Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Switchboard >

Student debt

10:05 / 21.02.02

There has been a fair amount of press coverage about about student demos against debt and poverty. What do you think about this? I'm paying off my student loans at the moment, and I'm not sure I really agree with the points raised.
Student debt and student poverty are often lumped together. Check out any news report or magazine article. They are generally treated as the same issue. Are they? Erm, no. One way to resolve student poverty is to increase student debt. Actually the term "student debt" is misleading. It implies that a student has to pay back the debt when they are poor, ie a student. That isn't the case with student loans. They are only repayable after graduation and after a certain salary level is reached. That seems pretty reasonable to me and the idea of student loans becomes much more acceptable when we rethink "student debt" in terms of "high disposable income young professional debt". A loan across time from the skilled employed graduate to the impoverished student who made it all possible. Here you go, mate, don't spend it all on beer.
The question is who should pay for educa tion? The people who benefit most from it or otherwise? Having a well educated population is generally "a good thing" so it is reasonable that some subsidy should come from general taxation. It doesn't seem fair though that those who benefit the least, non-graduates, should pay the same proportion as those who benefit most, the graduates. Ah, so you are more likely to earn more cash, have a higher skilled, more prestigious and fulfilling job...and you want me to subisidise this as well?
Student loans seem to be a fair solution, as long as they are generous enough to afford a decent lifestyle during the student years, and reasonable enough to afford a manageable payback later on.

11:53 / 21.02.02

quote:It doesn't seem fair though that those who benefit the least, non-graduates, should pay the same proportion as those who benefit most, the graduates. Ah, so you are more likely to earn more cash, have a higher skilled, more prestigious and fulfilling job...and you want me to subisidise this as well?

If that's the case, why have free schooling either? Or a national health service? Or social security?

Higher education funded by general taxation encourages more people to enter it and, crucially, more people from poor backgrounds. When there's no guarantee of achieving anything at the end of it (and, let's face it, these days a degree doesn't automatically mean a good or profitable job) poor people are much less likely to risk getting themselves into massive debt, whereas richer ones can soak it up.

This isn't just theoretical stuff - there's already evidence that take-up of university places from those from poorer backgrounds has gone down in this country since tuition fees have appeared and the grant has effectively vanished.

12:48 / 21.02.02

quote:Originally posted by Buk:
It implies that a student has to pay back the debt when they are poor, ie a student. That isn't the case with student loans. They are only repayable after graduation and after a certain salary level is reached.

That is, except when the administration of the loans is so shit, that despite being under the threshold for earnings at the time and deferring, they managed to lose my deferment for three years, fail to tell me and let the bastard build up. Then they tell me that they can only back date a deferment four months, so I'm lumped with a debt of over £2,000. And I'm not the only one. It seems like the bastards do this sort of thing on purpose. Why can't they just add repayments incrementally on your national insurance repayments? It would cost half as much and they'd be sure they were charging people fairly on earnings.

This has nothing to do with the thread though. Sorry.

13:03 / 21.02.02

Buk-
I can see your point, but the problem is that increasingly "high disposable income young professional debt" is not the outcome. At least here in the US it's almost a given that you have to go to college to get a "good" job. And people tell you to rack up this debt because you'll get a job afterwards, but that isn't true anymore. The market is flooded with people with college degrees, it just isn't as bankable as loan companies and colleges want people to believe. So you end up with a mostly useless, expensive degree, deep in debt and making exactly what you would have been making had you skipped college and started working right out of high school. (Only now they expect you to write several fat checks to your creditor and your dear alma mater to boot.)

Fra- Don't even get me started on the evil of debt. Maybe it's time for another loan bitchfest in conversation.

13:12 / 21.02.02

I'm not sure that the prospect of having to pay the loans back if and when people earn enough money to do so is even the problem... the fact is that the loan system does seem to put people off university, and is creating a system whereby everyone above a certain income level goes to university as a matter of course, and everyone below it doesn't irrespective of ability (to generalise wildly, but the trend is apparent).

