9% of kids from poor families go to university in Barnsley

All the best for the future . You get out of life what you put in . Keep grafting and learning .

 

Nope, the 21k threshold is only for people who started studying after 1 Sept 2012 (Plan 2), otherwise the threshold is £17,775 (Plan 1). The repayments are always 9% of your taxable earnings no matter which plan you are on.

 

Bargain.

 

The problem is that they are now making fees and interest levels so high that it is practically impossible to pay it off, unless you are a very high earner, so you are paying 9% the whole 30yrs. There's also a weird middle level where you pay more over the 30yrs than someone who earns more than you who pays it off more quickly.

E.g. Someone who leaves uni with a £51,600 debt (borrowing £9,000 for fees & £8,200 living costs per year)

Starting salary of £30,000 a year: pays £75,000 over 30yrs - remaining debt wiped off
Starting salary of £35,000 a year: pays £105,000 over 30yrs - remaining debt wiped off
Starting salary of £40,000 a year: pays £135,000 over 30yrs - remaining debt wiped off
Starting salary of £45,000 a year: pays £149,000 over 29yrs
Starting salary of £50,000 a year: pays £125,000 over 24yrs

And that's before the proposed interest rate increase to 6.1% in September. As you can see, the amount the paper you get says you owe and the amount you actually pay back is vastly different due to the low repayments and high interest rates (both of which can and do change at any time). You can get mortgages with 3% interest rates very easily in today's markets.

 

Maybe you think it is. Many don't.

Kids can go to Uni in the UK, and pay over £9k per year tuition fees. Unless they are Scottish going to a Scottish Uni, when its free. So we have a two-tier education system depending on where you are born.

Or they could go to Dublin, and pay under £3k per year for the same standard tuition and level of education. Or they could go to Holland and take a degree taught in English for £2k per year. Or they could until the will of the people decided to take that option away from them, unless you are the child of an EU migrant in which case you still have that option.

University education in the UK is among the most expensive in the world. And with the high tuition fees, they are now more incentivised for students to pass rather than receive a good education. Long term this is going to decrease teaching standards and the quality of graduates from our universities.

And as JamDrop says, the interest rate is increasing. What is to stop the government of the day increasing the payment rate by a few % when they next need some extra cash?

 

Yes and my point was I came from a similar background to get mine as did a lot of the people I went to school with - roughish school but a lot did make that break

 

The ability for it to change on a whim is the biggest worry. For example, how the government planned on freezing the repayment threshold at 21k for 5yrs (for Plan 2, Plan 1 is much lower). At first glance this looks like a good thing, until you take into account wages increasing with inflation and that it would mean lower income students paying back more money overall. MSE's Martin Lewis threatening to sue them put an end to that though. The fact that they can make retroactive changes to a contract is terrible, they could decide debts won't be written off after all, interest rates are already being changed whenever they want, the whole thing is a mess.

 

I am not too concerned about the low take up of university places as such, what concerns me more is the prevalent local attitude towards education in general which appears to be slow in changing. A university education is not the be all and end all and there are plenty of other educational paths one can tread. I just wish more folks would tread em.

 

I fully expect all 3 of my kids to go to university and I can't see it not happening.

 

So what's the alternative? Let the taxpayer foot the bill . So you're saying it's ok for a low income worker to pay extra tax to subsidise students that are potentially going to earn 50k a year plus . Can't be right.

 

Maybe the employers that need these skilled graduates should pay more tax to fund the training?

 

Maybe so , but I think employers would argue that the pay enough already on wages and taxes .

