General Chat

sorry left a bit off...

"With a vote on lifting the current £3,000 fees cap due before Christmas, Mr Denham said Parliament must not be "railroaded" into making a hasty decision.

He said there was still much in the way of detail to be worked out and it was important, for example, to know whether there would be a statutory commitment to uprate the fee cap in line with earnings every five years, as recommended by Lord Browne's higher education spending review."

RR -- that isn't loan forgiveness, I assume, it's just payment deferral? You don't have to start paying back if you're low-income, but you do still have to pay back later?

Picking on non-wealthy students ... interesting strategy. I guess they know how little sympathy the great British taxpayer will have for university students. ;)

Currently it stands like this

"How much you need to earn before repayments start
The repayment threshold for student loans, before deductions, is currently:

•£15,000 a year
This is equivalent to:

•£1,250 per month or
•£288 per week
If your income exceeds these amounts, you will be required to make repayments. In most cases, these repayments are collected automatically through the tax system.


Student loan repayments are made in one of three different ways, according to what type of employment situation you are in:

•PAYE (Pay As You Earn): if you are employed, student loan deductions are made automatically from your salary
•Self Assessment: if you are self-employed, or a combination of employed and self-employed, you will be responsible for calculating and making your own repayments
•overseas: if you work or are planning to work abroad, you will be required to make a repayment arrangement with the Student Loans Company" <<<< NB This answers an earlier query.

How that works in practice

"How much you have to repay

If you earn less than the threshold or thresholds that apply to you, you don’t have to make any repayments.

Your student loan repayments will be nine per cent of anything you earn over the relevant threshold. Remember that this isn't the same as nine per cent of your total income - you only make repayments on what you earn above the threshold.

Repayment example one: Jane

Jane pays her Income Tax on her wages through Pay As You Earn (PAYE). She earns £1,500 a month - £250 over the repayment threshold of £1,250 per month.

•Jane's repayments will be nine per cent of £250: £22 a month "

I'm sorry, Rita, but you obviously have some sort of bee in your bonnet that no amount of fact or logic is going to dislodge.

"The tax payer is paying for all these things that includes so called peacefull marches ."

Taxpayers are paying for so-called peaceful marches?

No. Taxpayers are paying for damage done by a tiny minority of people present at the scene of the peaceful marches.

Taxpayers should maybe get onto their local politicians to find out why police are so ineffective at identifying and dealing with the people causing the damage. That's what some taxpayers did in Canada after the G20 fiasco here this summer. I've mentioned before that large sections of downtown Toronto were trashed by the Black Bloc here. The police response was to round up dozens of entirely innocent people and hold them under inhumane conditions (no food or water) for hours or more. At least your police don't seem to have done that.

What are "all these things that includes so called peacefull marches"?

I hope you're not suggesting that because taxpayers are funding some portion of post-secondary education, students are living on taxpayer time and accountable to taxpayers for what they do with their time.

If you're an OAP receiving a public pension, do the taxpayers get to decide what you do with your time? tell you not to write letters to the editor or post on internet forums?


"They are lucky to have the chance to go to a university many were unable to get in."

And people once said that about hospitals, I guess.

Then people decided that getting into a hospital shouldn't depend on having money, or there being enough hospital beds. Hospitals should be for the sick, on a sickest-first basis.

Just as universities should be for students, on a best marks-first basis. Not on a richest parents-first basis.

We're all lucky to have many chances we have -- to go to primary school, to see doctors, to have the fire department show up if our house is burning, to have roads to drive on and all the other things taxes pay for.

If they turned the street you're living on into a toll road, would you protest? I'll bet you think the taxpayers should pay to pave your road and clear the snow from it, and pick up the household garbage from it ...

I'll have to figure out those figures, RR -- but I just got some work I have to do. ;)

When I left school, I was making $75 a week ... and paying $75 a month in student loan!

We may all wish to condemn any violence by so called anarchist groups apparently hijacking peaceful demonstrations.

However it is important to take heed of the underlying lessons for us all in this.Don't ignore the political crisis that there is in this country today.We have all the major political parties of all shades who have simply sold out to the real scourge of this country today;Focus
Groups and so called Think Tanks.

