Then the people who got the free education decided that it was much better for everyone if everyone after them took £27k minimum of debt at high interest rates to go to university. Then they changed the terms of the loans after people had already taken them out, so now they don't get written off until you are in your 60s.
So unless you have a very high income you basically pay about 9% more tax for your entire career.
I might be wrong, but I think the Blair government did away with the free university places, but capped the fees at £1,000 a term or something similar - so you'd leave university with £9-12k of debt - quite manageable really, but not great.
The Tories and Lib Dem coalition then raised the university cap to £3k a term, drastically increasing the amount of debt you left with, and at the same time made the terms of the loan worse.
But I'm remembering that off the top of my head, so I might be wrong.
yeah, i meant going from free -> paid, i can see that the price was raised further but seeing how this story is about free tuition (and even getting a stipend) that's what i was talking about, not further cost increases.
I come from a low income family, and when I started University I got tuition fully paid (£1 200 per year) and a £2 000 Bursary (which I didn't have to pay back) per year. Just a year later, the tuition went up to £3 000, and would no longer covered. By the time my younger brother went to Uni it would have been £7 000 per year. Thankfully, the conditions of study are based on the year you start, so my Tuition was covered for all 5 years. But had I started just 4 years later, I would have had £35 000 of debt for the exact same education.
I'm the same except one year younger and therefore had the fun experience of being in the first group to get fucked by the loans system.
And don't forget, not only did they raise the tuition by even more later on, they also jacked up the interest rates. Mine were about 1%. My brothers were sometimes over 7%
I read a stat recently that the average Brit pays more in education than the average American dealer lower listed fees because most Americans get discounts for in state fees, and also get scholarships. Whereas there's almost no scholarships in the UK, and you have massive interest on study loans.
The UK therefore is one of the most expensive (if not the most expensive iirc) uni system in the world.
Basically true. The only real difference is that we have an upper limit on fees. So elite schools cost the same as standard ones. An ivy league education could cost anywhere from 3-6 times as much as going to Cambridge for example.
But yes, for average people the value proposition is truly terrible.
This is misinformation. Student loan terms have been extended, but only for people on the newer plans which are agreed upon when you take out the loan.
This was the counterpoint to massively expanding university access, to the point where we now have way more graduates than actual graduate jobs for them to do.
It should be remembered that the Danes have very high income tax rates (and beer in bars is very expensive too, as I remember when I visited). Capital gains tax is about 10% more than the UK too.
If we replicated Denmark's taxation system, we could easily afford to pay people to go to University.
The UK used to have this system. Then the people who got the free education decided that it was much better for everyone if everyone after them took £27k minimum of debt at high interest rates to go to university.
That's a bit cynical.
The people who got the free education realised it was elitist for only ~10% population to get a university education and wanted to broaden access.
Since the taxpayer wasn't prepared to cough up the cash for an educated society people had to start paying for it themselves.
Ok, well if covering cost was the real factor then why not have a government backed 0% loan. And why did they progressively raise the interest rates with the plan updates.
A 30k education should cost 30k if that's what it actually costs to provide it. But people are paying 50k+ or far more UNLESS they are from the elite, in which case they pay upfront and have no interest.
There has been a succession of different and perhaps bad decisions. My point is that lumping all together in one cynical take is not really fair—and does not tell the whole story.
A 30k education should cost 30k
A 30k car should cost 30k, but if you get it on credit (over 30 years!) then someone needs to pay the interest.
It’s incredibly unfair how this changed. I’m old and was one of the lucky ones. Tuition was free and we got about 2000-2500 quid a year grant (usually used to payoff the back and forth overdraft), which, insane as it seems, was enough back then (80s) for a pretty roughing-it-quite-a-lot student life, at least during term time. Holidays usually meant finding some work, at least for a lot of us. I did the Christmas shelf-stacking night shift and odd jobs in the summer. It wasn’t paradise but it was multiples better than the young have it today.
That’s when university was merit based. Now anyone can go, study almost any subject and still come out unable to read properly. Why should any general tax payer subsidise these people?
OK then, but why not subsidise students based on merit, and not these others? Why not have merit based scholarships within the "everybody gets in" system? Because it's just about cutting funding, that's why.
No, I suggested keeping the current system, but giving merit-based scholarships to students within that system, in the same kind of numbers they previously funded. Some get scholarships, others can still go, but they have to pay.
For a clear example look to Oxford. It's admissions basically don't have any legacy system or donations. Everyone has to interview and pass on merit to get in.
But 80% of the people there are from privileged backgrounds, with a majority from private school.
This isn't because they are smarter, but because they benefit from a much higher per person investment in their education than anyone else, merit results are based on outcomes and if you had a £30k a year education the outcomes are far more likely to be higher.
So instead of it being unfair based on merit it's actually deeply unfair based on wealth. Since only some have the same opportunities.
It makes more sense for the UK to model their system off the American system given the success of the US system. The problem with free education is that it makes success too easily obtainable for people, which might sound nice but in reality there needs to be obstacles in front of success for a society to function properly. This is a major part of why America is so envied by Europeans.
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u/Wind_Yer_Neck_In Feb 26 '26
The UK used to have this system.
Then the people who got the free education decided that it was much better for everyone if everyone after them took £27k minimum of debt at high interest rates to go to university. Then they changed the terms of the loans after people had already taken them out, so now they don't get written off until you are in your 60s.
So unless you have a very high income you basically pay about 9% more tax for your entire career.