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Student Vote

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NellieMay | 12:06 Mon 12th Jun 2017 | News
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It is known that students have abused the system and voted in two places. Apparently some have been boasting and joking about it! Virtually impossible to check this doesn't happen apparently! Surely this needs to be addressed.

http://metro.co.uk/2017/05/16/how-to-register-to-vote-if-you-are-a-student-in-the-general-election-664091p


Putting it in News as it the most relevant section.
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Another thing to point out to the "youngster" regarding the free to everyone university promise. It isn't. It will be funded by massive borrowing that will have to be repaid. It will be repaid by they who are young now, not by oldies like me. I paid my tax for 45 years, month in month out. Now not all the young will go to university, some may not even go on to tech...
13:20 Mon 12th Jun 2017
Every voting slip has a number that is registered against your poll card number on a separate sheet before you are handed your voting slip. The only way that anonymity is ensured is for eagle eyed members of the public to be there when the ballot boxes are opened to ensure that the slips are not cross referenced with the sheets of card numbers and voting slip numbers entered alongside them.
Ah, that's a shame, Togo. Still, allow me to put my disagreement this way: perhaps we should see University Education not as a privilege, but as an investment. Then society does indeed pick up the bill for University Education, but recognises that in doing so it's encouraging younger people to get better qualifications, better training, and a better chance to be able to contribute back to the economy in later years by having a higher-skilled job.

So yes, the taxpayer would foot the bill. But it would do so knowing that it has a great chance of reaping the benefits later. Some things are worth paying for. Nor is it that alien an approach anyway; that's how the system works in most Scandinavian countries (with an exception for some foreign students).

Also, as a final thought, a lot of the tuition fee debt goes unpaid anyway. So taxpayers *still* end up footing a lot of the bill. Which raises the question: what's the point of charging tuition fees in the first place, if much of it ends up not getting paid back?

In 2014, for example, David Willetts stated (in a written letter) that approximately 45% of graduates would not pay back their loans in full. That basically means that the government only just breaks even on the deal, no extra money is earned, and the policy really only looks like it's saving the taxpayer from expense, rather than actually doing so, while ending up saddling many students with a great deal of debt, and all the stress that entails. They can overstate that stress (although I make a point of never looking at my own letters), but it's a policy that's worth it rather a lot less than you think.


//a lot of the tuition fee debt goes unpaid anyway. So taxpayers *still* end up footing a lot of the bill //

That Jim is the salient point. Why do these "student loans" go unpaid. Inability to do so or downright thievery? Why are these debts not handed over to the very efficient debt collection companies that seem very adept at hounding old people for parking fines and the like? :))
Off out for a walk whilst the sun is out, see you later.
Is it the principle of tuition fees you are against, Jim, or just the level?

Labour introduced tuition fees at £1000 per year (principle: tuition fees are OK).

Labour also tripled them to £3000 per year. (principle: tripling them is OK)

The coalition then tripled them to £9000 per year.

Everything Togo has written in the Best Answer is true. If somebody goes to university, then gets paid a good salary in the future, they end up paying more back than somebody who didn't go to university, or did go but ended up on a low salary. But this is seen as somehow "unfair".

I think whether it's fair or not is a subjective decision. Neither system is completely fair or completely unfair. Both have their strengths and weaknesses. Which is why a Labour government introduced tuition fees, and coalition and Tory governments have maintained them.
Multiple reasons: some people move to other countries so avoid the debt that way; others don't earn enough to pay the full sum back. I don't think much of it is lost due to actual fraud, as the repayment is (usually) automatically deducted from your salary along with other PAYE taxes. Maybe if you are self-employed, but then it would be the same as tax evasion.
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To Togo. My children were quite happy to take up their loans. I suppose because we spoke to them about it and gave them the facts, much the same as you have done. It's the cheapest type of loan you can get after all! And if you don't reach a certain salary you don't pay it back. We are not parents that are financially able to help
I suppose it's the principle, ellipsis, although for the record the point I'm trying to make is that tuition fees are, for me personally, not that big a deal. If Labour had not proposed scrapping them it wouldn't have made the slightest difference to the way I voted.

