Aimee Howarth brings you an interview with The Yorker directors on the final day of the advent articles
Aimee Howarth speaks to YUSU's sabbatical officers about their Christmas Day routine for day 17 of the advent calendar
For the final time this term, Vicky Morris updates you on this weeks film news
50 years after the publication of 'James and the Giant Peach', the works of Roald Dahl continue to celebrate success.
And not only that. We've had a period of negative inflation and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) has announced a £449 million reduction in funding. I'm not going to go into the shocking maths (yet again) - I made the point last year. If a student would have a conservative debt at £25,000 and wouldn't pay the debt back unless you're earning over £27,000 per year. And with a potential increase to £7,000 per year, there's the potential that students would have to be earning an insane £42,000 per year, only to pay off the interest on their loan.
As things stand, 50% of current students will never pay off their debt.
The interest on student loans is above the average level of inflation, whilst it should be the same. In 2009, the value of the pound actually deflated. But my debts still had a certain level of interest on them in every single month last year. And the ridiculous thing is twofold. Because only two-thirds of the money will be paid back, the government is actually paying for the loans - and a lot of people will be indebted until it's wiped clean. Secondly the government cannot afford to pay the universities the tuition that we're going to be paying back. To increase to £7,000 per year would cause the government to pay an increased amount that they can't currently afford.
HEFCE have cut funding but we're still paying more than every single student in the history of the UK. We're forking over a massive amount of money and yet Iceland, Australia, Hungary, Poland, Italy and even South Korea have a higher percentage of young people entering higher education.
There is a single, ridiculous reason for this. Our government isn't paying what it should be. I have argued a year ago and I will continue to argue that, despite an ambitious 50% target (which would still be lower than many of the other countries), we're paying a small amount of money. Smaller than the average EU member nation per GDP by over 70%.
A BBC report [1]shows that per student only Poland has increased their spending less than us. This from a government who prioritises "education, education, education"? Irrespective of who is in power in a year's time, there will be increases to costs.
What's shocking is that, even though 50% of British students can't pay back their debt, we're the 3rd highest OECD earners after higher education. If we have a degree, we'll earn more than all other countries bar Hungary and the USA. And we still can't pay it back!
The NUS is campaigning for a look into different funding models – presumably ones that actually enable people to pay it back – and want a national bursary scheme. In reality, it's looking a lot more bleak but whilst we may all think that changes to tuition fees are likely to be bad for students, it's also bad for the government that will have to cover thepeople who don't pay it off.
See also Jason's article from last year [2].
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