UK Politics IV: Disraeli Gears

[Alvecia]

Bit-off topic (sorry for asking,) but what is it that you all do in terms of career? I haven't ever asked?

3rd Line IT Support. Sig's a bit of a giveaway.

[Souseiseki]

Bit-off topic (sorry for asking,) but what is it that you all do in terms of career? I haven't ever asked?

[screams internally]

[Salandriagado]

Because wanting an education is idleness?

Not at all; demanding the government cover this cost without you having to pay the money back is, however.

Education spending is economically efficient: when you take into account the increased taxes paid in the future, it makes the government a profit.

When GCSEs and A-Levels were vital to get most careers, they became free. Why shouldn't the same occur to Bachelors' degrees, other than the government not wanting to pay for anything that isn't their own salary?

Devil's advocate here, but won't making them free mean everyone will be able to get one and a new, quaternary form of education will replace it so students can differentiate themselves with new and further education (or licensing) that they probably need to take out a loan for to attend?

Making them free does not imply making them easy.

When GCSEs and A-Levels were vital to get most careers, they became free. Why shouldn't the same occur to Bachelors' degrees, other than the government not wanting to pay for anything that isn't their own salary?

That kind of destroys the point of a degree; if the Government pays for it, more people will pursue them, they will lose value, and something else (a higher degree which the Government will not pay for,) will take their place. The more of a commodity there is, generally, the less value it has.

Free tuition does not dramatically increase enrolment: just look at the figures for 1997 if you don't believe me. Decades of government initiatives encouraging increased enrolment increase enrolment. Also, degrees are not a competitive principle.

Education is a commodity; very often, the more you invest into it, the better the result is overall, whether that be a top private school, a good university, good degrees. The more people who have this commodity ie. a degree, the less attractive you are to a potential employer; my mum among many qualifications has a PhD in neuroscience. This gives her an edge over many others in the field, for instance; if everybody had this qualification, and the others she had, the less attractive she would seem in terms of standing out. Thus, making degrees too accessible to people is counter-productive.
As it is, we have far too many people entering universities; we have a jobs market full of verity & full of interesting careers, and very often for many jobs an apprenticeship is far superior to any degree. We need to be encouraging children to look at all options, and not just aiming immediately for degrees. Evidently, concentrate the more intelligent students on the latter, whilst working to help people aspire to both this & other options.

You are utterly missing the point here. Having a large well-educated population attracts more foreign investment, high tech startups, etc., which creates more jobs for said educated population (and more taxes into the bargain).

So should the British government charge for the use of roads, the emergency services, the police, the courts? After-all - demanding the government cover costs without having to pay the money back is idleness.

Making the comparison between higher education & the emergency services makes you seem unintelligent, which you certainly are not. The fundamental duty of a government is to protect its citizens; that is it. This can span off into the police, fire brigade & at a definite push, healthcare. It is also the duty of the government to provide law & order, which comes under the courts. These things are paid for through taxes; the fact that loans are given out to students is absolutely fine in my book, but people expecting to not have to pay this sum back is ignorant & entitled, as it is not the fundamental duty of the state to pay for your education, certainly higher education.
It branches off as so; protecting the people (police & army), maintaining law & order (police, army & courts), providing basic services (roads, rail, electricity, water, gas.) The first two are fundamental, the latter at a big push. Education does not come into this, and furthermore higher education as a non-nationalised entity does not come under the jurisdiction of the state.

All of those things that you think are essential are functionally impossible without a good education system. You can't provide any of those things without a good tax base relative to population size, and you can't provide a good tax base without an educated population if your country isn't tiny.

Education is a commodity; very often, the more you invest into it, the better the result is overall, whether that be a top private school, a good university, good degrees. The more people who have this commodity ie. a degree, the less attractive you are to a potential employer; my mum among many qualifications has a PhD in neuroscience. This gives her an edge over many others in the field, for instance; if everybody had this qualification, and the others she had, the less attractive she would seem in terms of standing out. Thus, making degrees too accessible to people is counter-productive.
As it is, we have far too many people entering universities; we have a jobs market full of verity & full of interesting careers, and very often for many jobs an apprenticeship is far superior to any degree. We need to be encouraging children to look at all options, and not just aiming immediately for degrees. Evidently, concentrate the more intelligent students on the latter, whilst working to help people aspire to both this & other options.

