UK Politics
General Discussion for politics in the UK.
Please don't post to both !uk_politics@feddit.uk and !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk .
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.
Posts should be related to UK-centric politics, and should be either a link to a reputable news source for news, or a text post on this community.
Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.
If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread. (These things should be publicly discussed)
Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.
Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.
view the rest of the comments
Scotland did it by reducing the number of students they pay for. It's a perfectly reasonable strategy and arguably the push for greater participation in universities has resulted in a push for everything to be a university degree. There are potentially better options for students as well as the public purse.
While education in itself is certainly of value not everyone can have a career in academia. At the same time I think the state should really think about subsiding some courses. Medical students for example have a longer time training and while eventually there may be rewards later in their careers it can't be very motivating carrying around more debt than your peers.
That's just straight up misinformation. Every student within Scotland is eligible for funding. Every single one.
Education doesn't mean a career in academia. It means greater critical thinking, greater ability to source reliable information, greater chance of living a long and fulfilling life.
4 years of the government covering £1,800 in tuition is fuck all in the grand scheme of things and has many benefits to society.
You think £1800 covers the cost of tuition? Do Scottish universities get additional funding to cover the difference? The fees in the rest of the country are much higher.
You're missing the forest for the trees.
£1,800 is what Scotland capped education at, the Tories arbitratily decided to raise it to £9,000 in England. They initially claimed only the top universities like Oxford would charge this, but now it's pretty much the standard. But let's say for easy maths it's £10,000, per year, per student. That's a miniscule amount of money to spend to increase the intelligence of a population.
Full time work, at 40h per week, on minimum wage (£12.21), with 30 days holiday per year, nets £22,466.40.
For half a years work at minimum wage the ridiculous cost of £10,000 per year for education can be covered. For a 3 year English undergraduate degree it takes 1.5 years of minimum wage work to cover. That's fuck all for a nation to cover, especially one as rich as the UK.
For that cost you are vastly improving the scientific understanding, rationality, and intelligence of your population. For the rest of their lives. They can then also educate their children better, and so on.
University education has been privatised in an attempt to make an "us and them". To make "haves and have nots". To further entrench a class system.
Scotland provides free university education for anyone who wishes it, to create equality and break the class system. The Tories and New Labour wish no such thing.
The question is how much it costs to fund higher education. The money goes via the students or the universities but it still needs to be paid. Even in my day the 3k I paid for tuition didn't cover what it cost the university to run my course. With the drop in foreign students (who pay a lot more) universities have a funding crisis and a gap to be filled.
I assume Scottish students don't get the full amount of they go to an English university? They have to take out loans to?