A B-BBC reader notes…
“Can’t give you the precise date I am afraid, but listening to Radio 3 (a saving grace generally of the BBC) one morning shortly after the rioting, a new bulletin at 8.00am or 8.30am (but not repeated) said that a report calculated that average student debt would be £59,000 (note the specious accuracy). Quite how one gets from £8,000 a year to that figure rather baffled me. The implications were clear – the nasty rich Tories had snatched away the chance of higher education from the poor blacks of Hackney etc. by imposing crippling debts. No wonder they rioted.”
It baffles you that a student my have to incur debt to actually pay rent and eat, buy books, pay for travel and generally pay for all of those other things that life costs? You’re aware that £8k is an average fees cost only?
£59k is a bit steep I would agree…probably not a million miles away though.
If you choose to borrow more to enhance your lifestyle, y’know, Glasto tickets, The Vaccines new album, that’s your choice. Holiday job, or loaf around or travel? Helpless are we? If you think £59k is a scary number, wait till you have a £200k mortgage.
Both my kids went through Uni, came out with three years debt, both now have cracking high paid jobs. You don’t seem to want to pay for what you are getting, inference, you think someone else should be paying for it. Like poorer people on lower pay who didn’t get the benefit of university.
Thom, how can it be that “£8k is an average fees cost only” when the whole palaver of the marches is the fact that universties wanted (and the government will comply) them up to a maximum of 9000 an universities wanting to charge more than 6000 have to prove they need to.Sudents would need to pay back maximum fee, maximum maintenance loan and maximum grant for 4 years to get to the 59 grand.
My daughter graduated last year with total debts of £29k having paid £3,000 tuition fees and living costs for London. I was unable to help her financially, having had to take a substantial pay cut in order to keep earning and paying the mortgage through Gordon brown’s recession.
At an average of £8k tuition, the currrent generation of students should expect debts £15k higher, so that is £44k. Where does the other £15k come from? I wouldn’t have thought living costs for the average student would be much more now than they were for a London based student last year.
I’m not sure whether the BBC just plucked the number out of thin air (as they do with most of their numbers, in every area other than sport scores); thought of a number and doubled it (unlikely, as the organisation’s numeracy suggests thinking of 29.5 would be challenging, doubling a non integer way beyond them); added £24k tuition fees to their own bar and drug bills; or discovered, as a result of careful research, that £59k is somehow a very scary number.
Every one of those rioters should be issued with a place at Birkbeck College.
Tessa Blackstone and the like could then show us how best to include said “sad and frightened kids of Cameron” in their wondrous array of effete liberal arts and media courses that these gang members are all crying out for…but were just to shy to ask for(hence the scarves and hoods!).
I`d start them all off on sculpting “clay an shit” with suitable shaping knives to express their pain! Only those named Camilla, Jeremy and Harriet to be “tutors and t`ing”
The license fee will be used this year for their EMA this year, and all work placements and exhibitons to be held at Wood Lane…before they do the charity chicken run to Salford too!
I`d watch it!
Now who are the creatives fatty Patty?
How about each BBC executive giving up taxis for a year then using the savings to sponsor two or three students through university? With a record percentage A level passes from our superb edukashun system, there is no shortage of really excellent candidates.
I originally assumed that raising uni fees was a cunning Tory plan to destroy the “All must have prizes” culture that flourished under Blair. I surmised that pricing the hoards of mediocre media studies students out of the market was the politically correct way chosen to restore sanity to further education. However, my assumptions were predicated by the notion that Cameron was a closet Tory, which experience has taught me not to be the case.
I now believe that the astronomical fees are simply the result of chaotic governance, out of control further education spending, and a Prime Minister with no further education strategy to speak of allowing the system to drift rudderless.
Everything makes sense now. A dysfunctional education system overseen by a clueless, no policy, liberal government
He is but he is in the cupboard, or rather, the cabinet, with the LidDems so what do you expect? We’ve been left with an oversupply of “universities” all aboard the gravy train and with their hands out grabbing for more, more, more. And then the students. Last night on Radio 4 a student was mentioned who got B, C and D at A Level, got a place at some Metropolitan university and was blithely planning to go on to do a string of degrees including…gulp…a Ph.D. 😀 In the old days, a B, C and D wouldn’t have got you in the door, never mind to PhD. No harm in being ambitious and good luck to the student who can cut it but it did make me pause to wonder if PhDs can be what they were and how the current numbers of PhDs undertaken compare with those for previous generations.
