University funding

[onebyone]

If Lord Browne's plans go into effect, it seems likely that the four-year degree I took from Oxford will soon cost 24k at the very least, and perhaps more like 40k, in student debt for fees. What actually happened was that I graduated 10 years ago with 5k in student debt, none of which was because of tuition fees

Comments

[onebyone]

I'm not all that bothered by the graduate tax either. It introduces an open-ended obligation: if you earn enough, then you pay the tax you would have paid anyway, *plus* what would have been your fees, *plus* even more. But firstly, why shouldn't those who've benefited from state-supported higher education, and are very high earners perhaps as a direct result, contribute more to it than just what's deemed to be their own fees? If they don't like that, they could always go to a US university instead, and pay their way, and it would be more than UK fees. Secondly, if someone is deterred from going to university because they think they can make an absolute fuck-ton of money without going, I'm less bothered about them being deterred. They clearly have a pretty good plan without university. It's people deterred because they think they'll make hardly any money even if they do go, that I'm worried about.

The devil's always in the details, though: what's "a good job"? If the sums for the graduate tax meant that they'd have had to start charging it at 21k within their current budget plans, that might explain why they chose not to go that route.

For the loan repayment cutoff, I might offer you "median or mean, whichever is higher". I'm not sure whether the minimum wage means that they're skewed in the opposite direction for non-graduates than they are the whole population.

Actually, though, the expected salary of a person capable of going to university, but who chooses not to, might be higher than the expected salary of a non-graduate. I think the whole question is: at what cutoff is it actually clear to 18-year-olds, rationally or ir-, that going to university is a reasonable idea if they're academically[*] capable and they fancy it? I think more than 21k, and less than a million, but I'm a bit lost for more precision.

[*] Or for that matter capable in non-academic ways, for vocational education past 18.

[frax]

Don't we have an extra problem for professional careers that require a degree and/or professional training but are exceptionally poorly paid for what they do but may still break the £21k at some point, like Teachers and Nurses. Is there are argument that careers which are for the public good should have their fees waived completely?

[frax]

I am thinking of people who may spend their whole careers being paid less than if they had done something equally skilled (or even less skilled) but better valued by the market.

[undyingking]

Those people could be easily dealt with in a graduate-tax system: you could just exempt certain areas of employment from the tax.

[triskellian]

I believe those people currently do get their fees waived, and in some cases they also get paid enough money to live on while studying. I haven't actually read the Browne report, and the summaries I've seen haven't mentioned whether he proposes scrapping that too.

[onebyone]

Yes there is, but there's equally an argument that those people should be paid more in the first place.

I suspect they're paid roughly at the rate they're willing to work for, so quite aside from the morals of social benefit, there's not a huge scope for increasing their tuition fees without the supply falling.

Purely in terms of incentives: if you increase their student fees, but don't increase their salaries, then you get less UK-trained nurses and have to hire more from abroad. If you increase their fees, and increase their salaries to match, then you roughly break even, although you've made foreign-trained nurses more competitive, since you've increased *their* salaries along with those of the people paying fees. So we suck even more of the goodness out of various African healthcare systems than we already are. As against that we make healthcare training an even more attractive option for Africans, which is nice in a way, but not all that much use unless some of them do end up staying home at the end of it.

If you leave the salaries the same and waive their fees, then you preserve the status quo with respect to the supply of nurses, and soak the alleged ever-spiraling cost of university teaching. That sounds like a fairly reasonable move, though. It's not as though the number of nurses hired by the NHS (and hence the raw numbers of nursing students) is going up any time soon under this government.

I don't think graduate teachers are *exceptionally* poorly paid - starting salary 21.5k (27k London), so they would be repaying their loan immediately under this scheme. That would probably take a bit of the gloss off the current marketing for teachers.

[frax]

I definitely wouldn't object to paying them more - but I suspect that is not what the current Gov would have in mind :)

[onebyone]

"under this scheme"

under Browne's scheme, I mean. They're repaying their loans immediately as it is, but I think the co-incidence is a little unfortunate that teachers are paid pretty much exactly what he thinks is the point he should come knocking for repayment.

[frax]

Also I might be a bit out of touch on salaries for teachers.

I do remember that as a lawyer I got a starting salary of £26k (7 years ago) at the same time teachers got a starting salary of £17k even though we both had done a degree and 1 year of vocational study to get there. That sort of disparity is where my point is really aimed.

[onebyone]

Yes, I don't think your point relied on teachers in particular.

In a way it would be nice to see teachers and nurses employed at age 18, at some ridiculously low wage, and then trained pretty much full time at their employer's expense while in employment. Schools and hospitals have their own budgets, of course, but since salaries are fixed nationally I'm sure the cost could be shared nationally in some reasonable way.

I'm not sure it's practical, though.

[undyingking]

Schoolteaching and nursing used to be school-leaver jobs, until fairly recently for teachers, very recently for nurses (the first nursing degrees only date back to the 70s).

Social work (comparable in this discussion's context) in effect still is, in that employers tend to fund students through their degrees.

I suspect the change is practically irreversible though -- once a career has the warm glow of professional status conferred by being graduate-entry, they're not going to happily relinquish it.

[undyingking]

The number of graduate nurses hired by the NHS may well be going up any time soon, because it was recently decided that the system should move towards all nurses being graduates -- at present they're (I think) a minority.

Of course I guess the current govt might ditch or delay that plan if it turns out to be 'unaffordable'.

[onebyone]

Hmm. Attempting to move over to all-graduate nurses, and at the same time massively increasing the cost of becoming a nurse, would be an own goal.

Actually, the alleged starting salary for a graduate nurse is 20.7k (outside London). So like teachers that's at the low end of professional pay, but beats unskilled work. A living wage, but maybe not something you'd pay 20-40k for a shot at.

[undyingking]

And I think, although this is just anecdotal, that in nursing the senior-level salaries, and the chances of getting salary increments for extra responsibilities, are not as good as in teaching.

So (if we accept the flimsy hypothesis that 18-y-os are rational to this level) you wouldn't be thinking "but I'll likely be earning 30K in 6 years' time, and 50K by the time I'm 40, so paying it off'll be a breeze by then" or whatever the equivalent calculations are for teachers.

[undyingking]

Mm, your first para concurs with my own thoughts.

With a graduate tax, the govt could immediately also apply it to the whole cohort of previous graduates like myself who were educated at the taxpayer's expense. That would help the economics of the scheme along enormously, and allow sustaining of a higher threshold than if it were just applied on an ongoing basis. The Daily Telegraph might not like it, but I would feel that was fair.

Also, I believe that the current system has a very high rate of non-payment (by those who should be eligible). No doubt there would be avoidance of a tax too, but for most people it could be PAYE. That may be a further factor pulling down the threshold at the moment.

Yes, probably higher-of-median-or-mean would be better -- I don't know the distribution either. The key thing I think is, relating to your last point, that it needs to be set at a value that 18-y-os can perceive as the point of affordability. Tying it explicitly to such a measure, at least for the first few years until it becomes familiar, would help hugely with that.

[onebyone]

I believe that the current system has a very high rate of non-payment

Really? I thought that when they introduced loans-for-fess, they also started doing student loan payments through PAYE. If people are dodging it, I'm curious to know how, since their student loan should associated with their NI number.