Essay talk:Fees are bullshit

ListenerX's remarks
I am unaware of all the details of the U.K. situation, but at my alma mater in my mother's time we had a golden age of sorts, with a quarter's tuition costing three weeks' (minimum) wages, and a pinko named Sibley drawing crowds of thousands to his lectures. These days you pay 20 weeks' minimum wage for a semester's tuition, to which you add your University fee, your student service fee, and the fee that keeps the free buses running between the three disparate sections of campus, and the pinkos are reduced to sniveling in the letters section of the student newspaper. 04:57, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It's basically moving on from being whatever it used to be to something that you buy now. We berate diploma mills but frankly all universities are turning into that. While the current cohorts aren't at the point of suing academic staff left, right and centre for not getting them sterling results, they're mark fishing and waiting out their time to graduation so that they have "better job prospects". A group I was supervising today were happy to just let their mediocre work stand and clock off early rather than spend the hours they had spare in refining their experimental work, and last year someone took 20 minutes of their time and my time trying to retrieve something they'd submitted just so they could change it and get one extra mark - 20 mins they could have spent in the library learning something, or better still, in the bar. And that attitude is slowly climbing through the ranks, too. When I did my postgrad induction, I was the only person out of over a dozen to stick my hand up for "actually likes the research" when asked why I was there. Then there was a staff-student meeting I was in where one of them actually demanded that lectures stop teaching them things that wouldn't be on the exam. How school league tables have altered perceptions of what "good education" is undoubtedly a strong cause, but the fact that it's now costing potential students, and their families, so much is turning them into consumers and isn't helping. Scarlet A.pngd hominem 05:37, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * But students are customers, and the customer is always right. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 05:46, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * (EC) At the University of Minnesota they do not have inflated grades, or at least they did not when I left; but they had to take care to keep me as far away from the students as possible, since I was inclined to mark an assignment zero if I was unable to read it for grading, which was considered to be an overly harsh grading policy.
 * I suspect that your experience at induction was not due to the degradation of education, but due to the fact that academia has never reflected its own ideals.
 * But students are customers, and the customer is always right. When I paid my tuition, I expected an education, not a bout of fellatio to my ego. 05:48, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The customers do not want a "bout of fellatio," but a Certificate of Employment, or "diplomas" as they call them these days. Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 05:50, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I should recommend finding the video of Thunderf00t going off on one because some kid was pissed off with his college course, it was "interfering with [his] education". That guy definitely did expect his ego to get fellated as one of his concerns was that a lecturer hadn't learned his name - out of a class of hundreds and only a few weeks, I think. Scarlet A.pngmoral 05:55, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * As Twain said, "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 06:01, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yes, but as I say "don't mistake literary quips for legitimate arguments." Scarlet A.pnggnostic 06:12, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * But as Voltaire put it in a far superior fashion: "A witty saying proves nothing." :P Nebuchadnezzar (talk) 06:15, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * (EC) Or, to state it another way, I expected an accurate measurement of whatever intellectual competence I possess. If universities are handing diplomas out like Halloween candy, they are not providing such accurate measurements and I, the customer, am being cheated. 05:57, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * See "value added education". If you simply wanted a measure of your competence, you could just take the exam and be done with it. The entire point is to learn and improve, and they can, in principle, fail to adequately teach and improve you. Scarlet A.pnggnostic 06:00, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * That is the education part, not the diploma part. 06:03, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Fees are necessary
But loans should be interest free and incentives should be offered to those who pay them off fast/on time and who keep working in their relevant discipline in country, such as doctors who carry a load of debt. It should be more profitable for them to work in their home country than leave in order to pursue higher wages in order to pay their student loan (we have that problem here in NZ). AceModerator 09:06, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * They still are "technically" interest free because the interest is matched to inflation by law. In fact, they had to pass a temporary law a year or two back to make the rate 0% when inflation went negative (negative interest? Ha!). But incentives just to pay it off faster do little when it's projected that only ~30% will ever clear it all off. It's simply more effective to replace it with a graduate tax. Scarlet A.pngsshole 09:31, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * As the local Red Under Listener's Bed, I agree that some sort of fee structure is a good thing. I did my undergraduate degree in a system where school was pretty close to free, and my graduate work in what is apparently one of the most expensive "public" universities in America. Speaking broadly, the students who have had to make some sort of financial outlay for their education are way less inclined to slough things off and way more inclined to take shit seriously. Now, fees should be as low as possible, with lots of grants/waivers available for middle-to-low income students, and student loans should be as close to interest-free as possible; but I'm not sure free rides all around will really improve the system. P-Foster Talk " Watched Mad Men thinking it was supposed to be a sit-com. Found it disappointing. " 13:52, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Though I've never advocated free rides, I've simply stated that raising the cap to the point where the majority won't be able to pay it back is stupid, and in fact is set to cost the UK government more because they did it. Scarlet A.pnggnostic 14:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It is not in the best interests of either State or society to make a competent person go without an education because they could not pay for it. I favor, at least at public universities, what was in existence at the University of Minnesota some decades ago: a flat, nominal rate of tuition for all comers, with admission to degree programs based on merit, and expulsion for people who slack off. 06:41, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeed, that's why they try to put emphasis on "free at the point of entry". But there's still a psychological barrier of "dear fuck I'm going to graduate £40,000 in debt". Scarlet A.pngbomination 13:58, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
 * The problem with putting students in lots of debt is that they might not be able, after they graduate, to work in the discipline in which they were trained, owing to the need to make lots of money to pay the debt down. This is a problem particularly with teachers and some sorts of doctors, I understand. Then there is the structural issue of having to apply for financial aid; people who work for a living lack the time to excrete all the blather they make you put in those scholarship applications. 04:28, 2 February 2012 (UTC)