The ConDems just don’t get the absurdity of their proposals on university fees. I’m not saying Labour did either (except in Wales and Scotland) but as the Guardian notes:
A review of higher education funding due out this week is expected to recommend that universities should be allowed to charge higher tuition fees and that the interest rate on student loans should increase.
Reports today suggested the review by Lord Browne would recommend abolishing the cap on fees, currently set at £3,290, and allowing the market to decide the cost of a degree.
I guess I should declare lots of interests: I have a degree, largely paid for by the state; I have young sons who may one day go to university (but who knows?). I want to live in a civilised society, where learning is valued for learning’s sake. And where all have equal access to it.
But there’s more to it than that. In ‘Making Pensions Work’ I wrote:
It is our suggestion that [current pension arrangements] ignore the fundamental pension contract that should exist within any society. This is that one generation, the older one, will through its own efforts create capital assets and infrastructure in both the state and private sectors which the following younger generation can use in the course of their work. In exchange for their subsequent use of these assets for their own benefit that succeeding younger generation will, in effect, meet the income needs of the older generation when they are in retirement. Unless this fundamental compact that underpins all pensions is honoured any pension system will fail.
This capital is not just financial capital: indeed, financial capital is an artifice that is, as I argue in ‘Making Pensions Work’, unsuited for pension use. The capital in question is the real capital that underpins an economy: that is tangible productive assets such as buildings and equipment, knowledge as to how to make things work — which is rarely created by multinational corporations, and it is human capital, but perhaps most important of all it is social capital.
What is human capital? It is “stock of competences, knowledge and personality attributes embodied in the ability to perform labour so as to produce economic value. It is the attributes gained by a worker through education and experience.”
But social capital is a wider definition: it is “ the pattern and intensity of networks among people and the shared values which arise from those networks”.
And of course we can charge the young for their education. And of course we can deny many the education they want. And of course we can burden them with debt so their lives are a misery. And of course an elite with wealth can miss out on all that stress of debt. But in the process we destroy human capital, which is vital. And more important still we do irreparable harm to social capital. We destroy the link between generations. We fail to invest in the young and demand they invest in us.
But their retribution will be simple: why should they provide us with pensions when we failed to provide them with the capital they needed when it was necessary to do so? If that relationship fails the sting will be in the tail — and it will be on those who are imposing the charges now.
Of course that won’t matter to the ConDems — they are all wealthy enough to ignore the issue. But for ordinary people this policy is another policy nightmare and yet more evidence of the fact that, as someone put it to me yesterday, these people are intent on “screwing up not just now, but for time immemorial”.
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“Reports today suggested the review by Lord Browne…”
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=409011
Since the report was commissioned by the Labour government, perhaps wait until the Condems comment on the report’s suggestions.
The tragedy is that if university places were once again resevred only for those who can benefit from it, you could scrap tuition fees and go back to grants.
If you have half the population going to university there’s only one person who can pay for it – the student. Simples.
@Steve Coyle
No actually
It’s called tax
That’s what pays
Tax can pay when 15% of the population are going to university. If you seriously think half the population can be university-educated purely by tax revenue then you are living in cloud-cuckoo land.
@Steve Coyle
Hang on
100% of children go to school so tax must not pay
But if 15% did tax should pay?
What’s the difference?
The difference is quite big, and obvious. Not every one benefits from a higher education.
Nursing never needed a degree and it still doesn’t. It is a bit of an obvious example and it sems unfair to pick on nurses and there are loads of ther examples.
The thing is if these new degrees didn’t exist, no-one would be any the worse off. The jobs would still be there. They would just recruit people straght from A levels like they did 30 years ago.
In years gone by, a significant number of people left school at 18 to go into a wide range of careers from banking and office work to science and enginering careers, journalism, marketing, graphic design etc etc.
Nowadays these jobs are filled by graduates. They are the same jobs paying the same money (in real terms) with the same prospects so if the degrees didn’t exist, the jobs would be populated by exactly the same people. It’s just that they wouldn’t have thousands in debt hanging round their necks and the country wouldn’t have forked out the cost of them lounging about at the public’s expense for three years.
If we save that money, we could make higher education free. I’m not sure if the number’s 15%, 18% or 12% but it’s certainly not 50%.
