Tax & Spend Tories

[SirGalahad]

True, labour introduced fees, then removed the cap so successive Governments could increase fees .

They could have ended the fees as well.

 

[SirGalahad]

Crazy, back when few people thought about going to uni, it was free. Then the government wants everybody to go (so it can shout about low youth unemployment) and starts charging everybody.

It's almost as if the system was designed by a government that wanted to not only reduce unemployment, but make those without jobs borrow loads from banks, and pay into the economy, in the hope they'll pay it back in the future. But they wouldn't have done that on purpose, would they? That would be just crazy!

The money injected into the economy was created via debt. Debt which will either be written off or paid off in the future in part through erosion of inflation and in part through lowering consumption.

Unis like in the US went on a mad capital building programme, it's easy to atttract foreign students when you have nice new gleaming buildings but the level of teaching is lacking.

It's the obsession that free market and capitalism has all the solutions - it does in many cases but not when it comes to education and healthcare.

 

[charliegolf]

The other failing of fees is a bit more nuanced though... Sixty to 100 bums on seats doing marketing/Phil/Sociology/Politics- even English or Law, yields waaay more profit than Medicine or Physics or Chemistry or Biology or Engineering. Why? Labs, and workshops cost a ton (and radioactive material is a pain in Physics and Medicine).

"How will we deal with that?" asks the Vice Chancellor. "Well, we could drop x,y and z, Sir?"

Many did.