January 27, 2004
Mmmm, debt
Blair wins topup fees vote (BBC News)
Following the success of my last attempt at using this blog as a soapbox to disagree with a popular opinion, I thought, y'know, why not try it again? :-)
So, less than 3 years after winning an election where they promised not to introduce so-called "topup fees" for university students, our esteemed government have decided that, well, actually maybe they're not such a bad idea after all. The vote was close, with a significant rebellion from Labour MPs voting against the government, but at the end of the day not close enough. You have to wonder, how much faith can we put in the manifesto pledges of New Labour (or any party) at election time, if barely halfway through their term they're already breaking them.
This isn't, mind, to say I'm especially against the idea of topup fees. I'm all for the idea of students (and yes, I include myself here) paying a bit more towards the cost of the expensive education they receive; my only proviso to that is that the payments would have to be collected after the student has started reaping the rewards of their extra education, conventionally understood to be a higher salary on average than their peers without degrees earn. The topup fees scheme appears to work like this, with payments being collected in a similar manner to student loan repayments, so that's fine by me.
What I don't want to see, and what this bill allows for, is differential fees between universities, or even between courses. The process of choosing a university is hard enough already — adding this extra factor can only make it more so. I'm reasonably certain I wouldn't have bothered applying to Oxford if it was, say, £500 a year more expensive than other places. It simply wouldn't have been worth it. I'm less certain of how far I'd have applied this philosophy; perhaps I'd have simply chosen to go to UCLAN or some other recent-ex-polytechnic instead.
An entirely different issue, but related, is that of the (up to) £1100 students' parents are currently expected to pay towards their fees. That part of my university fees, I'm strongly against — I don't see why my parents should be expected to cough up for my education like that, not once I'm an adult living away from home. Still, maybe if the topup fees thing takes off they can stop levying that bit, or something. I'm not holding my breath though.
Posted by James at 20:02
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Comments
I am against having to pay extra for my degree course. My three younger siblings will more than likely go to uni and don't feel that they should have to cough up £20K after they finish.
Posted by: Nicky at January 28, 2004 10:25 AM
But why? It's not as if they'd have to pay it off the night they finish their degree, or anything.
Sure, it's a lot of money to pay back, but the cost has to be recouped from /somewhere/ -- if it's not recouped through higher fees, it'll be (logically) through higher taxes, and I don't see why non-graduates should have to foot the bill for us lucky 40% or whatever to be educated further.
Posted by: James at January 28, 2004 10:46 AM