Duke, I agree about scholarships: my graduate studies over here are costing me significantly more than my undergrad education (in the States) did. I had a full ride in the States, but here I have to pay the underwhelming sum of what comes to about $8,000 per year in tuition. I took out loans. So can Brits. The difference with the States is that over here people genuinely believe they are entitled to a free education (there has been in the past few years a big campaign to have even the existing few thousand pound tuition fees rescinded!).
I agree wholeheartedly with your remark about fundraising; it’s new to schools over here, but will surely emerge in full force once alumni and others discover that students have to pay.
But I disagree with your assessment that students here won’t be able to afford their newly priced educations. The program proposed by the Education Ministry would provide that students get the lowest possible interest rates; don’t have to start paying back loans until they have a job in which they make a minimum of £15,000 (about $22,000) per year; and provide government grants for those coming from poor families; among other benefits.
If people want to be terminal grammar school graduates and forgo college, then that’s their choice. But if they want to go on to a higher education, and the added salaries such educations allow, then it should be paid for. Consider the loans a graduation tax: you pay for earning more througout your lifetime. Sounds fair to me.
I would like to point out that in the US you have a culture of the “College Fund” don’t you? What is happening here at the moment is there are guys sayings “Everybody who studies next year has to pay £3000 extra” at least you guys get 18 years to save up!
I think that fees are good BUT they should be paid after graduation when you are earning. The money you pay should go back to the course you studied, not to subsiside other courses.
My university just spent around £10 000 on doing up the canteen. I would really like to know what the hell they spent that money on other than a really trashy shade of blue and seets that look like chewing gum.
I think that most of my fellow students would agree with me here, we would have prefered the roof to be fixed so it no longer leeked, or maybe a greater range of subsidised art materials… or some staff, that would have been good too…
peepthis: Sure, I guess students can take out loans. But I’d hate to see the same kind of “student loan debt” culture take over in the UK that I’ve seen here. (Single but telling example: my last boss still owed $65,000 in student loans. Sixty-five thousand dollars, I tell you.) In the US the loan agencies are usually pretty forgiving, and they give you a long time to pay off the debts with no interest. Even at a “low interest rate,” those interest charges can add up.
Actually, I’m largely in agreement with tuition rates in England. (Even compared with European university rates, they’re not unreasonable.) I just think that the government should have have given some longer-term warning for the rate changes, especially the hike from 1,000 to 3,000 pounds. I’m also intrigued by Theom’s suggestion of paying the fees after graduation, although it would be a nightmare to collect.
In Scotland (don’t quote me on this I am not positive on the details) they allow you to pay your fees after you graduate and are earning a certain amount of money, basically like an extra tax.
Um, no Duke not true. Although there are a number of ways to get student loans in the US, none of them give the money away for free. Interest is charged. In many cases, interest can be deferred, but it will start racking up once the student has been graduated. Example: My soph year (US state school: annual tuition, roughly $5000 per year), I took out a student loan. Deferred interest until graduation. Two years later, when I was graduated, the loan company added up the past two years of interest, tacked it on, then set a low payment schedule for the next ten years. I paid for that interest… just not up front. YMMV.
That’s very amusing. If more than 25% of people going to college have parents who were actually able to save up for the total cost of their child’s eduction I’d be really surprised(hell, I’d be surprised if it’s more than 10%). College Funds are this idea that they make commercials about, and talk about in TV/Movies but most people don’t make a serious effort towards since unless the family is very rich, or the kid is going to go to a very cheap school, even an entire childhood is not enough time to save the kind of money an education actually costs. I know my parents were not able to squirrel away $80,000 to pay for my brother’s and my tuitions, even though they’ve had 25 years to do it. However, though he is attending the same state university (bet you thought we went to a private school at that price) as I did, it is the most expensive one in the country, or so the news keeps claiming. I only have $20,000 in loans left to pay off! Whoo hoo!
And it’s not as though there isn’t an element of unpleasant surprise to fee hikes in the US, either. I was a freshman in 1995, and as of 2002, the fees and so forth for tuition and room and board are now $6,500 more than they had been then. It pretty much amounted to an extra thousand quietly tacked on to your bill each year, while at the same time the president of the university would be claiming that they were trying to prevent extra costs to the students. :rolleyes:
Um, back to the OP. When I was studying abroad in Israel, the Israeli students went on strike. They struck for about a month and a half. (Amusingly, in the middle of their strike, the professors went on strike too, so even if the student strike had ended, school would not have resumed. The professors ended their strike pretty quickly, though.)
It was a total waste of time. The students got nothing, eventually had to go back to school, and succeeded only in forcing the school year to extend into the middle of summer, which fucked up the army’s reserve schedule. Completely stupid.
Since we’re comparing debt, I graduated from the University of California, one of those “public-but-still-expensive” schools with a $18,000 debt. My parents took a small loan out my freshman year, and they helped me out with rent here and there, but the rest is on me. I’ve been out of school for nearly three years, and I’ve got the debt down to $15k, which I am quite pleased with. I consolidated my loans recently, and my payments fell big time, but I’ll be paying off those four years for a long time to come. And I’m planning on going to grad school, too. Yay, debt.
Sorry but I just have to say it…
On the Isle of Man, the government pays ALL our tuition fees and gives us a grant of up to £5000 a year to live on
No loans, no debts…
If it makes you feel any better (and I don’t know why it would), I’m planning on going back to school this fall, and TODAY is the deadline for a fellowship I was planning on applying for, and my letters of recommendation are not all in, so I CAN’T.
Australia and NZ both have a system where you pay back your fees after you graduate.
NZ’s system is odd though. We left the country and the tax dept has our forwarding address but they simply stopped sending the bill. You pay the debt after your income reaches a certain level. I always thought it was an urban legend that you could bail out on your debt by leaving the country but it appears not.
NZD 5000 for a year’s study. That’s about USD2500.
State University of New York student checking in. I attend one of the ‘flagship’ centres.
Tuition per se is $3400 per year. Fees etc end up being enormous. I get a $2500/year scholarship and end up paying $1200-1300 per semester out of pocket. This is for tuition only, incidentally, and not dorming, a meal plan, etc.
They want to hike tuition by $1200 per year. Ugh. That will make this significantly less easy.
