Blair wins key top-up fees vote (BBC)

[AP]

Tony Blair has scraped home by just five votes in a crunch House of Commons test of his controversial plans to introduce university top-up fees.

The Higher Education Bill was backed by 316 votes to 311 after days of intense campaigning by ministers and rebels.

Mr Blair had staked his authority on winning the vote, which was widely seen as his biggest test as prime minister.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3434329.stm

This bill is going to help more kids get great educations, which is one of the best ways to help economic, political and cultural power flom from top to bottom, and out.

This is a major vicotry for liberalism and progress in the UK. It's fantastic that antipathy towards Blair didn't result in parliament doing the wrong thing.

[Briar]

1. Quite th contrary...

...it has turned Higher Education into a market place. The rich will go the best universities, those with limited funds to cheaper ones. And since the country, the government admits, needs a thriving higher education sector, I see no reason why it should not pay for one instead of putting off young people by threatening to burden them with what is effectively a crippling graduate tax.


Meanwhile Bliar can look forward to another "triumph" (5 votes is an embarrassingly narrow majority) tomorrow.

The Sun claims to have been leaked the contents of the Hutton report. It says Hutton has exonerated Bliar and blames the BBC and Kelly strongly.

Now, I wonder just who would have engineered that leak so as to get a pre-emptive favourable spin of the news...

[AP]

2. bullshit. The banks are probably pissed because there won't be any student

loan business. And Tories will be pissed because more people will get better educations and better funded universities. And businesses are probably pissed because now they'll have to pay people with better educations higher salaries in order to receive their services.

[AP]

3. And how will rich go to the best schools? You don't have to pay up front

any longer. All students will be on an equal financial footing.

[AP]

4. Why shouldn't the government pay for all education? Because it confers

so much profit on to businesses.

And how can you have crippling graduate debt when you only have to pay a set % of income over a threshold?

This is a brilliant, liberal bill.

[tinnypriv]

5. Yeah

£64,000 graduating debt for medical students. Fantastic. :eyes:

[AP]

8. It's better than paying it up front. And you don't have to pay it back

if you don't make more than the average wage. And you get to delay payment without having to pay interest.

In the US, tinny, poor kids take 30 year loans on $64000 college tuition, and end up paying 200k-400K over their lifetime for those loans.

And, you know what, your universities will become globally competitive again, and your wages are going to go up.

Don't you care about investing in the future, and seeing power flow down from the top in the UK?

[tinnypriv]

14. Believe it or not

Poor people are perfectly capable of figuring out that paying roughly £147 tuition up front a year is better than paying £3,000 deferred.

As for the "average" wage, it's actually at about £12,000 a year that deductions from student loans automatically start. Which, I'm sure you can work out, is a pittance, and nowhere near the "average" of roughly £17k.

Moreover, the "help" provided in grants in this bill is only to what the government defines as "poor", which is households where both parents earn 30k or below combined. Nobody with that kind of income could possibly afford the kinds of debts they'd incur, and therefore would be put off from ever attending University in the first place, which is of course the point.

Onto your other remarks, I'm not interested in debating with buzzwords like "globally competitive", and "investing in the future". I do enough of that with Blair True Believers over here, but thanks all the same.

However, I will note that my express wish for this country is that it has an economic model as far removed from the United States as possible. So, you should be aware that invoking the idiocy of your student system is hardly likely to sway my opinion on any of these matters.

[rooboy]

6. A good liberal bill??? You have to be kidding.

Take a look at what's happened in Australia under a similar system. People graduate with huge debts in a marketplace where they're getting paid less and less.

Eventually the universities will start cancelling courses and closing departments that aren't 'profitable'.

[tinnypriv]

7. Yeah

And pretty soon everyone will be studying:

1. Public Relations
2. Business

And working in:

Call centres.

Brave new world! :eyes:

[AP]

11. It's time to do a gut check on your politics.

If you can't see that this is liberal and progressive, it's time to re-zero.

