Quote:
Originally Posted by Margaret Pilkington
Many graduates leave University with a huge millstone of debt around their necks, and with the current financial situation, a lot of them are not going to be earning the money to pay off the debts..and all the while the interest is accruing.
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Student loans are interest free
Only any overdrafts will earn interest and even they tend to be quite generous - banks are kind to students because they shortly become the professionals who are supporting the bank.
The higher and further education systems are both flawed and variable tuition fees are not the answer.
Scrap the EMA for 16-18 year olds. From experience the difference between receiving EMA and not doing is having to get a weekend job whilst in college to pay for your nights out or having the tax payer do it. If the person is from such a background that they need the £30 a week EMA they can get a job to cover it, there is no reason for the tax payer to be doing it.
Similarly, there should be no grants or bursaries for degrees. At ~£3000 a year England provides some of the best value for money education in the world. Interest free loans should be made available to anyone wishing to go to university, removing any barrier to entry, but they should have to pay the reasonable amount to do so, at the age of 18 a person is independent and what financial clout, or lack of, their parents have should have no bearing on the funding available to the student.
Having to actually fund their own degree would make people think twice as to whether they really need that history of art degree from Liverpool Hope. There are too many people going to university due to the stigma of not having a degree, I live with 2 people doing degrees in Photography and 1 doing a degree in Embroidery, both are credible professions but a degree should not be needed to enter such a field, training and practical experience in the form on an apprenticeship should suffice.
I do a Computer Science degree at one of the top CS & Engineering departments in the country and what I am learning should not be taught by a university, it is all practical and whilst it is preparing me well for the job I am going into, it should not be the universities place to do this, it should be done whilst working for a company however when a company has a choice between an unexperienced 18 year old and a graduate who has effectively paid for the training the company should provide, the company is going to take the graduate everytime, laughing at the £50k they've saved.
The majority of professions should not require a degree however the chance of getting into a profession without one is near 0. This needs to change. Don't shorten degrees from 3 to 2 years, but scrap any degree that isn't academic. A degree is not for a vocational subject, there should be specific qualifications for those fields.
Make academia for academics and the problem of funding will go away.