“The evidence suggests I was completely wrong about UK tuition fees”
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
That's just ridiculous. What we are actually seeing is a very strong sheepskin effect where not having a university degree pretty much guarantees you a menial, low paying job. The poor push for a degree but that does not "the inequality gap has closed", because there is still strong inequality among degrees themselves.
People go to university not to learn (that's just a side effect, in some schools, for some students) but to signal to society and to a future employer they are the type of person willing to commit themselves to a career in the field, by irreversibly burning money and years of their lives doing busywork. So clearly, a more expensive or exclusive school is a better signal. Everybody goes to university nowadays but that does not mean degrees are equivalent.
I agree throwing public money at this mess is not a solution, we have to devise more efficient ways for people to signal their competence and willingness to learn.
Evidence?
There's no definition on disadvantaged / advantaged areas. Might be that the given figures: 72% 63%, 39% and 36%, just reflect the relative populations. Combined with the ongoing trend of people getting more educated, this might account for all of these figures.
Also the article simply dismisses the size of tuitions. A tuition of say < 10000 £ / a year probably won't be a strong inequalizer. But the whole notion that Ivy league tuitions vs. no tuitions wouldn't effect the possibilities of people is foolish.
The second point / infograph was more interesting though, and might bare more fruit for thought. Resources probably would be better allocated to pre uni. times.
That said, £27,000 for a bachelor's degree represents terrible value for money in most cases. The UK's old targets of getting everyone into higher education have had a terribly negative effect on universities; they now chase student numbers and have a 'grow or die' mindset.
The improvement of apprentice systems over the last few years is a step in the right direction, but I fear the damage has been done. Students don't want a challenging experience for £27k, they want the piece of paper they've paid for. For best value for money, I personally would rather take out a student loan without attending an institution and undertake self-guided learning at a slightly later age.
I like how things work in Eastern Europe, where education isn't expensive but you need to actually work hard and be good (and get kicked out if you aren't) to get a degree.
The same is true in the UK - apart from the fact that we overload the term 'engineer' to mean both 'someone who fixes things' and 'someone with a particular professional qualification (similar to a doctor or lawyer)'.
Becoming a Chartered Engineer requires a relevant masters degree, some years of professional experience and then qualifying exams - which is similar to other professions such as medicine or law. And these professional qualifications exist for a reason - e.g. someone has to sign off on a new bridge project and say that it will be safe. I don't want that person to be someone who reckons they know what they're doing just because they've done it for 10 years.
NB: There are good reasons why software is (and should, IMO) be considered differently to a field such as structural engineering. And indeed, very few software engineers bother trying to achieve chartership.
Or pay...
Hell they haven't manged to increase the number of trade apprentices chipy sparkies etc
I think the problem here is that small firms and one man bands, who used to be the backbone of the apprenticeship system, are no longer willing to take the risk of investing in someone only to see them get snapped up by a bigger firm once they have served their time?
There needs to be some kind of system in place that either prevents this happening or that compensates the firm who made the initial investment.
It's impossible to run the kinds of controlled large scale socio-economic experiments you describe. If we ignore the evidence that doesn't meet your high standards, we'll have no real world data.
There's things you know, things you don't know, and things you think you know but you don't know. It's the last one that harms the most.
> If we ignore the evidence that doesn't meet your high
> standards, we'll have no real world data.
* No comparison with other countries, and their respective policies.
* No data on where these students graduate from, or in which subjects, or with which grades, or what their average salary is X years later, or whether they'll actually be able to pay back the loan.
It's missing a huge amount of important information; you really can't justify the conclusion "tuition fees are good" from this alone.
That said, the potential deterrent effect is not the only thing to be considered. We also have to look at fairness.
Normally, a fixed [2] benefit paid out of flat or progressive taxes is itself progressive (because it provides proportionately more financial relief to low-income recipients).
However, in the case of free tuition, middle- and high-income households are more likely to be recipients; this makes it potentially regressive and is one of the major arguments for not having free tuition; you might end up with low income households paying tuition disproportionately for high income households.
Yet the UK's system (paying back tuition as an additional tax on your income, but only if you earn enough) does not really fix it; while it addresses the low/middle income disparity, it creates a regressive bump in the middle of the income scale; the cost hurts middle class students the most. Once you hit a point where you will pay your entire tuition, it's a fixed cost that is borne by everybody and then it becomes regressive.
Creating a flat or progressive hypothecated tax for college graduates might address the issue of social fairness, but at this point it's not clear whether it's worth the complexity or whether just financing tuition (and also other forms of tertiary education) out of a sufficiently progressive income tax might not be easier. After all, governments do a lot of things that are likely to benefit richer people more and we don't create convoluted hypothecated taxes for all of them.