The devaluation of degrees – once almost every job applicant has one – seems to have been accompanied by the growth in “stand out from the crowd” accomplishments and yet futher qualifications, not I guess because we need more PHDs.
In my day the only people who took a second degree were those wanting to remain a perpetual student, putting off going to work by another three years.
Now their CV needs more enhancment. Hence the £4,000 gap three weeks in a safe African country “helping a village to build a library”. Why can’t Africans build their own libraries? (Rhetorical question)
Given the left-ward drift of student politics, the expansion of graduate numbers under Blair seems to me nothing more than a cunning plan to grow the circulation of the Guardian.
Well that didn’t work. 🙂
Despite being a lawyer, or perhaps because of it, the only law Blair could not understand was the Law of Unintended Consequences. Human Rights = Criminal Rights. More “fairness” results in “less fairness” . Multiculturalism is the midwife of Racism.
Not suprising his cunning plan failed.
‘Multiculturalism is the midwife of Racism’.
Yep, I’m using that one alright!
The result is that there are too many people qualified for nothing other than a handful of jobs in certain fields, with very few of them willing to work in trades or manual labor, skilled or not. And it’s impossible for either the government or the private sector to create enough liberal arts jobs to employ all of them.
Does everyone need a university degree? To what end? It’s the narrow-minded worldview of those who think everyone should be just like them which has led to this.
I think it was Shell the other day who said that it could not find the engineers it needed in the UK.
Ah..but a possible source of a berth for all those rioters next time we get a leak to plug.
How many would it have taken I wonder?
Gaia would consider it a poor deal though, but we can`t please her always can we?
It would be surprise me if those rioting weren’t already in debt, given their insatiable appetite for new HD TVs and Nike trainers. And I mean REAL debt, none of that friendly “pay it back if and when you can” deal that goes on with “student debt”.
What I found revealing was a rioter who was interviewed on tv or radio (can’t remember where I heard it). He said he was rioting because of the ‘spending cuts”.
When asked which specific cuts he was most worried about he did not know and quickly changed the subject.
This is a strong indication of indoctrination. It is reminiscent of USSR and Orwell’s 1994.
It is very scary when we parrot phrases without knowing what they mean and how they were planted in our heads.
I find the BBC’s corruption of our lives frightening.
The £59k figure was from this study. BBC report here with no mention of riots. Most of the major media including the Telegraph picked up on the same press release.
It seems like they’re including the cost of living for the four years in addition to tuition costs. No wonder the survey also looked at things like the price of beer on different campuses. Why should students live frugally, and work full or part time like I did, eh? Did they look into the cost of drugs, cover charges at clubs, prices at vintage clothing shops in different areas, and regional Easy Jet fares as well? Poor babies.
When it was first mentioned about changes to the EMA, Radio 5 had numerous students interviewed as a special feature. Every single one of them pointed out that the EMA provided the “resources”, that’s right, “resources” to get to their place of (indoctination) Schooling.
They are bloody coached on what to say.
Surely one of them would have said bus fares or books?
The euphemism “resources” is a good practice run for a life in the public sector. When I first started a spell in the public sector I received this great longwinded memo from someone explaining why they needed a PC. I said, sympathetically, he wasn’t asking me for a PC, he was asking for the money to buy a PC, different thing. Resouces resources.
I noticed in a report by robin denselow* during newsnight on looting in Gloucester that he asserted that most of the looters there were white.
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013n4dz/Newsnight_17_08_2011/
@ about 31:30 in)
This reference is in marked contrast to all the other reports about looting, where, although most looters were black, not only was this certainly not explicitly referenced (God forbid!) but the reports were edited so as to minimise onscreen views of blacks.
* Dense, low IQ?
What is truly scary is wondering how those who get shafted by this will react; a student with £30k of debt and a science or engineering degree will earn anough to pay it back (eventually, and more quickly if they leave the UK at least for a while); a student with a non vocational degree but in a demanding subject from a decent university can still expect to find a job paying more than they would have had at A level; the student with a nonesense degree from a useless university will have the same debts, but they will earn the same as they would have done had they started work three years earlier.
It’s fine to say they only repay the debt when they earn more than the hurdle rate, but student debt is considered when applying for other loans, to buy cars or houses, or to start businesses.
There are going to be a lott of very unhappy little bunnies when they realise they’ve been ripped off.
