Blair's top-up fees

This doesn’t really matter to you people across the pond, but a few hours ago, Tony Blair won a commons vote for university top-up fees. If you haven’t heard about it:

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/publicservices/story/0,11032,1132544,00.html

I’m going to go to university (hopefully) in two years, so if I don’t earn at least 20K by then, I’m going to be in debt if I do go. I think this is completely stupid. It’s just another way to take as much money from teenagers as possible and since we’re the most vulnerable group of people in England when it comes to political matters, we don’t have any say in the matter. We’re the future builders of society. When these politicians are old, we’re the ones that’ll be running and advancing the country and without us, the country would be nothing in the future.

The main worry I have is that all this extra money that teenagers will have to pay may discourage some from going onto university later on, which is a damn shame. We’ve got enough stupid people in the world, we don’t need anymore.

Since I’m no longer an armchair activist, I’ve thought this through and tommorrow when I go back into college, I’m going to arrange an appointment with the college’s student union and it’s head of departments and I’m going to ask them for ideas on how to get into contact with other colleges and maybe fighting all this. I’ve already thought of maybe creating a petition to give around my college and if other colleges are interested, to give them to those too.

Now the main point of this is to ask if anyone here has any ideas on how I could fight it, as well as what I already have. This especially goes out to anyone in England, and also, if you’re in college or even in the later years of school maybe you could also get in touch with the head people at your place of education and talk to them about it. If the future of England makes a loud enough voice, then the government can’t ignore us.

The bill is not yet guarenteed to be passed. The vote in the Commons was only won by five, which means that the vote in the Lords could be close too. The bill could possibly be held up there (like the fox hunting bill that’s keeps getting rejected by the Lords) although it’s not too likely. Also, if the Lib Dems come to power at the next general election, they have guarenteed to abolish tuition fees as far as I know. Tuition fees will only come to pass after the next general election, so if Labour are defeated, there’s a chance they might get scrapped altogether. This seems to be becoming more and more likely, as Tony Blair’s leadership seems less secure now than ever, what with the defence blunders in Iraq, the Hutton report, and now, he could only get the bill on tuition fees passed by five votes.

Other than hoping for something to change after the next election, there’s not much we can do. Even if there are mass demonstrations, the government may not listen as students don’t make up a large enough proportion of the population and are seen as ‘tax dodgers’ by many.

I agree that it may put a lot of people off going to university. I start this year, so I won’t have to pay fees for my degree, but I was intending to study graduate medicine after completing my first degree. I dread to think what the fees will be like for medicine, and, although I will get a grant before starting my degree, I’ll still graduate in a huge amount of debt.

FUCK. I hope to God this thing gets thrown out at the next step. He’s not even helping himself. The people who this really matters to, right now, have probably just turned voting age themselves (I did). He’s so screwed. I hope. >:O

At least he may finally have found the solution to voter apathy amongst young people. Most of the people I know are definately going to make the effort to vote, just to try to stop tuition fees.

Stick it to the man.

Throw him out on his arse, and boot his Labour cronies with him.

I did see enough newsclip on CNN yesterday to discover Blair made some sort of promise upon election in 1997 that this was exactly what he was NEVER gonna do.

Reminded me of Bush the First’s “read my lips: no new taxes” gaffe. This is why politicians never make concrete promises such as these. When the game begins to be played, and they make the deals, and end up going back on their word, it still summons enough outrage to get 'em booted via Insurrection In The Voting Booth.

If only we could get that outraged over their general evasiveness and unclarity.

Oh well.

I heard on the news that this wasnt going to pass, but he was going to try for a vote of confidence on it.

They had the vote of confidence yesterday, that’s what Urkani was talking about. Unfortunately, it did pass, but only because a small number of Labour rebels changed their mind and voted with the government at the last minute and gave them a majority of five. A lot of the MPs only voted with the government because they felt they had to in order to keep Labour strong and stop gains being made by the Conservatives and the Lib Dems. I think it’s quite sad that these people voted against their principles by supporting top-up fees, in order to ensure that the party did not appear divided over important issues.

It makes me really angry. As it is, university students now have debts flying out of every orifice once they leave and start work. And we all know that unis like Oxford and Birmingham will easily charge fees of close to ten grand for a single course.

I start university this year. I hope to god Blair gets the boot before he does something even more extortionate and stupid.

Originally posted by LunarCry
It makes me really angry. As it is, university students now have debts flying out of every orifice once they leave and start work.

Heh. Now y’all are just like us, your college-going cousins across the pond. :smiley:

Wait, that’s not comic. It’s tragic. For all.

Bah.