The article is of course right that the problems that cause unequal access to college occur a long time before you worry about tuition, but this is really not an either-or situation. Free or affordable tuition isn't all that expensive (by the standards of the budgets of Western countries), not to mention that investing in human capital is generally a good idea. And, obviously, providing options for tertiary education and careers other than college is also a primary concern.
[1] That said, I'm pretty sure that on an individual level, there are still plenty of cases where it does deter potential students – I know some myself – and there are other detrimental effects, such as the financial burden on dropouts.
[2] Tuition varies by university, of course, but on balance it's close enough to a fixed expense to call it that.
However, upfront fees of course are a big deterrent to poorer students, and that's not the only way to charge for tuition.
I like Milton Friedman's proposal to tax a certain percentage of future earnings of students in exchange for paying for their fees. Australia has a similar income-contigent repayment system which has been very successful.
I think it's fair that college graduates pay for the bulk of (all of?) their education, but I think it would be much better for college graduates (and society) if those fees were collected later in life and didn't cause crippling debt.
As other commenters have pointed out, students from Scotland who are studying for their first undergraduate degree at a Scottish university don't pay any tuition fees.
Tuition is actually not homogene, some german lands have it some not. But in the last years, they have been gradually reduced or removed ( in Bavaria for example).
> You have to take the decision if you want to go to university at the age of 10.
While I'm not a fan of Germany's tracking system, this really isn't true anymore. Leaving aside the fact that at least one state (Schleswig-Holstein) has pretty much killed tracking, your choice after fourth grade no longer locks you into one track. It's still pretty wasteful, but there's a lot of flexibility now (example: my niece is about to do her abitur after having already done an apprenticeship, and this was fully financed by the German government).
Regarding tuition, i've seen the tracking system more restrictive than having a tuition. You can always borrow money to pay a tuition, but if you choose wrongly ( or have really low scholar performance in the first 4 years of school), it is(was) pretty hard to access to the university.
The effect is - in general kids from well-off families do better at school and don't have to work when they are 18 - so they study for free and get a degree that's worth more in labour market.
Others pay for studies and often have to work during the day, and study at evenings/weekends, and in the end they get a degree that's "second class".
IMHO it's still a better system than USA (I'm not familiar with UK system so can't compare), because the competition for students means that universities can't charge outrageous prices like in USA. Almost everybody can afford university in Poland. But it's not the ideal system some people think it is.
Also the primary and middle school is important. In Poland the default for every kid is to go to university, and teachers teach basing on that assumption.
High graduation rate, but _horrible_ education quality exactly because of these factors. Judging by my personal experience, a CS graduate from any not first-rate (and there's about 5 of truly first-rate places left) Russian uni/college is, on average, significantly worse than a self-taught programmer.
Also, incredibly high corruption: professors extorting bribes at exams (not just accepting bribes from low-perfoming students, but actually extorting bribes from students who would able pass tests otherwise) isn't something far out of the ordinary.
"While student fees can be higher at many ivy league and other top colleges, the £9,000 annual charge for attending an English institution pushed the British average above the US’s public colleges for the first time, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said. OECD data showed that fees for a bachelor or equivalent degree on average in public institutions was $9,019 a year in the UK compared with $8,202 in the US. Fees at private institutions – attended by 40 per cent of students -- in the US are on average $21,189 a year."
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/62a1d4e0-9213-11e5-bd82-c1fb8...
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/nov/24/uk-has-high...
UK annual tuition: $9,000 - $13,440 (the max for public) [1]
US avg annual tuition, public: $9,410 [2]
US avg annual tuition, private: $32,405 [2]
It's possible fees might not matter too much up to a certain range... investing in yourself could be justified economically up to a certain amount, after which the fees could be too much to justify (unless you have wealthy family to help out).
[1] http://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/student-finance/... [2] http://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-table...
Education expenditures in France: 5.9% of GDP UK: 6%
Source: CIA World Factbook.
The outcomes in the US certainly aren't impressive, college degrees are becoming basic credentials, with little consideration of their utility. Not all academic pursuit needs to be measured against the economic utility it provides, but at a systemic level you probably want it to be at least roughly balanced against that utility.
Yes, of course it should be at least roughly balanced against that utility. But that's an entirely different debate, than one about equality of opportunity in education by cost paid by the student.
> Does it really matter how many people apply?
In the US, the ROI on a degree is sad. with hard numbers to back it up - especially from a 'private' school. $100k debt to get a $45k/yr job - and thats if you can find one in your field of study.
It doesn't seem (to me) that people think about the ROI on these things. At this point it makes more sense to pay < $10k to become a plumber or electrician - things people will need no matter the economic situation, with an ROI through the stratosphere.
I am currently enrolled in the EIT Digital master school. Funded by the EU, with scholarships for both EU and non EU citizens there was a huge amount of applicants from outside the EU, mainly "poorer" countries. Turns out, of those very few remainend and mostly those that got a full scholarship.
Applicants != graduates;
£24k p.a...