The Guardian reports:
Teenagers from the wealthiest families would be able to pay for extra places at the most competitive universities under government proposals that could allow institutions to charge some British students the same high fees as overseas undergraduates.
Candidates who take up the extra places would not be eligible for publicly funded loans to pay tuition fees or living costs, limiting this option to all but the most privileged households who could pay fees up front.
So access to education becomes ever more unequal. And some universities (St Andrew's, for example) become ever more like a rather nice finishing school.
They have an excuse, of course.
Ministers argue that the creation of extra places will boost social mobility by freeing up more publicly subsidised places for undergraduates from poorer homes.
And it doesn't stack, of course:
But the proposals are likely to be criticised as a means for the wealthiest to "buy places" at a time when the government is to cut 10,000 publicly funded places.
It still amazes me that the public have not got what this government is about, although equally I concede that it's true that they have not. As this policy shows this government is about creating a jolly nice place for a few where they can have 'fun' whilst being very sure the rest of the population are too burdened by debt, the fear of unemployment and an inability to make ends meet to complain.
To say it makes me angry is an understatement.
I look forward to others getting equally angry.
Then I think things will change.
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Matthew 26:11 (modified) – The ‘rich’ you will always have with you [the b*****ds]
So the rich British kids will take places in British universities that would have gone to rich foreign kids.
So what is the problem?
First: I am not a conservative (small ‘c’ or large ‘c’). I can’t see, however, why this is such a terrible thing.
The Guardian states that these are ‘extra’ places, so they will not be taking away, if their use of language is correct, from the pool of places available to all.
Overseas students have always been able to pay: possibly the number of places available to them will fall. Why should we draw a distinction between overseas rich students and UK rich students?
This provides a route for the UK ‘rich’ to put money into UK universities that otherwise they might well sit on. Agreed, they get a benefit for this, but their wealth will always allow them to access benefits that aren’t open to others. Unless you tax everyone 100% of all resources and then pay them all the same wage, this will always be the case.
This is an essentially pragmatic solution, and whilst it may not seem ‘fair’ that some people have more money than others, in the real world it doesn’t seem an unreasonable way forward.
In the meantime, the real obstacle to any kind of mobility is the new fees that are being brought in in the first place, and more fundamentally the havoc that a national curriculum has wreaked on the state education system.
This matters because equality of opportunity matters and this makes clear that this government does not believe in it
Access to cash is not the basis for building a society
Access to opportunity is
Of course if you don’t believe in society and are happy to see it destroyed then this move is irrelevant
But if you believe that society is the basis for the wealth we share, that society is the basis for a caring community, that society is the basis on which we deliver a sound education policy, that society provides the protection and nourishment that we all need if we are to flourish, and that society is the foundation of our security, which we have a duty to pass onto a children, then you will worry about denying the opportunity to each and every one of those children to develop as a full member of that society. This measure says that some children are worth more than others. That is destructive of all those objectives. And that is why this matters.
I agree the point on equality of opportunity, and fees in the first place are a problem on that front.
That ship has sailed though, (in part because of the increase in the take-up of degrees that do not offer a student a great deal in the real world post university) and fees are, sadly, here to stay.
In that context, I don’t think there is much benefit in actively preventing those who are already well off paying fees up front or paying for a place that would otherwise go to an overseas student.
And so society slowly fractures…..
If we have any interest at all in equality of opportunity surely we need to begin with the quality of state education in poor areas.
I know it is changing the subject but any ‘positive discrimination’ at university entry is a tawdry attempt to hide the bad deal all poorer children get from their state education.
Let us not forget those who don’t get a chance at any university place, personally bought or not.
I buy that
The problem with this policy is that we will get the dumb rich kids, just as we are getting the second serving of rich foreign sturdents (the UK only started to attract significant numbers of non-EU students when the US tightened the screws on students’ visa issuance).
Any student for who money is not an option will obvioulsly first apply for college in the United States where they can receive vastly superior education to anything on offer in the UK, so that if/when they eventually come back they will be at a significant advantage to those who stayed here. The problem is that only the brightest among them will be admitted. The rest will have no option but to remain in the UK and use their financial advantage to secure places in local universities.
Until someone can demonstrate that the policy of allowing students to buy their way in British undergraduate education can help transform the university system and help it compete with international schools, I suggest we handle this with extreme care.