On Thursday, July 4, 2013 11:45:58 AM UTC+1, Arfa Daily wrote:

she went to work for them full time, and is now a regional manager. She
hasn't picked up as much as a pencil since, so other than saying that she
has a first class degree, the time spent was of little meaning ...

Sometimes true for real degrees too, unfortunately.


NT

"Adrian" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 08:27:30 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

Perhaps you can help me here Bob (my dept has no undergrads so I don't
have any contact with this side of things)

1) Fees are paid by student loan with fairly easy repayment terms - I'm
pretty clear about this part;

2) How does cost of living/rent work?

The student pays it out of 1, plus whatever they earn in a part time job
or three. Unless they've ****ed their loan up the wall, and can't be arsed
to work, in which case it comes down to the parents.

A bit like real life, really, but for the fact that the loan has to be
paid back out of their future earnings.

The thing is, these are 18 year old kids who have no concept of "real life"
in the context of having 30 grand's worth of debt hanging around their necks
before they've even embarked on finding any kind of employment. And with it
being probably their first time away from home, they are going to **** it up
the wall. It's the nature of the beast. All the university towns are full of
clubs encouraging them to drink the night away. And digs are a joke. Back in
the day, accommodation outside of halls was reasonably priced. Now, every
Tom Dick and Harry has jumped on the bandwagon, buying up every house that
comes on the market, and converting it to bedsits as cheap as they possibly
can, and then renting them to the students for amounts that are nothing
short of extortion. The halls are not that much better. One of the
accommodations that my daughter had, was so tiny, you could just about fit a
bed in it. It was positively claustrophobic, and expensive. About the only
upside was that it was clean and warm in the building, and there was a
security guard in the foyer.

Arfa

On 04/07/13 09:46, Tim Watts wrote:
I am wondering when the time will come when going to the USA will become
similar or even favourable in costs. That will be the time we are truely
screwed. For now, I've heard it said that US unis (well decent ones) are
currently a lot costlier compared to here.

I had a conversation with my dentist on that subject a couple of years
ago. He was encouraging his daughter to look at US universities as an
alternative to oxbridge etc. His reasoning seemed to be: he was going to
be paying (a lot) for it, so it may as well be the best.

--
djc

In article , djc
scribeth thus
On 04/07/13 09:46, Tim Watts wrote:
I am wondering when the time will come when going to the USA will become
similar or even favourable in costs. That will be the time we are truely
screwed. For now, I've heard it said that US unis (well decent ones) are
currently a lot costlier compared to here.

I had a conversation with my dentist on that subject a couple of years
ago. He was encouraging his daughter to look at US universities as an
alternative to oxbridge etc. His reasoning seemed to be: he was going to
be paying (a lot) for it, so it may as well be the best.


Not that theres a lot between them at the top, some variance for subject
but otherwise;!..
--
Tony Sayer

in Cambridge...

On Tuesday, 2 July 2013 18:54:07 UTC+1, Adrian wrote:
On Tue, 02 Jul 2013 18:38:54 +0100, ARW wrote:



They will rise from £2.65 per hour to £2.68 per hour. That's a whole

£1.20 a week extra for working a 40 hour week.



£107.20 for a 40hr week. Damn near twice JSA for a 16-24yo.



Would you still want your child to take an apprenticeship?



How much do Uni students get paid?

They don't get paid they pay around £7,000 to £9,000 a year for 3 years..

On Thursday 04 July 2013 13:28 djc wrote in uk.d-i-y:

On 04/07/13 09:46, Tim Watts wrote:
I am wondering when the time will come when going to the USA will become
similar or even favourable in costs. That will be the time we are truely
screwed. For now, I've heard it said that US unis (well decent ones) are
currently a lot costlier compared to here.

I had a conversation with my dentist on that subject a couple of years
ago. He was encouraging his daughter to look at US universities as an
alternative to oxbridge etc. His reasoning seemed to be: he was going to
be paying (a lot) for it, so it may as well be the best.


