That Girl from Derwent dwells on the value of religion this Christmas.
That Girl from Derwent has learned a few more things about prejudice since moving up North.
That Girl From Derwent reckons if you're going to be offensive, you should find a better reason.
That Girl from Derwent considers why it is that some words have wider implications than others.
In the run-up to The Yorker and Club of PEP's debate on tuition fees, Jason Rose discusses the harsh facts and figures of student debt.
I’ll start you off with some maths. That sounds like a great idea. Students pay back their loans at a rate of 9% for any money earned above a £15,000 wage. Assuming that students have £3,000 of tuition fee debt per year, £5,000 of living expenses per year (including text books, food etc.) and interest is 5%, the total debt for three years is approximately £25,000.
That means that the interest per year is £1250 and, therefore, the student has to earn £29,000 per year to pay off the interest on their loan. For those of us that do four year degrees, it’s up to £33,000. Since teachers, on average – including headteachers, etc – earn £34,000 per year, they’d struggle to pay off their loan over the course of their entire life. And that’s assuming that they’re in the higher bracket of earners.
Rapid promotion is the only way of assuring you won’t be indebted for a very, very long time.
So the current system is a bit broken. The money that we’re actually paying doesn’t cover our tuition fee so the taxpayer is still forking over the money. We’re just being put into early debt. Indeed according to a Times survey last year, the highest average starting salary from any institution was £27,000. Rapid promotion is the only way of assuring you won’t be indebted for a very, very long time. Plus, of course, subjects that don’t provide students with financial benefit just add debt to their problems. As well as that, poorer course students subsidise those of us that study sciences.
If the fee was to increase to £7,000 per year, using the previous formula, the debt for three years would be £36,000 or £48,000 for a four year course. That would mean that you’d have to earn a whopping £42,000 to simply cover interest. In fact, since you wouldn’t earn that much until, say, five years after your degree you could end up having to earn even higher amounts to cover the extra interest you’ve accumulated. Personally, I don’t think it’s very feasible.
There’s more.
The Higher Education Statistics Agency already says that only 19% of Russell Group universities come from socioeconomic classifications 4-7 and only 72% go to state schools, compared to 40% and 97% for Million+ Group universities respectively. There is already a rich-poor divide at universities. Indeed one of the reasons I chose UCL instead of Surrey as my back-up choice was because I saw Surrey as being too expensive. If my parents were millionaires I wouldn’t have necessarily felt the same way.
And it’s true of other people I know. One of my best friends from secondary school decided, despite being up at the top end of every subject he studied, to go into manual labour instead of university because he thought it was financially beneficial to him. There are millions more like him. And if you don’t think that people will opt out of going to universities that charge higher tuition fees then you must be quite sheltered as a human being. There will be some people from poorer backgrounds who don’t see things that way but many people from richer backgrounds who simply won’t see £50,000 as a high cost.
And this will lead to segregation between those from rich backgrounds and poor backgrounds. Ok, some people think that it would be a good thing but here at York we pride ourselves as being diverse and open. I fear that a national increase in the cap will force us to choose between research and equality… and I know which the university would choose.
The current system is broken and increasing the cap would make it worse – support a full investigation into how to properly fund higher education. Or support free education for all, whichever.
For more information in the NUS Campaign, click here.
If you'd like to find out other people's opinions, come along to the debate, Thursday Week 8, 6pm, ATB056.
Well-written article, good job Jason.
I entirely agree with this article. Although it's important not to get too bogged down in exact figures it's somewhat inescapable that the current position that graduates are faced with is disgraceful, especially when looking at the jobs market at the moment.
University education has become a commodity that can be bought by those that can afford it not those who deserve it and this in itself is deplorable. This is especially true when we fondly look back at Labour's promise not to introduce top-up fees - how naive we were!
The current system makes Universities into businesses which in turn devalues our degrees since they are no longer something that can truly seen to be earned.
I, for one, am hoping that the government and indeed anyone who is encouraging the cap to be lifted sees sense before the education system that this country is apparently so proud of becomes a mockery.
Hmmm some good points and definitely a well written article, I just don't know if we are all being maybe a bit too naive??
Either way, should be an interesting debate!
Thanks, #1, I was expecting mocking and defacing 
My main points are that, FACTUALLY, it is likely that I won't be able to pay off the debt - taxpayers will cover me anyway... and increasing the cap will just make things worse.
There are plenty of good alternatives and hopefully we'll see the government adopt one as a result of its report this year.
Good points mostly. York really isn't that diverse, as you say, though. It's a very white, middle class uni (i.e. rich) - especially if you only consider non-international students (though of course you need to be pretty rich to pay the international fees).
Granted that it is true more of York than other places but I, for one, would not have come to York if it had been double UCL's cost.
And that's even including the fact that it was my favourite course, favourite city and favourite university in Britain when I was making my decisions. Finances affect us in the lower-middle-class a reasonable amount as well as those with, say, unemployed parents.
Fair points. Though given the vast amount of students going to Uni's outside the top 30....and thus diluting the value of a 'degree' it probably is accurate to say on average students can't pay it back. Hopefully us from York will be better off 
Though as I'm originally from a very working class background....I do fret about so many people being put off and how much it favours the rich(er).
I also agree with the article Jason. However I'm not sure how tuition fee grants fit into the argument. In one sense I am fortunate that I come from a deprived area and my parents do not earn much because it means I get a grant for my tuition fees and "only" have the normal student loan hanging over me. As a result my dept on leaving university will be significantly less than the numbers you've quoted. Is it therefore the people in the middle that are most hit, those who don't get the tuition fee grant, but whose parents perhaps cannot/do not help out with it.
The grant system is likewise extremely dodgy, as was the EMA system for a-levels. I knew, and know, people with millionaire parents who get money from the government and people who are in real need for money that get nothing.
It's a good idea and hopefully the government can fix the grant system - but that's just the point. They aren't seeing it as broken and their eyes need opening. I don't know the best alternative and I've talked with a lot of students on this issue over the last few days - there are many alternatives. The government needs to set up a proper working group to decide the fairest method because, well, the current system is broken and lifting the cap will make it worse.
#7 is right - York won't be as affected - but those that WILL be affected at York will be the poorer students, we'll become a more elitest university like Durham and it will water down the quality of our university, in my opinion.
As I said, it's not the discussion - the discussion is that at present taxpayers are paying the majority of fees because people can't afford to pay them back... and yet people are being riddled with unfeasible amounts of debt and are forced to pay it back. It's costing us money because it doesn't work.
And thanks for the second paragraph, #7. This will not affect my personal finances but I'm concerned about the direction that British higher education is going in and we currently have the chance to fix it.
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