Gutted. Just gutted. And unbelievably angry.

[Nihil]

> Students in universities in England face tuition fees rising to £9,000 per year,
> as the government confirmed plans for higher education.
>
> Fees will rise to £6,000 - with an upper tier of £9,000, if universities ensure
> access for poorer students.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11677862

The current fee is £3,290 per year.

This means that the cost of my eldest son's degree has just been increased by
between 82% and 174% per year.

Similarly for the son who is now studying for his A-levels - also with the
dream of taking his science education further - and who met the previous set of
Browne pronouncements with "I guess we won't be able to afford to send me to
university then". So much for my protestations to the contrary.

I feel sick. I feel betrayed. I feel frustrated. I feel angry.

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Small consolation, but the increase is set for the 2012 academic year

http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/39276

So if your eldest son has started his last, or last but one, year, he'll escape it.

For your other son, I think the way to approach it is "will the degree get him a job that pays enough extra to be able to pay back the loan". Which will depend the area he goes into. Which he may not have decided yet, like most A level students.

This is a huge change for higher education - it's gone from a being a state-subsidised education to making the prospective student look on it as a commercial transaction, despite their inexperience and uncertainty about their future life. This turns it into a market - and like most markets, some people will lose out. Which I don't like to see happen with a once-in-a-lifetime decision.

[Nihil]

2. True

> Small consolation, but the increase is set for the 2012 academic year

Sadly it doesn't apply here (1st year) but thanks for the thought.


> For your other son, I think the way to approach it is "will the degree
> get him a job that pays enough extra to be able to pay back the loan".

That's the theory. It's also getting closer to an outright lie every day.

> Which will depend the area he goes into. Which he may not have decided yet,
> like most A level students.

Yep ...

It's not helped by the plight of his elder brother who is not looking at a
highly-paid job at the end of the degree - simply because increasing the
knowledge-base of a subject is never seen as being as worthy as increasing
short-term profit or increasing kill efficiency.


> This turns it into a market - and like most markets, some people will lose out.

And, like most markets, the only "winners" are the sellers, not the entities
involved in the transaction.


> Which I don't like to see happen with a once-in-a-lifetime decision.

Hence my anger at the decisions being made by out-of-touch politicians in
their totally-subsidised and over-insulated fantasy world.

Thank you for your kind thoughts.

[LeftishBrit]

3. It's disgusting

I hope some of these policies get reversed; a lot of public pressure is needed! I just signed the following petition:

http://www.savethestudent.org/petition-against-uncapped-tuition-fees

[Nihil]

4. Thanks for posting the link! (n/t)

:thumbsup:

[T_i_B]

5. Signed.

It really does piss me off that students are seen as an acceptable group for politicians to shaft at every available opportunity.

[fedsron2us]

6. See if you can get the Liberal Democrat MP Simon Wright to sign it

After all he was happy to back the NUS No Tution Fees pledge when he was defeating Charles Clarke by just 300 votes in 2010

http://www.simonwright.org.uk/news/000147/candidates_pledge_against_student_fees.html

Now it seems he is not so sure

http://www.southnorwichnews.co.uk/news/anger-taken-to-mps-doorstep/

[LeftishBrit]

7. LibDem ministers seem to be hiding from students now!

http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/8629309.Nick_Clegg_pulls_out_of_Union_debate/

[non sociopath skin]

8. Hardly surprising. When the Not-So-Strange Death of the Liberal Democrat Party begins next year ...

... seats near Universities are likely to be the first to fall.

The Skin

[LeftishBrit]

10. There are lots of students in Clegg's constituency, aren't there?

Both Sheffield University and Sheffield Hallam University are there, I believe. He may have some reason to be worried!

[T_i_B]

12. Thanks to boundary changes, not as many as before.

The most studenty areas were moved into Sheffield Central for the last election. This boundary change lead to a closely fought contest in Sheffield Central which Labour won by 165 votes.

There were polling station irregularities in Sheffield and this may be what swung it for Labour in Sheffield Central. However, I don't think that Labour will need that to keep hold of the seat with the Lib Dems in such a hurry to flush their credibility down the toilet.

As to Sheffield Hallam? Clegg has a 15,284 majority and as it's quite a wealthy constituency where people vote Lib Dem in the absence of any credible Tory challenge to Labour I don't see him losing his seat anytime soon.

[ikri]

9. Fees will rise to £6,000 - with an upper tier of £9,000

I'm pretty certain that the original fees were "up to" £3000(ish) & yet pretty much every university charges that upper limit already, is there any doubt that within a couple of years of the new fees coming in the normal fees won't be the maximum?

£9000 per year for a 3 year course before the loan to cover living is simply insane. My first mortgage was for £26000, less than these students will probably end up owing. Plus I knew what I was getting myself in for, most eighteen or nineteen year olds simply will not understand the level of debt that they're getting themselves into.

These proposals are going to saddle graduates with so much debt that they can forget buying their own homes for years, possibly decades, past graduation. We'll end up with a generation of children who cannot afford to leave the family home, cannot afford to move elsewhere for work.

[Al Jilwah]

11. They want us stupid

They want us stupid and uneducated so they can more easily manipulate us.

The only people they want access to college are ivy leagues.

[T_i_B]

13. Nick Clegg slams Universities for charging as much as he said they could

http://newsthump.com/2011/02/10/nick-clegg-slams-universities-for-charging-as-much-as-he-said-they-could/

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg has slammed Cambridge University over its plans to charge tuition fees of £9,000 per year just because he changed the rules so that they can.

Oxford and Cambridge are among the first universities to imply that they will look to charge the most that the coalition has told them they can, provoking Clegg into a stinging rebuke for staying within the new rules.

After facing students Clegg told reporters, “I think it’s an outrage that these universities are taking advantage of the rules I put in place allowing let them do exactly this. I didn’t completely capitulate on my pre-election promise not to raise tuition fees just so universities could raise their tuition fees to an amount we said they could, it’s outrageous.”

“By changing the rules so that universities could charge £9,000 per year it was never my intention that universities could start charging £9,00o per year, especially not the really good ones. I only wish that as the deputy prime minister I had any influence in preventing these universities charging such amounts.”

[non sociopath skin]

14. Ain't it the truth!

So long, Nick, it's been good to know ya ...

The Skin