The results for last week's Fun Online Polls were as follows:
What is the best way of funding university degrees?
Tuition fees. 66%
General taxation. 28%
Other. Please specify. 6%
What is the least bad way of making university degrees affordable? (multiple choices allowed)
Low interest loans to students. 48%
Allowing students to claim the same benefits as other unemployed. 28%
A cap on tuition fees. 8%
Expecting employers to pay better salaries to graduates. 10%
A graduate tax. 8%
Other. Please specify. 20%
So that's that settled then. We could have saved Lord Browne all the bother.
PS - I'm a bit disappointed that "allowing students to claim the same benefits as other unemployed" was relatively unpopular. For a start, a full student grant is pretty much the same in cash terms as Jobseeker's Allowance at 18 - 24 year old rates. The unemployed can claim Council Tax Benefit and students can claim Council Tax exemptions, so that more or less cancels out (the landlord just hikes the rent by the amount of Council Tax which the occupants would otherwise be paying).
The big differences are:
i. The unemployed can claim Housing Benefit but students only get low-interest loans.
ii. If students can go out and work part time, they lose little or none of their grant, but the unemployed lose most of their benefits if they find a part time job.
iii. Benefits are means tested on the basis of the household in which the unemployed person lives; student grants are means-tested on the basis of their parents' income, even if they no longer live with them.
I see absolutely no reason why one group should be treated more or less favourably than the other, and seeing as ultimately the differences aren't that huge, I see no reason why they shouldn't both get the same, i.e. a Citizen's Income (how high or low that should be is a separate debate).
I won't mind too much having to shell out tuition fees when the times comes, but the idea that my kids will get less from the government if they are studying that if they are just hanging about is rather galling.
Just sayin', is all.
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7 comments:
It is bizarre that we would rather pay our young to sit on the sofa popping out brats than to send them to uni for some self improvement.
@ marksany: marvellous comment, I think i'm gonna steal that one.
MA, SW, exactly. Why do the meddlers-that-be desperately try to distinguish between unemployed (whether unable or unwilling), mildly disabled, students, part time workers, stay at home mums, trainees, apprentices, early retirees and so on?
Why not accept that all these categories overlap and just pay them all the same?
Because some of them might not deserve to be paid and the undeserving must suffer. Far better to spend billions on bureaucracy than a single pound be given to those who do not deserve it.
B, if we're being moralistic, I think we observe in practice that "the undeserving" get a far more favourable treatment than "the deserving", so that's an epic fail.
I am amoral/libertarian in these matters and prefer giving everybody the same.
M, I was briefly in Daily Mail reader mode there, I don't normally think like that.
B, and I was responding in Daily Mail mode: 'we observe in practice that "the undeserving" get a far more favourable treatment than "the deserving".' :-)
It's just that my solution is nice and simple - a Citizen's Income - whereas the DM crowd would prefer ever more clampdowns, which (as you rightly observe) swells the numbers of 'undeserving' recipients (i.e. civil servants).
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