Budget cuts to Universities?

[Chaz Sexington]

Oh, wait, the English are paying for electing the Tories but the Scots through their gradual devolution aren't gonna touch it?
(A)

Maybe we'll let some of you Northerners come up here. You're not all bad.

 

[Joel`]

i agree that we do need tuition fees to rise, we've had it so low compared to the rest of the developed world and it also ensures that the value of degrees will rise as the number of them fall, its like supply and demand, at the moment only the graduates coming out of top unis are getting decent jobs where-as in the the future there will be less graduates and thus the worth of the degree to each graduate is significantly higher, it will also encourage students not **** around at uni and not to show up.
P.s. i wont get to uni till 2016ish and by that time prices may have risen again

Education is a public and merit good, meaning that the Government should help with provision. If left alone to the free market then there wouldn't be the supply there, thus increasing the price. Basic demand/supply theory cannot be applied.

The price mechanism does not apply effectively here, as University places need to be decided by intelligence, not money. The real effect is that intelligent people will miss their chance to go to university, the effect on our economy is that our future products will not reach their potential, if we want to export technological goods, as we do, then we obviously need maximum education.

 

[alicwkd]

Luckily for me on a personal level, i escape this by one year. I still disagree with this though. Students are finding it hard to cope as it is, coming out of uni with around 30k worth of debt. Yes it could be argued some students are poor at financial balancing, but there is no way this is going to help anybody. Yes we need to recoup money from somewhere, but students are not the right people to recoup it from. And all this after Clegg promised lower fees. The economic downturn is so depressing

 

[Bodell]

Chucked a spanner in the works of me going Uni now, was looking to go to Notting Trent and do sports, but I don't want to be major in the red, at just the age of 19/20.

 

[Chaz Sexington]

Education is a public and merit good, meaning that the Government should help with provision. If left alone to the free market then there wouldn't be the supply there, thus increasing the price. Basic demand/supply theory cannot be applied.

What? Of course supply/demand can be applied. The private (and "artificially" created public) jobs require skilled workers, such as economists, psychologists, doctors, pharmacists. This is the demand. If the educational sector can't supply these, e.g. pharmacists, the private sector would increase incentives to be a pharmacist through higher wages, bigger companies would set up grants to make pharmacy a more attractive course. The educational sector should supply these, even though this summer's newspaper articles showed they were certainly out of touch with the private sector. Graduates with 2:2 in anything but science had virtually worthless degrees, whereas graduates with a degree in science could still get jobs with 2:2's. Ergo, the supply had vastly outstripped the demand.

 

[alicwkd]

Chucked a spanner in the works of me going Uni now, was looking to go to Notting Trent and do sports, but I don't want to be major in the red, at just the age of 19/20.

Sadly i don't think you will be alone. Many students will now reconsider going to Uni who may have turned out to be a real asset to the country (and ironically, the economy). No wonder the government always says there aren't enough mathematicians and scientists if they are making it harder for them to be educated...

 

[Bodell]

Sadly i don't think you will be alone. Many students will now reconsider going to Uni who may have turned out to be a real asset to the country (and ironically, the economy). No wonder the government always says there aren't enough mathematicians and scientists if they are making it harder for them to be educated...

They're just defeating there own objective, nobs.

 

[Ride The Walrus]

Sadly i don't think you will be alone. Many students will now reconsider going to Uni who may have turned out to be a real asset to the country (and ironically, the economy). No wonder the government always says there aren't enough mathematicians and scientists if they are making it harder for them to be educated...

Exactly; as I've said I think somewhere earlier in here, I'm targeted A's in everything, and really excelling in History; but this is making me re-consider bothering, at all.

 

[Joel`]

What? Of course supply/demand can be applied. The private (and "artificially" created public) jobs require skilled workers, such as economists, psychologists, doctors, pharmacists. This is the demand. If the educational sector can't supply these, e.g. pharmacists, the private sector would increase incentives to be a pharmacist through higher wages, bigger companies would set up grants to make pharmacy a more attractive course. The educational sector should supply these, even though this summer's newspaper articles showed they were certainly out of touch with the private sector. Graduates with 2:2 in anything but science had virtually worthless degrees, whereas graduates with a degree in science could still get jobs with 2:2's. Ergo, the supply had vastly outstripped the demand.

Demand and supply doesn't apply to education because resources won't be allocated properly by the free market. I said we don't want price to determine who gets education because we lose potentially brilliant people because they couldn't afford education. If we lose this then our exports and economy will suffer.

Setting up higher wages is a horrible incentive because it begins the wage-price spiral, if wages go up, price levels will, our inflation will start to spiral out of control, high inflation leads to so many economic problems that I just can't be bothered to type out, it's the single most important macroeconomic goal.

I never said demand/supply didn't apply to the labour market.

 

[Chaz Sexington]

Demand and supply doesn't apply to education because resources won't be allocated properly by the free market. I said we don't want price to determine who gets education because we lose potentially brilliant people because they couldn't afford education. If we lose this then our exports and economy will suffer.