When I actually paid tuition fees, in 2010, I voted for the Liberal Democrats, who famously made a pledge to scrap all fees (or vote against them). It won a lot of students over, I think -- certainly students deserting the party would explain the disaster they faced in 2015 -- but I didn't vote for them for that reason. Didn't remotely interest me. I remember thinking it was a stupid promise to make and one I doubted they'd be able to keep, although that maybe makes me look rather like I'm pretending to be a political visionary.

If tuition fees were never reversed I wouldn't be too surprised or angry, but equally I don't think that they have to be seen as essential. There are other ways to pay for education: yes, most of them inevitably involve the taxpayer, but students end up being taxpayers too, so they just end up paying for their education in a less direct way.

It's more an attitude thing as much as anything. The NUS ex-president Aaron Porter (obviously) campaigned vigorously against tuition fees, but proposed replacing them by a "Graduate Tax", with suspiciously similar conditions to Loan repayments. As far as I could tell, the only substantial difference between the two schemes was what you called it. I suppose the letters telling me I'm in an eye-wateringly high amount of debt are an irritation, but I haven't had to do anything about it yet and so just make a point of not looking.
Thank you Jim.
You're welcome.

As another criticism of the current scheme, remember when the actual level was going to be £6000 for most university, with up to £9000 reserved for "exceptional circumstances"? Yeah... "exceptional circumstances" have basically turned out to mean "when the University asks to charge that much".

So there are also practical criticisms of the current scheme, even if you still support the principle that students should (by and large) pay for their Higher Education.
//but [society] recognises that in doing so it's encouraging younger people to get better qualifications, better training, and a better chance to be able to contribute back to the economy in later years by having a higher-skilled job//

This rests on the premise that universal higher education will necessarily produce more useful (in both personal and general terms) members of society. WEhy is nobody challenging this premise? What evidence do you have to support it, Jim? I rather think its (universal higher education) effects are in many cases pernicious in as far as it can produce a sense of entitlement,raise false or unrealistic expectations, and defers (quite unnecessarily)adult responsibilities like working for a living. All this at a massive cost.
The Student Tuition Fee Loan System is severely broken. Only a fool would not want to reform it.

// Student loan debt rose £12.6bn, or 17 per cent, to £86.2bn in the past year //

// About 70 per cent of students who left university last year are expected never to finish repaying their loans, according to modelling carried out by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Instead they will have to make repayments for 30 years before then having the unpaid loan written off. //

From the Financial Times.
Scrap the "higher education for all" policy and revert to free "higher education" for the brightest. That's an investment worth making.
I didn't realise I'd have to defend the assertion that society benefits from having higher standards of education...
//I didn't realise I'd have to defend the assertion that society benefits from having higher standards of education...//

No-one is attacking that assertion.
Togo- Repayments. In my younger sprog's case it is because she (having gained a job and begun repayments) and her husband had kids (she was 30). After that she changed jobs and qualified as a Higher Level Teaching Assistant (specialism Autism)because it fitted with having children, so she doesn't earn enough to recommence repayments and the time-limit is near. She is wanting to convert her degree to be able to teach (Maths.) but will have to wait until her husband has paid off his loan (not long) and can bear the household costs. That's one reason, anyway.
Electoral fraud is always banded around. So unless there is real justification that can show it skewed the result it is a non starter really.

Having read some of the comments Just wanted to say... There is no such thing as free stuff. Someone pays for it and squeeze the money tree too hard and it dies. The saplings left then have to produce more and more quickly to plug the hole.

In the long run the youth will pay through the nose for all the free stuff.

Free stuff my ***.
Ballot papers are numbered & traceable
v_e, //Scrap the "higher education for all" policy and revert to free "higher education" for the brightest. That's an investment worth making.//

I’ll second that.
I'll third it.

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