@Steve Coyle
Your logic remains utterly illogical
Should sixth formers pay as not all go?
Should those with diabetes pay as not all use diabetes clinics?
Should I not pay for defence as I have never been in the forces?
Have you no understanding of the common good and the need to pay for it?
Regarding your ‘fundamental pension contract’ quote, have I understood you correctly? Private pensions are doomed to fail as they feature one generation trying to provide for its own retirement?
Secondly, while I agree university should not be a preserve of the wealthy, there is a risk you’ll see more ‘dumb’ degrees. Three years of drinking and daytime television, tax-payer funded, doesn’t sounds like a great legacy for the next generation either. How do you propose to handle that risk?
I think some people have rose tinted views of what goes on at Uni. A great number of students use the 3 years as a delay to getting a “proper” job and entering the real world. I don’t believe the tax payer should totally subsidise students, especially those who go to university for 3 years of partying.
Also, there are a huge number of pretty useless degrees; Golf Course Management and Surf Science are just two examples.
I really don’t know how you’ve so spectacularly managed to twist something I said into a completely different argument. Your ripostes have absolutely nothing to do with the issues I raised.
Diabetes clinics, defence – what on earth are you talking about? I have just argued in #6 that higher education does not always lead to “common good” yet you’ve completely ignored it.
@Steve Coyle
I’m talking about the fact you’re saying benefits to particular people must not be paid commonly
And I’m saying that all of the ones I note are paid commonly
And I’m asking you whether these should also be abolished?
@Greg
Drunk lazy students existed in the 70s when I was there
And they always will be
Get real
This is just you making excuses
Or showing your prejudice
Not really, just going on my own experiences and that of virtually every other single person I knew.
Granted, there are a lot of hard workers at university (especially Oxbridge and the red bricks) but there also a lot of people who treat university as 3 years of partying. Why should the tax payer subsidise this?
@Richard Murphy
I suggest that there are indeed “benefits to particular people” (and we can argue whether it is 15%, 10% or whatever) and I believe that the taxpayer SHOULD subsidise these people – completely free.
I am also suggesting that there are people other than those 15% (or whatever the number is) who should NOT be enjoying taxpayer-subsisided courses because, for the reasons outlined in #6, no “benefits” (either to “particular people”, or the public at large) arise.
@Richard Murphy
shame to fall into the political trap. There is a debate to be had about how much university education the state should pay for. And should rationing be based on ability to pay or ability to benefit; and perhaps the ability to benefit society.
The current review has a wider brief – how to pay for the mess resulting from the Blair folly of university education for all. So it won’t answer the more important questions.
Steve Coyle says: “If we save that money, we could make higher education free. I’m not sure if the number’s 15%, 18% or 12% but it’s certainly not 50%.”
But if Steve Coyle doesn’t know if the number who “should” go to University (in the Right’s grey, utilitarian view) is 15%, 18% or 12% how does Steve Coyle know it ISN’T 50%?
@BenM
There is a “should” question in here, but I think there are number of qualitative ways you might start to answer it. One way (one of many ways!) would be to start with the system we had which actually worked, and which is where I think Steve is coming from. It is one I recognise, as its a system I came through. It rationed places based on academic ability, and was balanced by the number of Universities available and the demand for graduates at the other end. Interestingly it is a system that continues to work in many other parts of the world, and to a large extent continues to work here.
The problem here is that the debate Richard refers to is how to fund University education, as it is now; and Richard is using it to take a pot shot at the ConDem coalition government and its policies. But in doing so he is ignoring the more important question.
I rather liked this in Independent letters today – it’s certainly a sound test of ability to pay:
“There might be a simpler, fairer and more cost-effective way of relating fees to the ability to pay.
No fees to be paid by those who attended their last 10 years in junior and secondary state education; 10 per cent of the fees to be charged for each year spent in private education, culminating in full fees being paid by those who had spent their last 10 years of education in the private sector.
No means tests, fairer to the less well-off and relatively little bureaucracy.
Jack Penrose
Bristol”
This comment has been deleted. It failed the moderation policy noted here. http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/comments/. The editor’s decision on this matter is final.
@Richard Murphy
Do you seriously think that it is affordable to send half the population to university funded by tax?
@Allen Bashford
Yes