All entries for Saturday 12 August 2006
August 12, 2006
Wrong about fees
Writing about web page http://education.guardian.co.uk/students/tuitionfees/story/0,,1840824,00.html
Neal Lawson has it wrong in quite a few ways here.
There remains a massive job to do to tackle the social inequitities Lawson describes but the new fees regime – provided this kind of misinformation can be challenged – with its requirements for generous bursary packages, actually offers the best prospect for changing this.
Several specific points:
- variable fee repayment arrangements are effectively a graduate tax – but they are a capped graduate tax – you don't keep paying after you have repaid all that you owe.
- the 20k debt is not a credit card style debt
- Without the deal on fees many universities would be heading towards insolvency – a graduate tax would not deliver the money desperately needed now in HE.
Most of the rest of this is just pure speculation and really just a bit previous, eg:
Variable fees haven't yet worked as well as the government hoped.
The government has put a financial support package together – but it's clearly not working.
It's August. Fees start this September. Let's look at it in a year, three years or five years and then decide if it's working.