PhDs are essentially accessible to anybody that wants to do them and is able to cope: not only are they effectively free (if the university wants you, they'll waive the fees), but you actively get paid to do them. And yet there isn't a massive flood of PhD holders. Just like there wasn't a massive flood of degree holders before 1998. It's almost like tuition fees aren't the primary determinant of enrolment rates.

Bit-off topic (sorry for asking,) but what is it that you all do in terms of career? I haven't ever asked?

Mathematics, doing a PhD.

[Frank Zipper]

Bit-off topic (sorry for asking,) but what is it that you all do in terms of career? I haven't ever asked?

I worked for 12 years in the NHS in a health education/health promotion unit, then about the same in an adult education research organisation. Currently unemployed exploring photography.

[Ostroeuropa]

The government spending money to enable a more educated workforce benefits the whole country. I am not sure the same can be said of the government spending money to try and promote home ownership. Stopping homelessness yes, but not just trying to increase home ownership compared to renting.

It's a good thing because it provides security and such, which means they spend more money.

I think they're a bit ahead of themselves though. I'd go for a share-holders democracy before a home-owning one. Allow all citizens without stock once in their lifetimes to be reimbursed taxes for buying stock in British companies, up to a certain amount, perhaps allow funds to hand it out to the poor for this purpose, and encourage them to stick it out in the longterm. (Perhaps with some kind of restriction preventing re-sale for the first couple of years, if possible.)


Conservatives can be pitched the idea by pointing out this will culturally transform the nation, and that for a one-off expense followed by a regular, smaller expense, the treasury will create a populace less hostile to business + more interested in what makes it work and how to assist, that it only applies to British based companies, and may instill values over the long-term consistent with conservatism.
If you also tie it in with thatchers vision of a home-owning democracy, you can pitch it is as share-holding democracy.
For the party members and MPs, quietly point out it represents a propoganda coup that will damage the viability of the Labour party, and allow us to attack them as "The conservative party instituted a policy representing the biggest transfer of ownership of the means of production to the working classes in British history, and because we aren't leftist in our outlook, it worked."

If you manage to get the corporatists off your back, you can start pitching it as "De-centralized economic stimulus." and rail against government corporatism as an essentially "socialist" form of economic stimulus, whereas the conservative model gives way to the wisdom of crowds effect, prevents corruption, and better reflects the capitalist ideal model, etc.

Once you get a larger swathe of the population interested in, and talking about stocks, I'd expect more conservatives.

Beyond that, in anticipation for the scheme, it's all but inevitable that the media would start dramatically boosting the profile of British companies, and there would be a spike in their value from people figuring out they can now buy up and it will eventually sell.

If the scheme is too expensive, it can be done by lottery (No entry charge.) with the goal of eventual total coverage.

If that scheme succeeded, it would be easier to push for home-owning projects both because the economy would improve, and because it would gel with the conservative vision for the UK and bring it closer to fruition. Previous attempts at share-holding democracy were done through privatization.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... -guns.html

Talks about similar ideas.

[Katalaysia]

Bit-off topic (sorry for asking,) but what is it that you all do in terms of career? I haven't ever asked?

I'm an A-Level student, taking Further Maths, Physics and Computer Science.

And I agree with Salandriagado that it's the government pushing degrees as the way to progress from university that is causing so many people to get degrees. Just another thing, as they also said, in 1998 the tuition fees were £1,000. Using an inflation calculator, that £1,000 is £1,431.14 in today's money. Why do they need that extra £7568.86? It's clearly not due to inflation, so where is that 7 and a half grand going?

[Conscentia]

1) I am not against the Government giving out student loans & startup grants to small businesses and so on; we need these to put people into higher education, to foster social mobility & a more prosperous economy. However, the belief that you are better than the wealthy, that you have some unspoken elite right to have the Government wipe your arse & hand you everything on a plate, is lazy. It is lazy, quite simply, that you think that you should be allowed to take out a loan and not pay it back, and 'oh, let the rich pay for it, they have everything anyway *flicks hair* I shouldn't have to!'.
Humiliating.

That is not why anyone advocates for the abolition of tuition fees.

