University tuition fees ‘to rise with inflation’

7 comments

1. Tbh I’m surprised they haven’t always. University costs have gone up so it makes sense within the context of the current fee system for the fees to increase as well.

2. It’s interesting that the headline is about tuition fees when the real interesting part is that maintenance grants could be making a come back.

   Tuition fees going up doesn’t actually mean all that much for 90% of us, it’s just more debt on the pile that only the top 10-15% of earners will fully pay off anyway. Fees not going up just degrades the service received. The reason students have to weigh up whether or not they can afford to go is cost of living and how much is in the maintenance loan, so returning the grant for those who need it would make a huge difference

3. Tuition fees should be competitive, If university A could teach me my BEng for £6000 a year whilst university B charges £9000 it would incentivise value for money and efficient courses.

4. Pay in the UK is notoriously low and living costs are exorbitant. It’s also common for parents to give their kids no help or very little help. The sums just don’t add up.

   The people who can afford this are those with parents/grandparents who have unearned property wealth and there are fewer and fewer of them.

   It’s completely normal in the UK for the thick/bitter to dump on education because there’s no culture of expecting people to deal with their insecurities. At the same time, the system makes it very difficult to get into higher education. Kids who haven’t grown up with support and privilege or who lose their focus for a couple of years as teens can rarely turn things around later on.

   It all adds up to a situation in which we’re taking professionals from overseas taxpayers, lowering wages, and throwing our own kids away on dead-end, low-paid retail and hospitality jobs. Or in the case of the wealthy, funding endless artisan cheese-making and coffee shops and the like.

   Just like when tuition fees first came in, there’s not that much attention in the papers and no one seems to care because older people have had what they’ve wanted. If this were happening anywhere else, there would be people out burning things or at the very least, protesting.

5. Part of me does wonder if you were to scrap the tuition fee system but replace it with a graduate repayment scheme and put it in place for all graduates regardless of if they had they were in education before or after the fees came in – would that provide a better solution? Seeing as it’s people that don’t have tuition fees who are in charge of the policy

6. If only my post graduation wages went up with inflation. That’d be nice.

7. Based on recent emails received from the VC at the university I work at, tuition fees rising with inflation isn’t going to make a dent in the deficits many universities are looking at currently.