Ironic that the 10 o'clock news last night went for the student view to a non NUS-college.

Nice to see they interviewed ordinary student Ram Ramanan. Did the union get asked to supply people, or did Ram and Ruth just happen to be in the JCR at the right time?

Not that there was anything wrong with their viewpoint.

Sykes looked like he was seething....

It seems our beloved union has published a response. Great. What bunch of muppets put this together then? How helpful is it to describe the return of grants as a "sick joke"??

Do the Maths

If the Rector goes ahead with £3k fees (which he will), then the poorest (the ones that get the grant) students will only get first £1.1k of fees paid by the government.

This leaves them with £1.9k to pay. The grant only covers £1k leaving a total of £0.9k per annum for the poorest students to pay. Hmmm, they didn't pay anything before, so why are they getting stung now?

Well, they don't pay anything till later, when they're earning at least £15k.

Not that this makes everything okay or anything.... but careful how you phrase your arguments.

If you don't like fees or the 'new' white paper then click here:

http://www.cix.co.uk/~ldys/clarke/

Oh great, another anonymous layabout that couldn't be bothered to do anything themselves criticises the people that could. Have you read the white paper in full?

How helpful is it to describe a return to grants as a sick joke?

Well lets see:

The cost of living in London is, on average, between 5 and 6 grand a year, depending on who you listen too.

The maintainence loan is too small to cover this, hence the huge overdrafts people leave university with. The higher education finance review started life as an investigation into reducing student hardship. It's turned into investigating the universities hardship.

How is a mere £1000 supposed to adress this? On top of that you are invited to get at least a further £2000 in debt.

Why on earth should anyone with an interest in student welfare do anything but criticise this? To make muted complaint legitamises the slight of hand. To praise it is even worse.

Hear Hear seb,

All the government wants to do is look, at first glance, as though it really CARES about the students, so, if your parents earn less than £10,000 p.a. (and therefore i assume are either ex-pats for tax purposes or live in a caravan) then you qualify for a whopping grant of £1k. If they earn 15,000, then it's only £500 you get. Never mind if there are any siblings... Faced with a possible fee of £3k p.a., it's easy to see why that's a sick joke!

Consider the national statistics office survey http://www.statistics.gov.uk/pdfdir/fes0103.pdf, which says that the average household spends £596 per week in London. Even the lowest income decile of the population in London can only get by on £159 a week, or £8250 p.a. Why should students be expected to rack up debts of up to £45,000 for a four year course at an elite institution in London, when they could go to scotland for less than half that? the only thing it'll do is lower standards, help privatise education (Sir Richard's stated aims), and keep students from a poorer social background out of academia.

To add insult to injury, our incumbent PM got his elite education for free, and look where that got us. about to kill some starving iraqis just in case one of their highly advanced, long range missiles with a nuclear warhead (courtesy BAe Systems) flies over and hits London sorry washington

but that's a separate rant

In short, the anonymous muppet above got it absolutely right:

nobody@ic.ac.uk

You can read it but £30,000? I assume thats a 3 year course, so whack another £10,000 if I was coming here in 2006...

What no-one seems to give a flying f*** about is that if I had to pay that much, even if I was tought by Bill Gates, I would go somewhere else... "People like me" (of which there must be at least more than one ;)) don't care if we get new lecture theatres or our halls repainted, I'm here for a degree thats all.

(Constructive criticism welcomed).

1k fees paid - a sick joke!

Point 1:

I can understand the need for the government helping poorer students to pay up-front fees. But giving poor students 1k off fees paid /*after graduation*/ is not supporting poor students at university - its letting graduates off putting money back into the system. It amounts to bribing poorer students to go to university - political meddling of the highest order.

Motivated bright young people from poor backgrounds should already be able to see the benefits of higher education (better paid jobs etc). Levelling the playing field and reducing the barrier to entry (i.e. up-front fees, living costs) is to be encouraged, but any other inducement is unfair.

My advice to the government - take a broader view - spend the money on affordable housing. After even with fee's of £1100, thats less than a quarter of most peoples living costs for the year. Cheaper housing would benefit everyone - students of all backgrounds, poorly paid public service workers etc.

Education is supposed to be the great leveller in society. When will we be freed from the (false) assumption that our parents pockets are our own - and be treated as independent (and equal) adults in our own right.

Point 2:

As for the idea of an access regulator - This is very scary. Good quality students from selective schools who have worked hard (and whose parents who have paid the £price£ for poor state school's provision) will be disadvantaged by a policy of political meddling in university admissions policies.

We should be concerned - after all, universities with the greatest need for top-up fees (i.e. our own, with no cheap arts degrees to subsidise our expensive technical training) will be most vunerable to the government's demands.

Any comments?

Only one comment about point 1, it's not technically (and I mean technically) true.

The great farce about student finance in the white paper is how it's broken down.

There are two types of cost: Tuition and Maintainance.

The *CURRENT* student loan is for maintainence, and yes, it's not enough. The proposed £1000 grant is also for maintainance.

The current £1100 tuition fee is up front and means tested. It isn't supposed to be paid for with the student loan.

The ammendment is that everyone will now pay higher tuition fees, because we benefit from our education, and we can pay it back *WHEN* we benefit from our education.

However, £1,100 of the fees will be means tested as before, for no good reason whatsoever (or at least, all the arguments for keeping a means test conflict with the rationale for higher, deferred fees).

So you see, there is still, technicaly, and argument for means tested grants but non means tested fees.

Frankly I think "sick joke" covers it quite well. Or perhaps Franken-Fees: a monster stitched together from the bits of old systems.

*WHY* am I randomly emphasising *WORDS*?

I need more sleep.

At http://www.wessexscene.co.uk/article.php?sid=424 there is an article by Damien Green, Shadow Education & Skills Secretary.