[Alvecia]

Bit-off topic (sorry for asking,) but what is it that you all do in terms of career? I haven't ever asked?

I'm an A-Level student, taking Further Maths, Physics and Computer Science.

And I agree with Salandriagado that it's the government pushing degrees as the way to progress from university that is causing so many people to get degrees. Just another thing, as they also said, in 1998 the tuition fees were £1,000. Using an inflation calculator, that £1,000 is £1,431.14 in today's money. Why do they need that extra £7568.86? It's clearly not due to inflation, so where is that 7 and a half grand going?

Presumably into the same pool that taxes tend to go unless it's being earmarked for something specific

[Alvecia]

1) I am not against the Government giving out student loans & startup grants to small businesses and so on; we need these to put people into higher education, to foster social mobility & a more prosperous economy. However, the belief that you are better than the wealthy, that you have some unspoken elite right to have the Government wipe your arse & hand you everything on a plate, is lazy. It is lazy, quite simply, that you think that you should be allowed to take out a loan and not pay it back, and 'oh, let the rich pay for it, they have everything anyway *flicks hair* I shouldn't have to!'.
Humiliating.

That is not why anyone advocates for the abolition of tuition fees.

I don't think I've even heard of the concept before.

[Questers]

I'm at a hotel in Singapore.

Will be in London for a few days -- arriving tomorrow -- but in the long term, the capital of god's own county. If you come down for a pint I've a hell of a story about my rapid departure.

I'm currently very poor in not-quite Lancashire at the moment :/

oh well depending where i might visit

lancashire tho :/

WHITE ROSE WHITE ROSE

[Lamadia III]

1) I am not against the Government giving out student loans & startup grants to small businesses and so on; we need these to put people into higher education, to foster social mobility & a more prosperous economy. However, the belief that you are better than the wealthy, that you have some unspoken elite right to have the Government wipe your arse & hand you everything on a plate, is lazy. It is lazy, quite simply, that you think that you should be allowed to take out a loan and not pay it back, and 'oh, let the rich pay for it, they have everything anyway *flicks hair* I shouldn't have to!'.
Humiliating.

That is not why anyone advocates for the abolition of tuition fees.

If you were reading this thread, then you would realise that I was addressing the point made by this player in the post above;

those on higher incomes should pay more into the system - after all they reaped the most benefits from University.

[Lamadia III]

Tuition fees weren't introduced until 1998, so that's a few years without paying any fees. From 1998 to 2006, the cap was at £1,000/year (maximum total: £8,000). From then until 2012, the cap was at £3000/year (maximum total to 2012: £29,000). Since then, the cap has been at £9,000/year (maximum total to date: £71,000). And that's assuming she was paying fees throughout: next to nobody pays doctorate-level fees, so that's frankly unlikely.

She went to Oxford & Harvard, and toured numerous other universities during her numerous courses to attain numerous qualifications. She got a doctorate, then trained as a practitioner in the field; on top of accommodation costs, on top of the costs of medical school, travelling, her own private research, you would be surprised the resulting fee.

[Anywhere Else But Here]

That is not why anyone advocates for the abolition of tuition fees.

If you were reading this thread, then you would realise that I was addressing the point made by this player in the post above;

those on higher incomes should pay more into the system - after all they reaped the most benefits from University.

How poor your reading comprehension must be to draw the red from that. Also, I find it outright hilarious that someone who so obviously thinks herself better than the poor is complaining about phantom people who think the rich worse.

[Vassenor]

I am still not sure I understand your arguments though. Mostly because there doesn't seem to be a whole lot separating them from "governments helping citizens is bad because reasons".

[Souseiseki]

That is not why anyone advocates for the abolition of tuition fees.

If you were reading this thread, then you would realise that I was addressing the point made by this player in the post above;

those on higher incomes should pay more into the system - after all they reaped the most benefits from University.

there are three ways to approach that statement

1) "people who benefit most from X should put most into X" - pretty reasonable
2) "people should contribute to X in proportion to how much they have gained from X" - also pretty reasonable, but it has a flaw
3) "those that gain from X should contribute in proportion how much they gained and their ability to do so" - pretty nice

i challenge you to make a convincing argument against all of them without poking a serious hole in your own ideology

e: keeping mind that "personally gained from going to university" and "gain from having university educated labour" both count

[Vassenor]

School reforms widen poverty gap, new research finds

The new government may have settled in, but the detail of future education policy remains unclear. The prime minister, Theresa May and education secretary, Justine Greening, have flagged up their commitment to social mobility. May wants to fight the “burning injustice” of inequality and make Britain a country that works “for everyone”.

