employers. Many employers and professions treat a degree as an entry ticket to the Graduate Club, and you have to be a member before getting the job even if the degree has no relevance to the job you'll be expected to do which is only ever learned vocationally. To join my profession, one of the requirements is that you have to have a 2:2 or better degree. Doesn't matter what it's in, you just have to have a degree. If it isn't in law, you have to do a law conversion course, to teach yourself about the law, but you can't just do the conversion course, you have to do a degree first. Never worked out a convincing reason why, other than snobbery and an entrenched class system.

i think degree level education is as important as GCSEs or A-Levels, and they should all be compulsory. I think it should teach people that an improved economic position is not the most important thing - currently even A-level choices and results are judged by your ability to get a good job, rather than a better understanding of the world, a maturity of outlook and sensible decision making skills.
As it is, only middle class kids get the luxury of doing something they enjoy, studying something they want to study. that's why the country is full of fuckwits.

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You could always try this, which apparently doesn't require any intelligence, let alone a degree

worked in government ... in policy-making circles