Regards
William Russell Jones.

I do feel there is beginning to be an undercurrent of thought ( largely encouraged by the worst tabloids) that going to University is some kind of 'jolly' that is one long holiday between school and getting a 'proper job', that the vast majority of students do not slog and pass exams in order to make something of their lives and the lives of others also .

I'm a great believer in any case that education...at any age and level should be of good quality and accessible to all, not just because those who use it 'wisely' will be high tax payers in the future...but because the education they get will 'broaden the mind' which can only be a good thing imo.

I admire the students. There are so many people who whinge and whine about things but do nothing to change what it is they're whinging about. At least they are attempting to do something. As for writing to their MPs that won't get them anywhere, they, and the issue, would just be ignored.

I'm not surprised that young people feel as if they've been sold down the river. Because they have.

Maybe their voices get highjacked by "rent a mob", but afford them the respect of appreciating their views.

Getting a decent education shouldn't equate to starting out in life with a debt of many thousands of pounds.

Sue x

OAPs marched in protest and went to prison rather than pay Thatcher's poll tax... the government had to ditch it, sometimes it is the only way to make your voice heard.

It's been said many times before, but all that it takes for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing.

I remember (just) when I had the energy to march. Now I just "march" from the comfort of my settee, and am proud of the next generation who won't take this rubbish lying down.

Sue x

I'm proud to say my son and his girlfriend were demonstrating in Birmingham yesterday. Both are graduates but went to support future generations of students. If I wasn't still getting over a virus I'd have been there with them.

No violence at all and lots of cheers of support from members of the public as they marched through the city. I even saw them on TV.

I cannot believe you are comparing British students to Hitler.

They want to stop the traffic for a day. I think Hitler's aspirations were somewhat different.

Gwynne

I think if anything is going to bring London to its knees it'll be the weather.

I'm glad they're marching. It might just make the government think twice, hopefully. You know the government that consists of all those politicians who went to university for free who now want to charge todays generation for the same thing. Maybe, in order to help reduce this deficit, they should back date these tuition fees and pay for going to university themselves.

if theres no violence i support them if there is i don't

i cannot condone innocent people been hurt

Visit www.factsonfees.com for the facts on student fees

if the fees go up
the unemployment figures will go up to

I wish people would stop whining about an increase to tuition fees. Most of us are going to suffer in some ways because of the financial mess we're in and university education is a bonus not a necessity or a god given right.

Unless I'm completely misunderstanding it, students won't have to pay their tuition fees back until after they are earning over 21 grand, on a low level interest anyway.

Some of us put ourselves through university whilst working full time and didn't have the opportunity to whinge about tuition fees. There are a lot greater injustices in the world people should be demonstrating about in my opinion.

There are some students who will have to work full time whilst putting themselves through university and pay tuition fees on top of it. It's all very well saying they don't have to pay until earning £21,000 but they also have to save a substantial amount for a deposit on a house, that's if they can actually afford the mortgage on a house (dependent on where in the country they live). The prices of houses nowadays means that many people can't afford to buy even on say £25,000 p.a., private rent is ridiculous, imo, and there's a shortage of social housing. So anyone leaving university will automatically be £x,000 in debt, unless of course mummy & daddy can and will pay the fees and that's before they take into account living expenses.

Personally I think they should back date this so that anyone who has been to university and is earning in excess of £21,000 has to pay, say £6,000 p.a., back to cover the cost of their courses. After all, if today's students have to pay, because education, is a privilege why should former students not have to pay as well.

Those with parents who have money will still go to university because the parents will help out.

The "best" universities will be charging higher fees than the others and those from less well off backgrounds will be priced out of the market altogether, while others opt for the ones with cheaper fees. Oxford and Cambridge will probably become the playground of ex-public school types as they used to be. I don't believe that should happen.

The thought of taking on these huge debts is very daunting when you are only 18, especially if you hope one day to buy a home and have a family.


I believe that education is a right not a privilege and that our most talented young people should be nurtured. My solution would be to close some universities and up the A level grades needed to get to university and then support those who attain them.

Gwynne