But where will that leave the changes made by their predecessors? This week marks the sixth anniversary of the Academies Act, which provided a fast track conversion process. The first wave of the equally contentious free schools celebrate their fifth birthday in September. The former education secretary Michael Gove claimed these changes would offer parents more choice and improve the chances of the poorest children. But how far has this promise been realised? There are now 5,302 academies and 304 free schools – and the Cameron government’s pledge that all non-academy schools should eventually convert has not been retracted.

Yet evidence that academies and free schools don’t necessarily improve results, or narrow attainment gaps, comes thick and fast. Research published three weeks ago by the new Education Policy Institute, whose executive chair, David Laws, was schools minister in the coalition government, reinforced this message.

[Souseiseki]

Tory policy widens poverty gap, new research finds

[Ifreann]

Bit-off topic (sorry for asking,) but what is it that you all do in terms of career? I haven't ever asked?

I'm secretly Prince William.

[Val Halla]

Tory policy widens poverty gap, new research finds

Wow, this is surprising news. Next thing you'll tell me is that BoJo shouldn't be foreign secretary!

[Dumb Ideologies]

Tory policy widens poverty gap, new research finds

Wow, this is surprising news. Next thing you'll tell me is that BoJo shouldn't be foreign secretary!

Steady now.

[The Nihilistic view]

The government spending money to enable a more educated workforce benefits the whole country. I am not sure the same can be said of the government spending money to try and promote home ownership. Stopping homelessness yes, but not just trying to increase home ownership compared to renting.

It's a good thing because it provides security and such, which means they spend more money.

I think they're a bit ahead of themselves though. I'd go for a share-holders democracy before a home-owning one. Allow all citizens without stock once in their lifetimes to be reimbursed taxes for buying stock in British companies, up to a certain amount, perhaps allow funds to hand it out to the poor for this purpose, and encourage them to stick it out in the longterm. (Perhaps with some kind of restriction preventing re-sale for the first couple of years, if possible.)


Conservatives can be pitched the idea by pointing out this will culturally transform the nation, and that for a one-off expense followed by a regular, smaller expense, the treasury will create a populace less hostile to business + more interested in what makes it work and how to assist, that it only applies to British based companies, and may instill values over the long-term consistent with conservatism.
If you also tie it in with thatchers vision of a home-owning democracy, you can pitch it is as share-holding democracy.
For the party members and MPs, quietly point out it represents a propoganda coup that will damage the viability of the Labour party, and allow us to attack them as "The conservative party instituted a policy representing the biggest transfer of ownership of the means of production to the working classes in British history, and because we aren't leftist in our outlook, it worked."

If you manage to get the corporatists off your back, you can start pitching it as "De-centralized economic stimulus." and rail against government corporatism as an essentially "socialist" form of economic stimulus, whereas the conservative model gives way to the wisdom of crowds effect, prevents corruption, and better reflects the capitalist ideal model, etc.

Once you get a larger swathe of the population interested in, and talking about stocks, I'd expect more conservatives.

Beyond that, in anticipation for the scheme, it's all but inevitable that the media would start dramatically boosting the profile of British companies, and there would be a spike in their value from people figuring out they can now buy up and it will eventually sell.

If the scheme is too expensive, it can be done by lottery (No entry charge.) with the goal of eventual total coverage.

If that scheme succeeded, it would be easier to push for home-owning projects both because the economy would improve, and because it would gel with the conservative vision for the UK and bring it closer to fruition. Previous attempts at share-holding democracy were done through privatization.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/econ ... -guns.html

Talks about similar ideas.

That is already part of thatcherism. From 79 to 90 the % of people who owned shares increased by about 150% from about 1 in 10 to 1 in 4 due to various policies. Trouble is since her nobody has really grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and pushed on.