If she was doing dentristry (I know that is not logically implied), I'd hope
that she'd go to South Africa - based on personal experience that the best
dentists hail from there (2 SA dentists vs several english, one ozzie
(though he was OK) and a swede.)

--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://squiddy.blog.dionic.net/

http://www.sensorly.com/ Crowd mapping of 2G/3G/4G mobile signal coverage

Reading this on the web? See:
http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Usenet

On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 10:52:22 +0100, news wrote:

ISTR that the BBC have now realised that the older engineers who made
things work and happen are now all retiring or coming to their career
end and they aren't being replaced. So the BBC are offering to pay your
Uni fees provided you go and work for them for a while!...

This used to be fairly common in the engineering industry when I went to
Uni in the mid '70s. Many engineering companies would "sponsor" (ie pay
salaries and fees for) undergraduates with the proviso that they went to
work for the company during the long summer recesses and following
graduation. About 25% of my course were on one of these schemes. I
think its long since dead and the best you can get is a bit of a bursary
these days.

t'was common in the late '80s, early '90s - a good percentage on my
degree were sponsored.

Guaranteed sandwich placement, summer jobs, job on graduation, plus money
to live on. One pair of twin brothers on the course were sponsored by
Ford - BIG discount on a new car every six months. Each. So they were
making cash by taking the discount on whatever was newly launched/cool/
short supply at the time, then selling after three months, too.

On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 12:55:59 +0100, Arfa Daily wrote:

The student pays it out of 1, plus whatever they earn in a part time
job or three. Unless they've ****ed their loan up the wall, and can't
be arsed to work, in which case it comes down to the parents.

A bit like real life, really, but for the fact that the loan has to be
paid back out of their future earnings.

The thing is, these are 18 year old kids who have no concept of "real
life"

And there's only one way they're going to learn...

Arfa Daily wrote:
"Adrian" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 03 Jul 2013 22:14:28 +0100, Fredxx wrote:

Umm, no.

Courses are still heavily subsidised for UK students.

No they're not!!

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk

Daily Mail. Say no more.


Why do your posts keep appearing multiply ?

Arfa

He was making the point that the Daily Mail is ****:-)

--
Adam

On 04/07/2013 11:45, Arfa Daily wrote:


"Steve Firth" wrote in message
...

Tim Watts wrote:

2/3 was the bit I thought parents ended up paying unless darling
Willoughby
was of a mind to take 3 part time MacDonalds and evening pub jobs on
to pay
his own way (which is one of the typical newspaper lines).

If its any help, my grandson whose parents make very little money and who
can just about get by with assistance from the bank of mum and dad gets
nothing.

He pays his own way by working all weekend and most evenings as a
warehouseman in a cash and carry warehouse. He also works during the
week.
He's taking a computer science degree and I don't know how he finds the
time to study as well as support himself. His girlfriend is in much the
same boat. Her family aren't wealthy, living just above minimum wage.
She's
working most evenings in a fast food "restaurant" to pay her way.

--
€¢DarWin|
_/ _/


My daughter worked every spare hour in a business in Kingston

Jamaica?

--
Dave - The Medway Handyman www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

On 04/07/2013 18:56, The Medway Handyman wrote:
Jamaica?

'cord.

--
Rod

soup wrote:
ARW wrote:
They will rise from £2.65 per hour to £2.68 per hour. That's a whole
£1.20 a week extra for working a 40 hour week.

Would you still want your child to take an apprenticeship?

Yep .
In fact eldest son is an apprentice mechanic, he is in his fourth
year (no more college, "yay" qouth he). We have already had people ask
him for advice/look things over etc . He will also be a (relatively,
more than the dole/dead end job) high earner when he is fully 'time
served'.


Living at home[1] he has electricity/food etc supplied he gives
his mum digs (the amount is unknown to me but it is nothing like JHGs
numbers). Indeed he has enough 'spare' to run a small car (of course
he maintains/services and diagnoses any problems with it himself using
his spare time but the employers ramp etc).