[Spentastic]

18. That's as low as I've seen you stoop

If you can't see that forcing a generation of people into debt is wrong then frankly I think you need to consider reviewing your humanity.

This policy raises about 1bn pounds. It now costs 1bn pounds due to the concessions.

This is not about improving University education it's solely about putting it in the private domain. That is not liberal or progressive.

[Nihil]

20. "Time to re-zero?"

> It's time to do a gut check on your politics.
> If you can't see that this is liberal and progressive, it's time
> to re-zero.

"If you can't see that 'screwing the working & middle classes' is
'liberal and progressive' then you need to re-calibrate your label
for 'liberal and progressive'"?

I'm not sure quite who should be doing the gut check on their politics.

Nihil

[rooboy]

12. The next step will be...

that the unions will come under attack. Universities will be told that if they want funding, they have to reduce union involvement and be more 'accountable' for the performance of the teaching staff.

"Run it like a business, old bean..."

Meanwhile, be sure to look at how much money the deans, chancellors and vice chancellors get paid...

[AP]

13. psst. there was a funding problem before. This will shift wealth from

employers to the univerisities without rasing taxes to do it, or making anyone else pay for it. SALARIES are paying for universities.

[tinnypriv]

15. Er

And salaries pay taxes.

[frank frankly]

9. I can't see this as anything more than more garbage from Blair

I wonder what Palast will have to say about it.

Blair needs to be removed tomorrow.

[AP]

10. It's a ZERO interest loan that you don't even have to pay back if you do

not make a minimum salary.

Effectively, it shifts the burden of paying for university from parents and students how have no money into the future, when you have a job.

Is this what they do in Australia?

it's going to drive up wages in the UK, and improve education.

[rooboy]

16. You want to bet???

This is step one. Then wait a couple of years and watch a later government say "we can't have this sort of debt without charging interest", and they'll put 2% on it. And so on.

Look at what happened to the VAT in the UK. Wasn't it "locked" at 10% once upon a time?

You can't look at these things in isolation - this has just opened the door for the Tories.

[tinnypriv]

17. No it isn't

The interest is linked to the retail price index. Roughly 3.1%.

[Nihil]

21. Right ...

> It's a ZERO interest loan that you don't even have to pay back if
> you do not make a minimum salary.

So you think it's good that the choices after college are
1) increasing debt (before thinking about house, transport, life)
or
2) minimum wage job (burger-flipper, shelf-stacker)

> Effectively, it shifts the burden of paying for university from
> parents and students how have no money into the future, when you
> have a job.

Great. Start living on the never-never even earlier. :eyes:

There's already concern over the credit limits that are allowed to
people who haven't gained the real-world experience of balancing
income against expenditure. Now it is being mandated as a condition
of further education.

Nihil

[sweetheart]

19. i see it as a half-victory

The real victory is the win of the stealth-blair confidence vote.

Regarding the tuition thing... hmmm... i think that a university-levy tax on those earning over say 120K pounds (that's 200K USD!!) would be fair given that those people are precisely those who benefit from the higher education system. That this measure is not passed is a half-victory.

I agree with AP, that the other half is indeed a victory, and that students should pay "something" for their education, and grading it on the post-graduation salary is wholly reasonable. It forces students to value what they're getting or not waste the time of the uni. Too many cases exist of people sluffing through uni because its the thing to do, and not because they've had to make the deliberate decision to support the school financially. THis is good news. Somebody benefits and somebody pays... last time i checked, the primary beneficiary of that education is the student. It is incredibly fair that they should pay something.

Good victory for the meritocracy... over false socialism. Welfare university has rotted british higher education long enough... and it shows. Its time to put the snap back in to it, and i must commend Mr. Blair for this one thing... it is a victory over petty labour small mindedness. That said, it does not clear mr. blair for being a lying asshole regarding his other activities.

... net net... a half-victory.