Setting up higher wages is a horrible incentive because it begins the wage-price spiral, if wages go up, price levels will, our inflation will start to spiral out of control, high inflation leads to so many economic problems that I just can't be bothered to type out, it's the single most important macroeconomic goal.

I never said demand/supply didn't apply to the labour market.

That is an opinion.

Price is still determining; why do you think half of the people on many courses in demand are Chinese? Because the Chinese pay the universities much, much more than the UK does. And it's ridiculous to say it'll start a wage-price spiral. Doctors earn a lot more than most people, and that's not caused any major break down of the economy. As for losing brilliant people; having them simply pay more won't change anything radically, because I'm presuming they already have the motivation and drive, and a larger student loan probably won't deter them.

I think that the UK should raise university funding considerably, or start up a tuition fee/loan to stipend scheme. The Norwegians operate with a 100% loan until you pass your exam, where 70% of your loan gets turned into a stipend if you pass. This is a great incentive to actually pass and do well at university. And do you know how much Norwegians pay to go to a UK school a year just in tuition fees? 12K £. I can only imagine Chinese pay more to go to UK universities, so ergo they are favoured over locals, as it gives the university money to actually run itself.

And the labour market and education is intrinsically linked.

 

[Hafnia]

Chucked a spanner in the works of me going Uni now, was looking to go to Notting Trent and do sports, but I don't want to be major in the red, at just the age of 19/20.

I take it you weren't planning on going till 2012 then when these increases in fees are actually coming in?

Debt is a fact of life, whether it be credit cards, loans, mortage etc. if you don't think paying for your degree is an investment worth making than perhaps it's good people like you decide not to go to university in the first place

 

[Cal.]

I take it you weren't planning on going till 2012 then when these increases in fees are actually coming in?

Debt is a fact of life, whether it be credit cards, loans, mortage etc. if you don't think paying for your degree is an investment worth making than perhaps it's good people like you decide not to go to university in the first place

At least the debt you get from being a student is very gentle in the way its paid back and no interest apart from inflation.

 

[Joel`]

That is an opinion.

Price is still determining; why do you think half of the people on many courses in demand are Chinese? Because the Chinese pay the universities much, much more than the UK does. And it's ridiculous to say it'll start a wage-price spiral. Doctors earn a lot more than most people, and that's not caused any major break down of the economy. As for losing brilliant people; having them simply pay more won't change anything radically, because I'm presuming they already have the motivation and drive, and a larger student loan probably won't deter them.

I think that the UK should raise university funding considerably, or start up a tuition fee/loan to stipend scheme. The Norwegians operate with a 100% loan until you pass your exam, where 70% of your loan gets turned into a stipend if you pass. This is a great incentive to actually pass and do well at university. And do you know how much Norwegians pay to go to a UK school a year just in tuition fees? 12K £. I can only imagine Chinese pay more to go to UK universities, so ergo they are favoured over locals, as it gives the university money to actually run itself.

And the labour market and education is intrinsically linked.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merit_good - Education is a merit good. When consumed, a merit good creates positive externalities (an externality being a third party/spill-over effect which arises from the consumption or production of the good/service). This means that there is a divergence between private benefit and public benefit when a merit good is consumed (ie. the public benefit is greater than the private benefit). However, as consumers only take into account private benefits when consuming merit goods, it means that they are under-consumed (and so under-produced).

Stop putting words in my mouth, I didn't say price won't take effect, I said if left to the free market then the resources won't be allocated properly, as the free market ignores the public benefit.

Do you even know what the wage-price spiral is? It's an increase in wage rates, not the difference in wage rates between higher skilled jobs. If prices rise, then a worker will want a pay rise to keep up with the nominal cost of a good, if wages rise then a business will have to increase prices to keep up with wage rates and protect their profit margins, if prices rise then wages will again, and so on. Why do you think we had ridiculously high inflation when the trade unions were demanding gigantic pay rises for the miners, far above the price level.

You already said price is a determinant, then contradict yourself saying people will still go to university with the price hikes. Raising prices will deter people from University, and we will lose potentially brilliant people to our economy. There's also the fact they may be just as willing to move to another country to seek cheaper education.

 

[goona4life]

well what we need to stop are people spending there time on pointless degrees at poor universities who arent going to help them much at all, increasing the tuition fees is good as long as we save some of the savings for a scholarship so the cleverer people can still go to uni no matter how poor their background is

 

[prow07]

The government have now voted, and the fees will be raised to at the maximum £9000 per year.

 

[goona4life]

that last protest was really annoying. was in school lock down for hours

 

[Jack Fulham]

Minimum is 6k a year too.

Well done Tories.

 

[Jay Pricey]

Good that i'm going to Uni next year so i'm not as badly affected, really angry though because I wanted a gap year but I can't do that now. Conservative bastards, no idea how this is going to help the country in any way. Surely the more people going to university is better than less people.

 

[CJACKO11]

although i agree the price is an absolute joke and very harsh the protests and rioting is just costing the goverment more and more money so it swings roundabouts.

 

[prow07]

Minimum is 6k a year too.

Well done Tories.

Its the lib dems as well, they have conned the students into voting for them, and once they get into government, they betray all of these students by voting to raise the fees