Moreover, what with half of all students at English universities paying tuition fees and spending their loan money on rent, student poverty is a reality which is probably not offset for yer average student by the prospect of getting a well-paid job (which is by no means a certainty - hasn't happened to me, for example). According to NUS stats, after rent and fees a student can be left with as little as 29 pounds a week to live on - that's less than income support will give you, and that is no fun. Then you start work knowing that you have (if you're at university now) probably ten thousand pounds of loan debt, not to mention things like overdrafts and credit cards. That's a depressing situation.

16:09 / 21.02.02

I'd just like to say that I went to a good university, got a first class degree, stayed for three years of post-grad work, retrained as a journalist, moved to the incredibly expensive heights of London where I've worked from the BBC, Time Out and emap and have not in my life EVER earned more than £23,000 and at the moment earn about half of that.

Based on this, I'm resentful enough of having to pay back my highly limited, "high disposable income young professional debt"...

16:23 / 21.02.02

Europeans might be shocked at the Byzantine gauntler of financial aide systems US students have to run, and even more shocked at the incredible price of a "top" education. A first tier university can cost well over $30,000 a year (including room and board). Considering that the average household income in the U.S. is slightly higher than that, the majority of students have substantial debts to pay off, even if they attend a "public" university (which might still run you $15,000 a year or more, including room and board, and more if you want to go to a school in a state your are not a resident of).

Because of this, most students in U.S. universities are there to get a "good" (high paying) job to pay off loan payments. This is where all those business management students come from. Consequently, we have a population that is educated, making a lot of money, and yet don't know how to think critically, something a traditional liberal arts education would get you.

The loan/aid system is a large reason why schools are a factory for replaceable coporate drones rather than a sanctuary for those who want to study and retain knowledge. Even those who go to school for science degrees are largely shunted off into research that can profit the university, rather than explore areas of interest to students.

20:05 / 21.02.02

Of course, in Scotland we've taken a slightly more amenable route: your fees are paid but you do, still, pay back a much smaller amount to a hypothecated fund which is sunk back into paying for other people's education in future.

It's early days and we'll probably all be bankrupt North of the Border soon but at least there's an acknowledgement that:

1. Society in general benefits from students getting an education and not just (if they do) the individual students

and 2. If you have to gamble on a lucrative career at the other end to pay off a disproportionate debt then poorer students won't take the risk at all (which research bears out since the abolition of grants).

The subjects which look like sure bets vocationally are oversubscribed and nobody wants an arts degree or a nursing degree. Which is a loss to society as a whole. Who's going to read philosophy for four years apart from the children of the upper middle classes?

09:24 / 22.02.02

i just paid off my student loans this past november. (3 cheers!) i think higher education should be much better funded, generally, and loans should be much less necessary, and rich people in the u.s., should pay more tax.

and how cool I saw the march--it was going almost past the Royal Courts of Justice just as we were breaking for lunch. I thought it was just a very good thing. The US has had student loans for many years, and the UK is copying it. I say: Don't go gently into that good night... they use these things to just keep chipping away at generalized public support for education. There's a real battle in the US to keep ads/mass media out of primary schoolrooms!

and if only people could feel they could afford to get a non-practical degree, just for the love of learning for its own sake. don't know how to solve that basic problem, but i also suspect things like student loans contribute to the problem....

alas.

07:46 / 23.02.02

Some good points there. The dissuasion factor is a biggie, but that could be addressed by a fair loan payback system. Perhaps, tiered for different income levels, or is that just a graduate tax?
Anyway, I think it is "a good thing" that general taxation meets needs. I'm just not convinced that graduates are the neediest people in the population. The subsidy goes to graduates (see privilege) not students. I'd rather see funding going elsewhere than those who 'only' earn 23,000. Of course, if graduates are in a position of need, ie through low earnings, then that should be addressed within a fair loans system.

11:46 / 23.02.02

I think one of the problems here is that there's a difference of perception of what the status of education is.

I tend to perceive higher education as something that should be accessible to all - a basic service, not a luxury. Some people may choose not to take advantage of it, that's their right, but they shouldn't expect to be treated better because of it.