I tried to pick this up from the article, but I got a little lost in the description of side-switching in the voting. What exactly is a top-up fee? Is it basically a tuition increase?

hey urkani goes to my collage (unfortunetly!) and he hasent done it yet! he was drunk when he done this thread! but he came into school today and told us about it and we are gonna FIGHT THE POWER when we can be arsed to get our butts of the chairs! but seriosly tony blair is one gay mother fucker. this is some blair witch project or somthing. hes such a wanker i bet his wife has a penis (even though thats got ntohignt o do with it!)
but yeh urkanis right we are gona try and get in touch with these dam collages and try and get a petition but its kinda harfd coz we have a tonn of coursework to do on top of it.

As I understand it, the top-up fees allow universities to set their own charges for tuition fees. At the moment, the maximum tuition fee is £3,000, I think. However, universities have already stated that with the top-up fee bill, they’d charge fees of £8,000 and more for a single course! A course of minimum three years would end up inflicting debts of far beyond what we have to pay now - around £10,000, average, upon leaving university.

People from low-income backgrounds will no doubt still receive plenty of help to pay the tuition fees. People with high-income backgrounds won’t need the help. And the people in the middle ground will, as usual, be screwed. Which includes my family.

Actually people from low-income families like me are gonna be screwed too, because although we get a small grant up front (and from what I’ve heard, this grant will be small), the full tuition fees have to be payed after graduation, the same as everybody else. I’m not sure if they actually have to pay the grant back yet, I don’t think that’s been decided yet. I do agree though, middle-income families do get screwed with this, as they won’t be eligible for any grants.

This really gets me because I want to study medicine after the degree that I’ve applied for this year, and rumour has it that some universities want to charge the maximum amount possible for this course. That may well and up being over £10,000 and I just can’t afford that.

You have to start paying the fee when you earn more than £15,000, and when you consider that the average house price in England is £158,000, I think a lof of students are going to be living with their parents for a very long time. It’s bad enough trying to get onto the property ladder as it is, without being saddled with huge debts to pay back as soon as a graduate starts working.

I want to make sure that I’m clear on how the money works… so, basically what you refer to as “tuition fees” is the same thing as tuition (here, I think we refer to “tuition and fees”, in which tuition is basically the cost of attending the school and pays for the academic expenses, while fees pay for services offered for students such as transportation, libraries, athletics, etc.)? Therefore, with the passage of top-up fees, the schools would be able to set their tuition prices wherever they like, right?

I have one more question - what is a course in England-speak? To me, it’s just one class I could take over one semester. Is it a person’s time as a student at a university? If it’s what it is here, then those prices sound insane!

I find this to be interesting since there currently is a lot of conflict over university prices in my state.

Originally posted by VickiMints
I want to make sure that I’m clear on how the money works… so, basically what you refer to as “tuition fees” is the same thing as tuition (here, I think we refer to “tuition and fees”, in which tuition is basically the cost of attending the school and pays for the academic expenses, while fees pay for services offered for students such as transportation, libraries, athletics, etc.)? Therefore, with the passage of top-up fees, the schools would be able to set their tuition prices wherever they like, right?

Roughly. Tuition fees pay for the lessons only. Everything else, food, dorms/flats/houses, and transportation are seperate. Technically you could get by Uni without paying anything except lesson fees, but it would be difficult and/or embarressing.

And I think the max they can set, now anyways, is 3k a year for lessons. It still sucks ass.

You have absolutely nothing to complain about. 5K a year is cheap in the US.

Sin, it may not seem like much to you, but to me, living in a poor family with not much income, it’s a hell of alot. I don’t want to be at least 15K in debt when I leave university, because I’d have to raise all the money myself. That’d take around a year for me to clear out, so I’d have to wait that long before I can even start to think about saving up any money. That’s not even taking into account how long it’ll be till I FIND a job after I leave uni. Before you make comments like that, try and think about everyone’s circumstances.

If I go to med school I could be 120K in debt. Hi. I know a dentist that is so in debt he can’t even buy a house yet. The dude has to pay rent for a few more years. And he’s married. I don’t remember if he has kids.

I do think of the circumstances and its really nothing dramatic. I know people that have a greater credit card debt than you will when you’re done with college.

IF you are in debt, it only means you’ll have the discomfort of knowing you need a job. Furthermore, from what I’ve read about this little event, IF you ARE poor, then you will have some financial aid available to you and that you won’t be required to pay off the debt the second you have your degree. While you do have some reason to be upset as no one likes higher costs, I think that the people up top had a point when they said someone needs to pay for this somewhere. Also, I have a friend who made 10K in 1 year to be able to finance a semester trip abroad, while taking classes. Life’s not easy. Suck it in.