[Imperializt Russia]

Bit-off topic (sorry for asking,) but what is it that you all do in terms of career? I haven't ever asked?

I'm an A-Level student, taking Further Maths, Physics and Computer Science.

And I agree with Salandriagado that it's the government pushing degrees as the way to progress from university that is causing so many people to get degrees. Just another thing, as they also said, in 1998 the tuition fees were £1,000. Using an inflation calculator, that £1,000 is £1,431.14 in today's money. Why do they need that extra £7568.86? It's clearly not due to inflation, so where is that 7 and a half grand going?

Basically, it's because the government decided to stop subsidising that part of the tuition.
IIRC, even at £9,000 fees, the government is still subsidising well over half of the cost of tuition.

So the amount the universities receive hasn't actually changed (apart from general increases in price that were previously hidden), the government, for not-well-explained reasons, decided to instead shift the money they were directly spending into a government-owned loans body (for how much longer, lol) that instead loans that money to the university, but shifts the debt onto the student because... reasons.

Even if you believe that the student should pay their tuition fees, how loans currently work certainly doesn't fit a reasonable explanation of how such a system should work. The government still shells out, the government still gets paid back (or in many cases, doesn't because the debt has to be wiped out because it's practically impossible to pay the full amount back), but students are indebted.

There's no practical reason for that.
If you believe in tuition fees, the amounts should either be feasible to repay (say, on the £3000 fees, but even then it wasn't really), or a government company shouldn't be handling loans, and it should be the private sector.
That alternative however is completely pissing atrocious in concept alone.

I'm currently very poor in not-quite Lancashire at the moment :/

oh well depending where i might visit

lancashire tho :/

WHITE ROSE WHITE ROSE

Back in Liverpool for six weeks.

I said "not-quite Lancashire" because the proposed HoL Senate voting areas lumped Merseyside into Lancashire.
And Yorkshire dominates in terms of size, I'm sure you'd be pleased to hear.

[Conscentia]

That is not why anyone advocates for the abolition of tuition fees.

If you were reading this thread, then you would realise that I was addressing the point made by this player in the post above;

those on higher incomes should pay more into the system - after all they reaped the most benefits from University.

As another has pointed out, the red cannot be reasonably drawn from the statement you have quoted. Nothing in that statement suggests a "belief that you are better than the wealthy, that you have some unspoken elite right to have the Government wipe your arse & hand you everything on a plate". What can be drawn from it is the belief that those who benefit from a service should pay for the service, and that the amount paid should be proportional to the benefit received.

There are two reasonable objections I can immediately see that you could have argued for...
1. The statement quoted implies that all those on higher incomes should pay more towards the costs of the higher education system. Not all those on higher incomes necessarily attended university. You could have argued that only those who directly benefit from the service should pay.
2. You could have argued that all those who attended higher education were offered equal opportunity to learn and achieve higher income employment, it is thus unfair that they bare the costs unequally due to their post-education financial circumstances.

You argued neither of those. Instead you opted to insult your opponent with accusations of laziness and self-entitlement.

[Imperializt Russia]

Not all degrees are equal, even when they're equal, so the second option would be false anyway.

[Hydesland]

Here's one of the biggest problems. Many young people were "sold a lie" (or more accurately, unrealistic promises were made) - that getting a degree would be a key to a success and would practically guarantee them getting a good job. A few generations ago, this would have been practically true, since only a small share of the population had degrees then. But the low hanging fruit of higher education has been exploited, and a huge amount of young people today have degrees on the basis of this false promise. I would say in many subjects well in surplus to demand. In short we have a glut of over-educated graduates, but they're not necessarily smarter (how many of them truly cared about the subject they study vs those who just focused on passing exams and getting coursework in on time by any means necessary?).

We need a slight change in culture. We need to stop telling kids that getting degrees will guarantee or them or is a requirement for a good career, especially for subjects where there is a low demand for graduates. People shouldn't be getting a degree and loading themselves up with debt just for the sake of getting a degree. Perhaps when we're more frank with prospective students, more sensible choices will be made - they'll choose to study a subject because they are really interested in it and believe it to be worth the cost, rather than because it's an easy fast track to a degree - or if they really have a good plan and are studying a subject for which there is a known skill shortage currently (engineering?).