[1] Fully understand not all 20 year olds can/want to live at home

Considering the conversation I had with my parents and my brother last week
it's a wonder that we WERE allowed to live at their house until we were past
20 years old (or bugger off and turn back up when we wanted to).

Do Mothers have this special memory that allows them to remember everything
that her kids have done wrong? And this is EVERYTHING from birth to present
day.




--
Adam

On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 18:56:25 +0100, The Medway Handyman wrote:

On 04/07/2013 11:45, Arfa Daily wrote:


"Steve Firth" wrote in message
-
september.org...

Tim Watts wrote:

2/3 was the bit I thought parents ended up paying unless darling
Willoughby was of a mind to take 3 part time MacDonalds and evening
pub jobs on to pay his own way (which is one of the typical newspaper
lines).

If its any help, my grandson whose parents make very little money and
who can just about get by with assistance from the bank of mum and dad
gets nothing.

He pays his own way by working all weekend and most evenings as a
warehouseman in a cash and carry warehouse. He also works during the
week.
He's taking a computer science degree and I don't know how he finds
the time to study as well as support himself. His girlfriend is in
much the same boat. Her family aren't wealthy, living just above
minimum wage. She's working most evenings in a fast food "restaurant"
to pay her way.

--
€¢DarWin|
_/ _/


My daughter worked every spare hour in a business in Kingston

Jamaica?

No, she volunteered.

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Thu, 4 Jul 2013 18:57:21 +0100, ARW wrote:

Do Mothers have this special memory that allows them to remember
everything that her kids have done wrong? And this is EVERYTHING from
birth to present day.

That's just women in general regarding any men folk they have been
associated with. The only special bit about it being a mother/child
relationship is that they have known you since before birth.

You mean she didn't tell of the time you kicked her bladder and she
wet herself walking down the High St?

--
Cheers
Dave.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 4 Jul 2013 18:57:21 +0100, ARW wrote:

Do Mothers have this special memory that allows them to remember
everything that her kids have done wrong? And this is EVERYTHING from
birth to present day.

That's just women in general regarding any men folk they have been
associated with. The only special bit about it being a mother/child
relationship is that they have known you since before birth.


You mean she didn't tell of the time you kicked her bladder and she
wet herself walking down the High St?

No. She did not mention that:-)


But she went on and on about us ruining her 25th wedding anniversary party.
And that was back in 1991.


And my Dad was not in the clear. He got a bollocking for breaking his leg on
their honeymoon.


Do women have a second menopause?

--
Adam

On Thursday 04 July 2013 18:57 ARW wrote in uk.d-i-y:


Do Mothers have this special memory that allows them to remember
everything that her kids have done wrong? And this is EVERYTHING from
birth to present day.

Just the embarasssing ones. That forms th efirst story they recount to your
new girlfriend...


--
Tim Watts Personal Blog: http://squiddy.blog.dionic.net/

http://www.sensorly.com/ Crowd mapping of 2G/3G/4G mobile signal coverage

Reading this on the web? See:
http://wiki.diyfaq.org.uk/index.php?title=Usenet

On Thu, 4 Jul 2013 02:04:39 +0100, "Arfa Daily"
wrote:

My first wage as an apprentice in 1970, was £6-8/6d

Round about a fiver, for me.
On that, I could run a Vespa 150, on diy fuel from the lab.
Norwich Union Rider Policy was a fiver a year for up to 350cc and I
had conniptions when they put it up to seven quid.

On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 18:56:25 +0100, The Medway Handyman
wrote:

My daughter worked every spare hour in a business in Kingston

Jamaica?

How does it smell?

On 04/07/2013 10:05, Tim Watts wrote:
For comparison, for interest, in 1986 at York:

Fees were 100% covered for me.

