Student loans - a good or bad thing?

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

My DD has worked from the age of 14 when she took a weekend job in a local chemist chain. She worked herself through college and went on to university where she worked in McDonalds to pay her way. She is now 28 and has student debt as she was one of the most unlucky/unfortunate students who fell victim of the worst tuition fees (thank you Gordon and Tony) she earns pennies over the payback threshold and will pay every penny back via her (low) wages . I am not sure what the fuss is about now as today's students have a much better deal than they did a few years ago.

Having said that the Scottish students have it very east compared to the English and the proposed Scottish system (in my vho) appears to be racist at best, as proposed free tuition for any student within the EU with the exception of the English ????

Although I would be very happy to be corrected.

Sorry I did not mean the "would it were so". I mean it ain't so in this sector.

Granjura would it were so but wages in software are not low, far from it. The principle might apply somewhere but not in the UK software market. IT is taught badly in UK schools. it is nigh on impossible to recruit staff because anyone with an IT degree is doing something more lucrative. Also the curriculum taught to GCSE has been deathly boring - basically how to use spreadsheets, databases etc. All the kids are great at powerpoint. But programming - this has not been taught. A levels in computing are rare. Our kids are doing all kinds of degrees but not enough of them are doing software and other technical subjects.
And there are hardly any women going into software degrees in the UK. Far more in India. So half the potential UK talent is being lost.

I am another one who benefited from free college education in the 60's. At 18 I got a grant of £3 a week and the next year it rose to £5! We had subsidised meals in the canteen and most of my money went on fares and materials and , very occasionally, clothes. We hardly ever went out during term time apart from the odd trip to the cinema and we all went down to the pub on the last day of the term. You really could count the people who actually got drunk on the fingers of one hand.
Fast forward to the 90's and you find my daughter who got her degree before student loans came in but took several out while doing her PhD and also had to fund her husband's degree course because he was not a British citizen at the time.

It means paying foreigners less money for the same job (like Asian IT specialists in the UK- but French watch makers in my part of Switzerland, etc).

What is salary dumping and to what are you referring granjura?

Partly due to slary dumping rather than shortage as such.

Not sure about free course for some subjects and not others- as the arts would become the prerogative of the wealthy alone. And those who qualify for shortage subjects will most of them find highly paid jobs quickly anyhow. and will be in the best position to pay back.

grannyactivst totally agree about free tuition for shortage subjects. My DH is currently applying for phd funding in a useful and highly mathematical area. There is a shortage of people applying (which works in his favour). No doubt there is hot competition for phd funding in the arts and social sciences.
The UK is having to import many thousands of software developers and testers from India because we are not producing enough, despite all this higher education (useless teaching of computers in school does not help).

The interest went up quite a bit a few years ago when the loans were transferred to a private company [ think]. What was a very small interest rate when my son took the loan out increased quite a lot [and we weren't really aware of it happening at the time]. I feel sorry for young people that, for one reason or another, never completed their degree courses because they still have the debt hanging over them. I still don't understand why there were so many strange degree courses available all of a sudden. And I don't think my daughter realised that her degree [History] didn't actually qualify her for a job of any kind, although she did an extra year and went into teaching. I'm sure that, at one time young people were encouraged to go to uni to take them off the unemployment figures [again; could be wrong..just being cynical].

I think one of the worst aspects of student loans is that they reinforce to the young the idea that debt is ok. It's no good us oldies telling them to live within their means when the government is telling them it's fine to start a career thousands of pounds in debt, in fact it's essential if you want to enter a profession. No wonder the younger generation feel we don't understand!

Its not just the student loans that have to be found and repaid my DGS1 who is in his final year now will have to "fund" his pupilage at the Chambers he is looking to join for his final year before he qualifies and it doesn't come cheap at all thats without the required clothing he will require,I wonder how people think we can afford all the expense but it's his ambition,his brother 11mths younger has been very fortunate to have been snapped up by LandRover as a diesel Engineer and they are paying for his Education but DS1 doesn't like to get his hands dirty (mores the pity) plus they pay him a really decent salary whilst he is still at their training school & towards his living costs.

I think it unfair that education in Scotland is free. I am unsure about Wales and NI. Are we subsidising those in Scotland?

I have seen on TV the type of flat a student expects to live in/share with others. All mod cons including a dishwasher. I shared a 2 bedroom flat with 3 others, ancient furniture and the only mod con was an immersion heater. We certainly did not have central heating there in the mid 60's.

I have one son at university and one who has just completed his degree. Both my sons have had jobs since they were fourteen, but as they took highly academic subjects (Maths and Engineering) they would struggle to hold down jobs in term time and do justice to their studies. As a consequence they work/ed only during the holiday periods. Both took a year out to save before starting uni and neither are great partygoers. Even so, they have (with student loan plus assistance from parents and grandparents) only just managed to keep solvent. I do think that the government should pay tuition fees for courses in which the country has a skills shortage because I think it's sound economic sense.

They were saying on the Today programme that the government has n't got a hope in Hell of getting the money back as graduates are often so poorly paid. Sounds alright to me. I believe the interest is very low.

It is not possible to have 43% of young people going to university and funding them all heavily. The previous system, under which a few of us had a very privileged higher education (grammar or private followed by university) was very elitist and didn't produce enough well educated people for the labour market.
I think the new system is much better, it is in effect a graduate tax that kicks in when incomes reach a certain level (about 20k I think). This is a pretty good deal.
This is much better than having a loan account that has to be paid down by the person over the years as in the first version of student loans.
I also think that many students spend a LOT more money on entertainment than we ever did in the 60s/70s and that contributes to their debt.
And that universities don't actually produce people with the right qualifications for the labour market. But that is another story.
I interviewed a young man this week who worked hard in a 2/3 job all through his degree and got his career off to a flying start.

Mixed feelings- but I have to say, the amount of debt incurred by students is also linked to the modern expectations with regard to accommodation, food and drink, outings, holidays, etc. When I was a student, we never had holidays unless it was YHA or camping, an outing was a beer or two with friends at the pub, not expensive clubbing, etc, we wore jeans and t-shirts, didnn't have cars, didn't buy fast food or ready meals, didn't go to restaurants, we lived in uncomfortable and very simple digs, etc. When fast figures are quoted re student debts, I wonder how much is due to unrealistic expectations re above.