palmer1984 (
palmer1984) wrote2010-10-15 05:37 pm
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Fee increase
My main worry is not that HUGE DEBT will stop students from going to university (though that is a concern). I'm worried that students will go to university to do degrees that don't actually lead to well paid jobs. £40000 in debt when you end up being a secretary or a bar manager is really pretty awful. Despite having a degree at a reasonably good university I'm doing a fairly low paid non-graduate job.
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It's also the first move in privatising the public debt as a form of balance sheet misrepresentation. Rather than have the government borrow £40k, make the students borrow it instead.
I have the opposite worry: that degrees that don't lead to well paid jobs will be taken up only by the children of the well off, and the idea of university as an academic rather than vocational institution will be corroded.
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I don't think this is the first move in privatising the public debt - they've been selling off student loans for years. What it's doing is increasing the amount the government gets for them due to the real rate of interest.
My worry is that graduates will only do well paid jobs leaving an even bigger starvation of candidates for other useful but not so well paid activites, research, startups etc. Had I had a £40k debt I'd never have changed job for a lower paid but more interesting one.