Grant was £2100/year.
Room in halls was £21/week (30 weeks/year)
Dining was typically £1 per proper meal in college. Self catering was
available and you could mix as you wished.

Guinness was about 80p/pint

So bringing that upto date using the BoE inflation calc:

1986 grant in 2012 terms = £5211
1986 room per week = £52
Dining / cooked meal = £2.50
Guinness = £2

As a fellow Yorkie of an earlier vintage I might point out the rooms
aren't what they were. I went on a tour around James a few years back.
Most of the rooms were en-suite, and they provided proper cookers and
fridge freezers. As an inmate in Goodricke Cell Block C we had no
fridges (I bought one second hand in the end) shared showers & baths,
about 1 between 5, and a baby belling 2 ring cooker between about 20 people.

Andy

On 04/07/2013 13:28, djc wrote:
I had a conversation with my dentist on that subject a couple of years
ago. He was encouraging his daughter to look at US universities as an
alternative to oxbridge etc. His reasoning seemed to be: he was going to
be paying (a lot) for it, so it may as well be the best.

...and since an 18yo can't (legally) drink in the US she'll stay (fairly)
sober and do some work

In message , Bob Eager
writes
On Wed, 03 Jul 2013 13:08:24 -0700, jgh wrote:

Bob Eager wrote:
Of course, the costs haven't changed - it's just that the student pays
rather than the taxpayer

The students are *supposed* to pay, but the overwhelming expectation is
that the student's parents pay. I've never seen newspaper articles on
"how to pay your university fees", but piles and piles of "how to pay
your child's university fees".

The fact remains is that {students,parents} now pay all of it rather than
about a third, and the government pays nothing rather than two thirds.

As for the parents paying - that's daft, because there is no real
incentive to pay fees (or the repayments thereof) *at least* until
graduation.

But it sells papers I suppose.
Back in the days of "free" university education, parents were expected
to contribute towards living costs by a means tested grant. Many
refused. They also paid, as did graduates, through a basic rate of tax
of around 30% which is probably well above the marginal tax rate of
someone repaying a student loan today. Also of course only about 2.5% of
young people actually had the opportunity to go to a university.

What irks me a bout the Student Loan system is HMRC website which
proclaims that you never pay tax on a student loan. Oh yes you do, when
you repay it, just like any other loan because the repayment is taken
out of income after tax has been deducted.
--
bert

On 03/07/2013 11:30, Tim Watts wrote:
On Wednesday 03 July 2013 10:42 Dave Liquorice wrote in uk.d-i-y:

On Wed, 03 Jul 2013 09:35:53 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

If I were 16 now, I would be giving serious second thoughts to going to
university with the extorninate costs involved.

er, I'm sure you realise that you don't go to University at 16, you
go to "Sixth Form" to get A levels to go to University at 18...

Well, yeah... But 16 is a good time to start thinking about it - it may
affect the choice of A-Levels taken ;-o

The costs, well the student loan is cheap money and you don't start
paying it back until you are on a reasonable income and even then
it's at a pretty low rate and it gets written off after 25/30 years
or so.

This is true - but what about the means tested maintenance/cost of living
side - that looks horrendous? It seems that a lot of working parents would
have to support their kids through uni for housing and food. Or am I wrong?

Absolutely correct. Our lad's at Manchester and his rent is a little
bit more than his loan provides, and not for anything palatial. This is
actually considerably cheaper than university accommodation, which is
invariably run as a business now rather than a service. He could, of
course, get a job but with 100,000 students within 5 miles, they're not
exactly easy to come by, although he has picked up a few little
short-term earners. So guess who has to pay?

Is it worth it? Only time will tell but these days even a good degree
in something worthwhile is no guarantee of even a shot at a decent job,
in the way it was once, more a baseline qualification.

While the high cost of HE might be expected to motivate students, it
seems largely to have the opposite effect. They now consider that all
this money has bought them a degree, so they shouldn't have to do any
work for it.

