Tonight will see the first Live Blog/debate being held on this blog discussing the issues relating to student loans, top up fees, graduate tax and higher education funding in general. Soon I will post/link to some blog posts that people have contributed to aid the discussion before the debate but before that I thought I'd share a round up of some of the different values and goals that different authors have view points have stressed.
Everyone agrees that Higher Education has to be available for all and that whatever option is chosen it has to make this available. I have not heard a single person say that their view point will hinder universal access and everyone arguing for an alternative idea says that their choice will allow more people from worse of backgrounds to have the option to go to university.
Another key idea is that universities should be able to provide top quality education and how can different types of funding provide this. As such ideas such as top up fees to raise more funds, the current Browne review (which is addressing the lack of funds for university) and market mechanisms to ensure top quality education is provided, are all argued as ways to achieve this.
Many writers encourage the idea that those who benefit from higher education should be the ones who pay at least for the majority of the costs. However there are different views about how direct these benefits should be and as such some argue for just those who go to university, some for businesses as well and some for the whole of society.
In a change from the previous points, the desire to avoid discouraging students from either not going to university, choosing a course that would have less of a financial cost on them or even leaving the country to avoid having to pay of higher taxes/student loan/higher tax rate in general. This point is sometimes labelled "brain drain" and can be used to refer to a general lowering of education standards within the country due to the above factors. This point is obviously linked into the first point about higher education being available for all yet sometimes people argue that this will occur even under systems that stress they would be available for people from any back ground.
Not directly linked but often discussed is the numbers of people who are in higher education as this obviously impacts budgets, availability to all, quality of education etc. As such policies regarding further education can also seep into discussions and should certainly be considered when debating higher education as well.
Well I hope you enjoyed my round up, bellow I have some links to articles for further reading include two put forward for the debate tonight.
Some responses to Vince Cable suggesting the Browne review looked at a graduate tax.
Lee Griffin on Why now is the time for a radical change to higher education funding
Joe Jordan on Why the graduate tax idea is acceptable...for now.
The Debate thread
[If you are taking part in the debate tonight and want to put forward a blog post to be published/linked to on your views please email it to wilsonswordsblog@gmail.com]
Showing posts with label Higher Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Higher Education. Show all posts
Wednesday, 21 July 2010
Now is the time for radical change to higher education funding By Lee Griffin
Graduate tax or top-up fee loans? To me there’s barely a hairs breadth between the two policies. Both suffer from cashflow issues, with a person’s education not being “paid back” for decades, and both cause students looking in to their future to ask “Is it really worth the gamble?” The differences that are there are small, with a slight rebalancing of how much individuals pay dependent on income (though they may still end up paying more than they actually costed the system to educate them)
In the current economic climate there are those crying that this is the best situation, that we need to accept these “bold” new changes. Rubbish.
For a start we shouldn’t be making our first change on these matters to start a legacy of students paying for their own education in some kind of inbred American style. Once we start to make HE a commodity where the most successful end up paying more in to the system than they actually took out you must start to get individuals asking why they are subsidising certain degrees, or certain institutions.
But more importantly it might make universities themselves look at where their funding comes from, some may argue the current top-up system could do the same and I wouldn’t disagree, but with a graduate tax the lure of gaining MORE than the course was worth off of your high earning lawyers, doctors, and other top level professions would surely cause the book keepers to ask...shouldn’t we just cut out the music, and art degrees all together? And hell, nursing doesn’t exactly pay much either...
HE is about more than the piece of paper you get at the end, it’s about the learning, it’s about the growing...my personal opinion is the more people that are able to get integrated with other cultures, ideas, political beliefs during those final formative years of teenage life, the better for society. Who says that we can’t be truly bold or radical right now to do help fund just that?
The state already funds a large part of a student’s course; but if we were truly radical shouldn’t we say that society, and business that benefits from successful students, has to take better responsibility for the benefits they’re gaining? I don’t want to sound like students should never pay something, they clearly get a benefit of their own....perhaps some kind of graduate tax would indeed by useful, but not on the scale of paying back the entirety of their educational funding deficit and then some.
It’s a tough time right now, but it’s also a time of massive economic change. If we miss the boat now to take a real leap and change the way HE is funded we’ll miss it for another decade.
In the current economic climate there are those crying that this is the best situation, that we need to accept these “bold” new changes. Rubbish.
For a start we shouldn’t be making our first change on these matters to start a legacy of students paying for their own education in some kind of inbred American style. Once we start to make HE a commodity where the most successful end up paying more in to the system than they actually took out you must start to get individuals asking why they are subsidising certain degrees, or certain institutions.
But more importantly it might make universities themselves look at where their funding comes from, some may argue the current top-up system could do the same and I wouldn’t disagree, but with a graduate tax the lure of gaining MORE than the course was worth off of your high earning lawyers, doctors, and other top level professions would surely cause the book keepers to ask...shouldn’t we just cut out the music, and art degrees all together? And hell, nursing doesn’t exactly pay much either...
HE is about more than the piece of paper you get at the end, it’s about the learning, it’s about the growing...my personal opinion is the more people that are able to get integrated with other cultures, ideas, political beliefs during those final formative years of teenage life, the better for society. Who says that we can’t be truly bold or radical right now to do help fund just that?
The state already funds a large part of a student’s course; but if we were truly radical shouldn’t we say that society, and business that benefits from successful students, has to take better responsibility for the benefits they’re gaining? I don’t want to sound like students should never pay something, they clearly get a benefit of their own....perhaps some kind of graduate tax would indeed by useful, but not on the scale of paying back the entirety of their educational funding deficit and then some.
It’s a tough time right now, but it’s also a time of massive economic change. If we miss the boat now to take a real leap and change the way HE is funded we’ll miss it for another decade.
Sunday, 18 July 2010
Live Debate: Higher Education Funding
In light of the recent statement from Vince Cable, Wilson's Words blog will be hoasting a live debate on how we should fund higher education. This will both discuss at the present time, with the issues of the current finanical situation, and what we should seek in the future.
The debate will start at 8:00 pm Wednesday the 21st and all contributions are welcome. Certain Individuals have offered to contribute a small Blog post before hand to help stimulate the debate. If you Wish to also contribute in such way then write a small post, no more than 500 words, then either send me a link to your article or the article itself and I will publish it.
More details of contributors to follow
The debate will start at 8:00 pm Wednesday the 21st and all contributions are welcome. Certain Individuals have offered to contribute a small Blog post before hand to help stimulate the debate. If you Wish to also contribute in such way then write a small post, no more than 500 words, then either send me a link to your article or the article itself and I will publish it.
More details of contributors to follow
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