Vince Cable appears to have been replaced with a total moron since he joined the government.
To recap' briefly, according to this, the present situation for English students attending an English university can borrow money from the government to pay for tuition fees of "up to £3,290" per annum and a further amount of between "up to £3,838" and "up to £6,928" per annum for living costs.
When they finish university, the total loan is subject to interest set the same as the normal inflation rate (in other words, it is quite low for an unsecured loan) and the government collects it by adding 9% to your tax rate on earnings above £15,000.
So if your total loan when you finish university is £18,000 and you earn £25,000 a year, you pay an extra £900 in tax for twenty years (ignoring interest). In other words, we already have a kind of graduate tax, it's just that it is a fixed maximum amount - after so many years, you have paid it off.
Vince's party, the Lib Dems have always opposed tuition fees but never thought they'd be in government so didn't worry about how universities would be financed, so today's offer is to scrap tuition fees but have an open-ended graduate tax instead. I am wholeheartedly in favour of tuition fees of course, because that's the free market way, because this encourages people only to take courses which increase their earnings potential.
What Vince is proposing would significantly reduce these 'market signals' as students will be comparing a zero cost with a lower post-tax earnings potential in future. And if they choose a degree in something completely pointless which won't help them get a job they will pay very little.
My personal highlight from the BBC article is this: "[Vince Cable] is also expected to say that universities which perform well should get a "reliable stream of income" but be less dependent on the state." Dude, WTF? How is "being funded by a tax collected by the state on a randomly selected group of people" not being "dependent on the state".
As to the last bit: "But Mr Cable's department, like most others, is expected to find cuts of 25% in four years to reduce the budget deficit.", as UKIP always say, the most painless way of doing this would be to get away from the idiotic 'target' set by the previous government that 50% of all 18 year olds should go to University. If we reduced the number of student places*, then the department's budget would probably be sufficient to be able to scrap tuition fees entirely.
* Remembering always that large (but as yet unquantified) number of people who have attended university fail to qualify, or to find a 'graduate' job, but under the present system they all end up with these huge debts at age 21 or 22 - i.e. the 50% target makes a lot of people a lot worse off!. Feel free to add"Serve them right, they ought to shun those loans and get themselves a weekend or evening job instead", which is my view as well.
UPDATE: VFTS points out, The Daily Mash has explained this far more succinctly.
Prestigious
3 hours ago
15 comments:
"Serve them right, they ought to shun those loans and get themselves a weekend or evening job instead"
I worked all through uni, in my final year I worked 32 hours a week answering Vodafone's phone for them.
I still took a loan, the loan basically paid my rent and the £6 an hour gave me enough money to support my alcoholism.
Totally agree with all that. It's a barmy idea. Mr Cable always was going to be the weak link in the coalition government.
I can only add that this may even face legal difficulties, bearing in mind he is proposing a different tax system for half the country from the other half, and can't pretend it's a fee for the uni course because, as you said, it's open-ended.
European Court of Human Rights here we come...
Cable always was a moron. He is a fine example of the classical clever smug semi lefty. He's clever enough to know that he's clever but not clever enough to know that he's not clever enough. Rather like Ed Balls or Brown. Clever idiots all of them or more elegantly the 'intellectually autistic'. These type of shits have been the bane of my life (all our lives) for years.
Lola is looking for Dunning Kruger...
Incisive analysis, as always.
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2913&Itemid=81
AC1 - To prove your comment I had never heard of Dunning-Kruger, although I have been aware of studies that show that we all think that we are above average drivers say - although clearly I am - an above average driver that is. So thanks for that.
SL, I took the student loans 1993 - 1996 even though I didn't need them and put the money in an interest paying account (back in the days when interest rates were higher than inflation). And I once did an LLB law degree for a bet while working full time - it took me three-and-a-half years and I got a First (of course).
AC, excellent point. It's probably against EU law on free movement of workers as well.
L, he did show some promise but he has turned into a c***.
VFTS, excellent, I have updated post accordingly.
AC1, we can use that D-K thingy to justify anything. Brilliant.
Hey, lay off Old Vince! His job is to make Osborne look good. And he's making a very sound job of it too.
You lot make me feel old. When I went to university, anyone who wanted to do that, could and, if their parents were poor, the state paid not only the tuition fees, but their living expenses. OK, some students dossed about and ended up with nothing to show for it, but as wastes of public funds went, it was pretty small beer. Most of the universities were well-respected enough that any degree was worth something in the jobs market.
Of all the things Tony Blair did, one of the most detrimental to the poor of the country was to introduce what you rightly call "the idiotic 'target'" of having 50% of 18 year olds attending university, which appeared to be based on nothing but a personal whim. All that has happened is that the extra 40?% have ended up in debt to get themselves a useless degree like Media Studies from the University of Nowhere, which latter institution used to be Somewhere Polytechnic, teaching people useful things like engineering.
Bruce, yup, even by my standards he is.
Bayard, that is UKIP policy - keep the funding the same but reduce the number of students, which isn't perfect either but better than anything else on offer.
Best option of all is Citizens dividend and a loan for ALL the cost of the course.
Mark, if I was education minister, I'd introduce state scholarships to cover the cost of tuition fees. You work hard, you get your tuition paid for by the state, you doss about and you pay for it yourself.
It's bizarre, isn't it, that when tertiary education was free, we had, more or less the number of graduates the country needed. Now student have to pay for it, the country is awash with surplus degree-holders.
AC1, yes of course when I'm in charge, students will get the same Basic Cash Benefit as anybody else in that age group, whether students pay their tuition fees upfront or in arrears is a minor issue.
B, if we 'privatised' universities, then they would always give scholarships to the really clever kids just to boost their average results. No need for state involvement.
And we'd always have the 'right number' of graduates, by definition, in the same way as this country has the 'right number' of hand held video cameras or the 'right number' of mid-price family saloon cars.
In olden times 'free' university education was strictly rationed by quantity; now we have propaganda and qualification inflation which mean that demand for uni places outstrip supply of 'jobs for people who actually need a degree'. All very sad.
"In olden times 'free' university education was strictly rationed by quantity;"
IIRC, it was rationed by quality, not quantity. Three good "A" levels meant you were pretty well guaranteed a place in university. But that was "elitist", I suppose and had to go; after all, why should morons be discriminated against by not having a chance of some tertiary education?
B, yes, but that requirement for three good A levels was chosen because that gave us the 'right number' of students a year.
I am quite sure they decided on the number of students first and then set the entry requirements to match, rather than the other way round.
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