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by Rand0m
(quotes)
Same here, except it was a ritual burning of the registration form on the steps of Norwich City Hall, in the company of many others - "bin 'em, burn 'em, don't return 'em".

The thing about the Poll Tax was that it united many disparate groups - the pensioners, people on council estates with no interest in politics - and tuition fees just don't excite a broad enough base of the population.

It won't be Blair's Poll Tax, but it will warm things up nicely for when his Poll Tax heaves into view, whatever it may be...

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Well bugger my giddy aunt, but welcome back mate!

The following information comes from the DfES' own statistics and can be verified here

Current expenditure on Higher Education = £6 Billion
Cost of ALL Education as Percentage of GDP = 4.9
Number of students in Higher Education = 2.3 Million
Number of which were part-time = 961,700
Number of overseas students = 188,400

Now tax revenue obviously varies due to a number of factors, but has been around the £390 Billion per annum mark (taken from the HM Treasury - here).

Do the Math - £6 billion as a percentage of tax revenue to the treasury? Let's say we double that, nah, scrub that, let's treble it. That should cover a full grant and no tuition fees and more than a little left over. That would be a percentage increase of what? Don't worry, I'll tell you - it's approximately a 3% increase.

In personal terms, I pay around 4.4k per year in income tax and NI. A 3% increase would mean roughly another £132 a year. I think that's a worthwhile investment to secure the economic and cultural future of this country. How about you?

Also, this would mean less students wasting time doing low paid jobs to pay their fees, and therefore more low paid jobs available for those currently on the dole, thus reducing expediture on benefits. It also means less graduates with cripling debt, therefore more disposable income, which means increased sales and revenue from VAT and corporate tax. It also means a healthy flow of cash around the national economy, keeping things flowing and all our pockets are healthier for that.

The economics show that it will cost us more in the medium to long term if we don't increase the numbers attending university and don't ensure they can do so debt free. Those arguments against this usually originate from wealthy parties with only a short term indidualistic economic view point.

To put it another way:
Curent Spending (£6b) + Every student given £6k per annum in grants (£13.8b) + Amount Universities claim they need in addition (roughly £10b according to here) = £29.8b per annum.

That's about 7.6% of taxes raised. It's an increase of 6%. Go and take a look at your PAYE forms. Work out 6% of what you are already paying. Then tell me we can't afford it.

(Edited by Jayjay 07/12/2003 01:40)

From what you've said there is no real downside and everything to gain, if it's that simple then why isn't it being done?

No one is prepared to stand for election while promising increased taxes (at least, no one with a chance of forming a government anyway) to pay for a full grant and fully funded higher education system. Same reason why Tuition Fees won't damage this government - most people don't care about higher education. And most people want to pay less, not more, taxes. Unfortunately no one seems to be prepared to publicly stand up and say why this is essential to our economy, and that if we want to be competitive in this global economy then we need to invest now in higher education.

And it seems to me that most politicians are more interested in doing whatever makes them popular (and therefore in a job) than try to actually make a difference.

Those tax figures certainly look rock solid. But the problem I see isn't with the maths, it's that it isn't just higher education that's in crisis: the NHS is strapped, the railways rotting, and I'm sure you've got plenty examples of your own that I need not post here. If the government imposed such an assertive tax hike for the sake of higher education, it would be untennable for them to resuse a similar rise for other essential services. By the time everyone got their share of the pot, it would be far over and above 6 per cent.

Which is why I can't see any viable alternative to increasing funding aside from letting university numbers stabilise and restricting degrees to professional fields. There's all sorts of highly specialised degrees that could just as well be learnt on the job without needing three years and several grand of tax money/fees. If we increased the number of apprenciseships (where the person is of course being paid a standard wage as they learn on the job), could we not redistribute the resources saved to pick up the slack of professional/academically oriented degrees? I've seen plenty from university professors who say that, far from the 50 per cent figure being a natural progression, they're having to invent new subjects and take people with lower qualifications onto the established ones to make up the numbers!

This is all very sad. And yes, everyone needs money...

Some of the up-in-arms-ness comes from the fact that the concept of free education is very much a sacred cow. Certainly in my country, there used to be the attitude that education could get you out of the poverty trap; you'd do the 11+, you'd do the grammar school, you'd do Oxford (in the ideal world) and then you'd get the hell out of where you were, or try and find some way of improving the place. My grandparents, as many others', worked themselves till they dropped to send their kids to uni. The university in the town where I grew up was founded, according to the local story, "with the pennies of the lead miners". Historically that was the case, anyway. I don't see much of that attitude around anymore. But thenm, I don't see many of the heavy industries, (m)any apprenticeships, many opportunities for those non-academic-types (like my brother) to find a niche for themselves and build any sort of foundation for the country.

I understand the economics of manufacturing going to other countries - it doesn't mean I have to like the fact that companies will go somewhere where they don't have to pay the workforce a living wage/exploit labour in a way that'd never be legal in this country.

The world is a very sad place. Yet again I find myself wishing, in vain, that everyone could want to and be able to help one another... but that's just me being stupidly idealistic. It ain't gonna happen. No-one is going to bother taxing the obscenely rich, who can afford it, and the voting (or rather, not really many voting) public are going to vote for the party who say they won't tax them.
*jumps up and down at the madness of it all*

Continuing my little forray from hanging drawing and quartering the prime minister to the politics of taxation, I think the major problem with bleeding the obscenely rich, aside from the obvious, is that they're in the best position to take their business elsewhere, literally in the case of Fat Cats.

As it happens, I don't think everyone is instinctively selfish: when a stranger knocks at your door to tell you you've left your lights on, they tend not to be hoping you'll slip them a fiver for their trouble. But people do want to protect their loved ones, and reasonably enough, aren't best disposed to trust those married to the greasy pole with a hefty chunk of their hard earned finances.

Which is as you say all rather perennial and depressing.

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by Byron
As it happens, I don't think everyone is instinctively selfish...

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No, I know, I know - random acts of kindness from strangers happen more frequently than I admit. Witness the nice people who handed in the £30 I left in the cash 'chine when I was having a real no brainer Random day-to-day acts of kindness from us little folk are wonderful and pleasing things, and I do (somewhere) have a basic faith in the decency of humanity.

I think I really meant the fatcats who, as you say, will take their business where it is cheaper/less taxed/less regulated. I will never forget learning about the industrial revolution, where the mill owners were up in arms about compulsory education for children, as they'd lose their cheapest and most lucrative workers (for the historian pedants out there, I do also know that this wasn't popular with poor parents, as they'd lose an earning family member, so don't shoot me!). Plus ca change...

It's the same the whole world over
It's the poor what gets the blame,
It's the rich what gets the pleasure,
Ain't it all a bloomin' shame?