Buk, on the other hand (and correct me if I'm wrong), you seem to perceive it as the other way round - it's a special thing, an additional luxury for the individual, which is incidentally also good for the community by raising the general level of education. Individuals can choose to take advantage of it, that's their right, but should be expected to pay an extra premium, like they would for flying lessons or taking MCSEs.

This always comes up in the matter of a lot of socialised services (how much healthcare can one expect before it is treated as a luxury?) I think a good point to focus on rather than the specifics is - how much education, and of what type, should people expect to get for free as a member of society, and what is luxury benefitting the individual more?

I've often heard it said (for example from the government) that it is better to encourage vocational and directly applicable degrees - engineering rather than media studies. The irony of providing extra funding for these, of course, is that those are the degrees that are most financially beneficial for the individual. They don't need so much government funding under a capitalist system because (sensible) employers will subsidise students and universities to make sure their potential workers are well trained, and provide greater pay for graduates so they don't have to worry so much about their future.

18:06 / 23.02.02

...yeah, the entire structure surrounding education = employment is truly fucked up. It seems that many kids I went to art school with, knew that they had to go to school and knew that they were probably going to have a hell of a time applying that knowledge to something lucrative. More often than not though, they accepted this truth and took it as an opportunity to just learn more and fulfill some areas of their life.

I however, did have some expectations...remembering all of the extra work I put in due to it looking good to an employer, but also for the general benefit of pushing the envelope and getting something in return. Now that I don't have a job, I'm kind of reliving the days of eating plain rice for a month since my money that I had was tied up in the other necessities...including loans. However, I wouldn't trade the experiences for the world.

And now since the job markets all topsy-turvey again, it seems that the idea of continuing your education further is available. But then again...with the debt of prior learning looming in the distance (as well as other small debts), it seems to be a very big Catch 22. It's sort of like hoping that you can defer long enough to put off the inevitable while gaining a skill that will be able to pay it of...

21:40 / 24.02.02

I always have mixed feelings about this issue. In principle Im all in favour of free education, though I think that is a misleading term since someone has to pay for it. Poorer students are often singled out as losing out under the current system in the UK. Perhaps Im wrong here, but Im not sure that this is true. (Can someone provide me with a source if Im wrong.)

The thing is that higher eduction has been and largely remains fairly class biased so that a disproportionate number of students are middle class. I dont think that this is a funding issue, but is more about our education system as a whole. I dont think we ever had classless education in the UK and from what I understand about the US its even worse there.

So when you hear someone argue that they dont want to pay taxes to fund higher education because they never went to Uni and their kids wont go to Uni, I do have some sympathy with their argument. Its not like health where you find yourself suddenly enrolled on a materials science degree.

The answer is to have a broad based and wide view of higher education that is funded through direct taxation and is, in principle, meant for everybody. Im thinking of the funding of evening/self improvement classes, for example, as well as higher education. The problem is that this would be even more expensive than at present and so would have greater opposition.

21:55 / 24.02.02

quote:Poorer students are often singled out as losing out under the current system in the UK. Perhaps Im wrong here, but Im not sure that this is true. (Can someone provide me with a source if Im wrong.)

Can you tell us what you mean exactly by "losing out"? I'm not sure what you mean here. Might be able to find a source then.

I mean, clearly students from poorer families are losing out compared to rich ones, because they find it harder to afford to pay their way through.

quote:The thing is that higher eduction has been and largely remains fairly class biased so that a disproportionate number of students are middle class. I dont think that this is a funding issue, but is more about our education system as a whole. I dont think we ever had classless education in the UK and from what I understand about the US its even worse there.

Yes, I quite agree, it's worthless making higher education free for all when we give some kids such bad schools that they can't even get the A-levels to get in.

There's a wider social issue to do with education and anti-intellectualism which I think is a bit beyond the scope of this thread.

10:13 / 25.02.02

What I meant by losing out -

Its usually said that students from poorer backgrounds are discouraged from going to Uni because of the debts they will end up with. So you'd expect there to be less students from poorer backgrounds than there were when grants were available.

It seems a reasonable line of argument, Im just not sure its actually true. I suspect that the problems in higher education are much deeper than that.

[ 25-02-2002: Message edited by: Lurid Archive ]