I also noticed the bizarre reference to Newsnight… Anyway, heres a tip for adding a start time ti BBC Iplayer links… So you don’t have to say “around 31 minutes in”… its piss easy and go’s like this…
for example
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b013n4dz/Newsnight_17_08_2011/?t=12m12s
notice at the end you simply put ?t=45m23s (or whatever time it is) and bingo when you click it the wretched liberal spin will start even quicker for you to enjoy..!
Regards
JS
Not many people know that!
So you go to iPlayer, you copy and paste the link here and then type on to the end of it that formula?
Thats it… thats all you do… I’ve also found that sometimes if you have “bufferiing issues” which sounds like something a choir boy might experince in the vestry…. starting a video a few seconds in (using this method) seems to get the thing going… this might be cobblers though..
Thanks for that JIM.
I shall have to memorise that formula, though.
Some duff spelling in last post.. Not sure how to edit typo’s.. Anyway you get the drift…..
“a nonsense degree from a useless university”
It will teach them to be more critical of the pro-public services propaganda pumped out by (for example public sector outfits such as) the BBC i.e. the universities are selling services in return for a fee.
This has been so since the universities were founded in the Middle Ages) and if parents nor other taxpayers are picking up their tab, and they are not bright enough (hardly something to be ashamed of) to be awarded a scholarship, they will have to think very carefully if a degree in X is worth the money they are going to have to pay for it.
In other words they will have to think as carefully about this as any other purchase in their life.
The universities in turn will have to think very carefully about the quality of the education they are offering, in direct competition with other providers, and the whole educational establishment (which once upon a time was very much on the Right (there are objective standards) but these days is very much on the Left (what matters is not truth but whether or not what you say is politically correct) will be gently, lifted off the public teat.
The greatest shift of power towards those who use a service, and away from those that offer a service, in our lifetime. If public sector universities shink as a result this is simply a consequence of the removal of a public subsidy.
In other words, taxpayers ought to ask themselves why they should be forced (via their taxes) to pay the wages of Leftist sociology teachers but not (say) the people who provide your water, and gas, and electricity?
If you reply that a degree is more important, I would say you are an idiot. If you said OK not as important, but important nonetheless, I would say, it depends on the degree, and it depends on the student.
As for the funding, Leftists at universities have (as usual) run out of other people’s money (which they are spending on themselves) and so will have to focus on providing an education that the people who use the service will think is worth borrowing money from the State to obtain.
Radical.
Not so much radical, Wild, as common sense.
A pity no “University” seems to offer a degree in Common Sense. Now that would be radical.
As you say the amazing thing is that Leftists pulled this scam (we take your money [via taxation] and in return we not only undermine the education system, we also corrupt your children) and everybody said, OK.
The brain washing is so complete (let us call a spade and admit that this is the importance of the BBC for the Leftist establishment) that if you point out grade inflation, lowering standards (which in subjects such as mathematics can be objectively measured) or question why you should be forced to pay teachers in universities to “teach” your children politically correct thinking you become a thought criminal, the sort of terrible person who reads the Sun or the Mail or the Daily Telegraph instead of Stalinist Weekly.
Leftists will be Leftists it is what they do. They never saw a free society they liked. Hence they seek to destroy them. What is our excuse in letting them do it?
I almost forgot. listening to Radio 5 the other day a ‘caller’ (probably another BBC employee pretending to be a member of the public) claimed that the prison sentences for ‘protesters’ sorry rioters was unfair due to all those corrupt MPs, you know the duck houses and the moats.
The beeboid of course never corrected him that the duck house and moat were both rejected as claims, but the beeboid could have pointed out that the Liebore party has had 4 or 5 MPs sent to prison for REAL theft and corruption.
I find it amazing that so many Liebore MPs have been banged up in the nick yet it’s totally ignored by the BBC.
Oh and on the subject of the BBC, anyone else notice how the BBC have ignored Ken Livingturd’s rather pathetic suggestion that Boris Johnson is as bad as Hitler.
Old Red Ken really does have a thing about Nazi’s doesn’t he?
Can you imagine if Boris had called Red Ken a Nazi?
On the red button the BBC tell me about some bloke getting done for nicking a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts from Piccadilly in Manchester.
He was 48-just been let out of Strangeways-was just polishing off his bottle of sherry after an AA meeting…and then got caught up in the riots with 20 doughnuts!
Comedy gold at every twist and turn…and FAR funnier than anything the BBC have given us for months!
Sensed thought that they had deemed it “not funny”…so there!
“Are we all to be stupid now Father?”