 

JD where do you get these amounts from?
People on here seem to have just accepted them. However my son in law completed a degree course a few years ago and then another period where he topped up his student loan to gent his teaching qualification and he is now in his second year of teaching. He will pay nowhere near the amounts you are talking and my daughter and he have secured a mrtgage on a £250k house whilst my daughter was still on maternity leave (albeit she has a decent salary when she returns to work)

The figures below back up what Martin Lewis on money adviser recently stated on their site confirming that people should not be concernbed about student loans. Furthermore a friend (who is an IFA) told me that student loans, whilst taken into account by Mortgage providers rarely if ever impact on the application result other than a footnote in the process. Most people will never pay off the loans in full and only pay a prortion of the extra income gained from obtaining a proper degree.

I apologise now if I have got these figures wrong (I dont think I have), but your politics appear, in this instance, to be getting in the way of reporting the facts accurately

These are the figures and examples based on the two different SL plans (pre 2012 and post 2012) from the SLC and other sources readily available on the internet:
Pre 9 12 30000 salary 2500 £93 360 months = £33,480
Post 9 12 30000 salary 2500 £67 360 months =£24,120
Thes amounts vary according to indivisual circumstance but are the maximum someone will pay unless they make overpayments (which most financial advisors recommend against.

 

They will be paying more tax for their working lives (45-50 years) which will be subsidising the lower level tax payers, so it can be right, just depends on your point of view.

 

This is such a complex problem. It's not just tuition fees, not just north-south divide, not just attitude towards (or expectation of) education. It's a mixture of all of that and more.

I've done research here in the area, talking to people about unemployment and job searching, and a lot of them have lost faith in what education can bring people WITHIN the area.

Working with the numbers from 2012 (most recent Joseph Rowntree/Sheffield Hallam "State of the Coalfields" report) there's only 56 jobs (full-time, somewhat quality) jobs available for every 100 people of working age in Yorkshire.
Also, another report shows that South Yorkshire is among the lowest educated areas exactly because people who do manage to go to uni move out of the area after finishing to find a job down South. This all sounds logical, but this is not something that you can just use to say 'Well, why don't you all just move away then, can't find a job here? Just move!'. First, an exodus in the area isn't going to help the area, as it only limits further development, and eventually jobs 'down South' will also become more scarce, living prices will rise, etc. Second, it's easy to forget what attachment to the area, community and social ties do for a person. Family, friends, support, but also just enjoying living in the area where you grew up in. Moving away isn't just something you do. Although it's easy enough for people to think 'I succeeded, so that means everyone else can/should too'.

That ties into what education can bring you if you stay here, and a lot of people simply tell their kids 'not to get their hopes up'. I've heard it a lot from people all over South Yorkshire, working with young people, older workers. They don't want their kids to be disappointed even further, which leads to a lot of people not encouraging further education which although (too) expensive might (and there's the thing..) pay itself back in the long run.

At the same time, this ties into the whole glorification of 'university education' by the State and perhaps universities themselves. "Everyone should go to university as that is the best one can do", all the while making it seem like learning a trade is inferior. Yes, they do support apprenticeships (up to a certain (financial) level, and more in the South than here 'oop North'), but people are made to believe that going to university is the only thing that makes you successful. Well, newsflash, it isn't. People should be able to find out what suits them, and be supported with that no matter the 'level' of their education.

And.. And.. And...

In the end, the balance should be returned/created between all forms/levels of education, people shouldn't be too hung-up on stats and numbers (university league tables are rubbish too...) and look more at what individuals can do. Stories tell us much more about reality than numbers, or at least, that's my 'professional' opinion.

 

i trust you've paid yours back?

 

Absolutely!

 

Why do you have to go to university to be prosperous? Most people I know have done really well in life, and did not go to Uni.

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This 1000% Look at post war industrial Germany. 'Blue collar 'engineers etc highly regarded , rewarded and 'respected. The UK, it seems, in the vast majority of situations only consider office and managerial posts as worthy of high salary and career progression And don't get me started on 'Mickey Mouse' degrees (usually suffixed with ...studies)

 

It's a fair point and hopefully after gaining a degree they will get a decent well paid job so they can afford the extra tax and re-payments, otherwise what's the point in going to university ?