Quote:
Originally Posted by Matt D
Well, I think the Doctors & Lawyers will be able to afford it 
Plus, of course, as mentioned earlier, the salary threshold for loan repayment is being increased (above the pathetic level Labour set it at), so although the fees will be higher than at the moment, graduates will also have to be earning a fair bit more than they have to earn now before they start re-paying the loans.
The Government never gave its word not to increase fees. It also was not responsible for commissioning the Browne Report into higher education funding, which actually recommended unlimited fees - the previous Government commissioned it.
If Labour had won the GE in May, the Browne report would still have come back saying "We think fees should be unlimited", and the Labour Government would still have had the same tough decisions to make that the Tory/LibDem Coalition Government has had to make: Where do we get the money from... |
Agree. Tough as it may seem (and our eldest will probably be affected) the decision is realistic and would likely have been made whoever won the election as the current system is not sustainable.
Of course none of that will wash with those who blindly oppose whatever savings are made and seem to want to carry on spending money we don't have and our children will have to pay back. That's probably because they're still in denial about the size of the mess the previous government got us into. They're often big on rhetoric when it comes to denouncing whatever the current government does but seem to go very quiet when confronted about what the other lot would have done or how they'd suggest HMG deals with the problems we face.
Anyway, hopefully this might better focus the minds of our students as to which courses are really worth doing and indeed whether university is the right option for them as opposed to almost a default choice. I'm sure I heard on the radio that universities are going to have to publish performance figures and, if so, all this should help students make better judgements on what and where to study. I think that in recent years too many universities have sprung up that aren't offering value for money and I think if students are going to be left in so much debt they ought at least to be assured that they're getting the quality of education they're paying for and have some redress if they don't get it.