To all with student loans

[Beefy198]

I don't know why this is so hard to understand - do you actually understand how -ve inflation works?

The loan is supposed to be zero interest in real terms.

I think that some posters do see it quite crudely as the government writing a cheque and saying "here's some money back". But of course, it's not money in your pocket, it's adjusting the loan in real terms as you say.

As for it being 'free' money - I've already pointed out that despite choosing the use the official government inflation yardstick of CPI, they use RPI which is higher anyway, so if anything we've been paying over the odds for years anyway... not that I expect that will make much difference to most peoples' views

(Before anyone suggests that graduates protest they use CPI instead - they already have and the government response was that "we have always used this method, and to change it part way through people's loans would be unfair. And just because RPI is higher than CPI at the moment, it doesn't mean that it always will be"... bet they love that statement now )

And pissing it up the wall? That's a bit of a stereotype - the maximum loan (which was income assessed) was in the region of £4000 to £5000, out of which came any fees, rent, food, books etc. Those who needed the maximum loan always definitely needed a part-time job as their parents couldn't "pay their way". So any 'pissing up the wall' of funds would be their own money.

If you took away the loan system you would literally allow only rich kids to go to uni. That's progressive, hm?

[zamzummim]

Don’t know to me the Tuition fees Student Loan idea was awful, I personally couldn’t believe it when a labour government out of all governments brought in the regulations, it’s totally wrong and was the end of an era. To me it was in the same class as irradiating NHS.

Students Loans are totally wrong, I don't only want them to irradicate the student loans, I also want them to bring back the old student grants!!

[zamzummim]

Sorry what I meant is the tuition fees idea was awful, and forcing the students to take loans is worse... I believe the old system was fair enough, kids who came from families with good income didn't get any grants, kids who were unable to afford uni expenses, were given a grant!

[TimberWolf]

I wonder if the conservative will put the brakes on the practise of half the population going to university, running up huge debts and then being told to fork off abroad?

[Pickle2]

Students Loans are totally wrong, I don't only want them to irradicate the student loans, I also want them to bring back the old student grants!!

But that would mean rolling back the massive increase in access to higher education that scrapping the grants allowed. Labour (rightly imho) traded free education for the few for subsidised education for the many.

Can't really argue with that if you ask me.

[EternalOptimist]

But that would mean rolling back the massive increase in access to higher education that scrapping the grants allowed. Labour (rightly imho) traded free education for the few for subsidised education for the many.

Can't really argue with that if you ask me.

you can't polish a turd

[Pickle2]

you can't polish a turd

No, but you can teach it media studies.

[zamzummim]

How did tuition fees open uni to the masses and kids from poor background? In the past anyone who came from a poor background would be given money (grants – not only the government grants, but the university itself issued extra grants to anyone with hardship) anyone who came from a middle class family (who had an income higher than 30K per year) would not be given grants – at least this was the case when I was a uni student, I didn’t get any grant because my dad’s yearly income was about 32K !! I and my family had to suffer to afford the university expenses for me and my brother and sister, but the kids who came from a poor background managed to get all sort of grants and were financially better off than the students who came from a middle-class background with no access to hardship grants. So to me the kids from poorer background were better off with the old grant system, and therefore would have been encouraged more to go to university.

[NotAllThere]

But that would mean rolling back the massive increase in access to higher education that scrapping the grants allowed. Labour (rightly imho) traded free education for the few for subsidised education for the many.

Nah. That started in 1988. I started university in 1987. The expectation was that we'd have university rooms in the first and third year. In 1988, admissions increased dramatically. Instead of all third years having university accomodation, only half did.

[expat]

Is there no net flow of British taxpayers money to Scotland any more then?

There never was: there is a net flow of Scottish taxpayers money to London (some say small, some say large).

Some but not all of Scottish taxes comes back to Scotland, and this flow is more visible than the outflow, most of which is not counted separately, hence the common illusion that England pays for Scotland.

Actually England exploits Scotland. This, as Schumacher (1973) pointed out, is generally what happens in such a case; equally general is the larger country's aggrieved and invariably false belief that they subsidise the smaller.