Probably the worst aspect of current higher education though was the
conversion of polytechnics, where some very good courses were once run,
into 'new' universities, whereupon they dropped a lot of their best
offers in favour of soft options. I'm sure nobody intended that, but
it's a predicatable consequence of making it a market, given the fickle
consumer base.

In message , Tim Watts
writes
On Wednesday 03 July 2013 22:01 Adrian wrote in uk.d-i-y:

Given that the number of students at university has exploded in the last
few decades, was it really sustainable to expect government to support
them all to the same extent?

Well, this is back to my pet peeve. We should have stuck with less students
prefereably doing solid degree courses. But all means attract the foreign
students.

Now that we are in the mess of having a lot of perfectly interesting but
effectively useless (in term sof being able to do anything much productive
with them afterwards) my take is that we should be offering grants for
engineering, science and core arts. If you want to do "film in the 1950's",
pay for it yourself.

The reason I include core arts as productive is that is what certain civil
servants, journalists and teachers may have traditionally taken,
particularly English, History, Economics or a foreign language. And by god
the newspapers would be better off with journalists holding a range of
proper degrees.

The remaining problem is: what to do with everyone else? The days of entry
level apprenticeships at the Post Office (telephones), GEC and the BBC are
gone, much for the worse. There are a *lot* of people who are smart and can
make a good career the old way without academic qualifications.

One of the best technical courses was/is the HND. These should have been
turned into technical degrees. If you want to work on the global stage
you really need to have a "degree" because you are competing with people
from other countries who have them. The employer isn't interested in
arguments about "real " degrees or whether our universities are better
than their universities.
Speaking as someone with experience in international recruitment.
--
bert

In message , news
writes
On 04/07/2013 09:54, tony sayer wrote:


ISTR that the BBC have now realised that the older engineers who made
things work and happen are now all retiring or coming to their career
end and they aren't being replaced. So the BBC are offering to pay your
Uni fees provided you go and work for them for a while!...


This used to be fairly common in the engineering industry when I went
to Uni in the mid '70s. Many engineering companies would "sponsor" (ie
pay salaries and fees for) undergraduates with the proviso that they
went to work for the company during the long summer recesses and
following graduation. About 25% of my course were on one of these
schemes. I think its long since dead and the best you can get is a bit
of a bursary these days.

The sponsorship has gone because much of the industry has gone.
--
bert

On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 22:29:12 +0100, GMM wrote:

Absolutely correct. Our lad's at Manchester and his rent is a little
bit more than his loan provides, and not for anything palatial. This is
actually considerably cheaper than university accommodation, which is
invariably run as a business now rather than a service.

I agree, but in the latter case heating and lighting are usually included.

Is it worth it? Only time will tell but these days even a good degree
in something worthwhile is no guarantee of even a shot at a decent job,
in the way it was once, more a baseline qualification.

Depends on the degree, though. We have had 100% employment on graduation
(within the statutory 6 months) for at least the last two years, for our
mainstream degrees in computer science. Rated 5th in the country now.

While the high cost of HE might be expected to motivate students, it
seems largely to have the opposite effect. They now consider that all
this money has bought them a degree, so they shouldn't have to do any
work for it.

Yes, there is more of that these days.

Probably the worst aspect of current higher education though was the
conversion of polytechnics, where some very good courses were once run,
into 'new' universities, whereupon they dropped a lot of their best
offers in favour of soft options. I'm sure nobody intended that, but
it's a predicatable consequence of making it a market, given the fickle
consumer base.

Hear hear.

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

In message , Arfa Daily
writes


"Steve Firth" wrote in message
-septemb
er.org...
Tim Watts wrote:

2/3 was the bit I thought parents ended up paying unless darling
Willoughby
was of a mind to take 3 part time MacDonalds and evening pub jobs on
to pay
his own way (which is one of the typical newspaper lines).

If its any help, my grandson whose parents make very little money and who
can just about get by with assistance from the bank of mum and dad gets
nothing.

He pays his own way by working all weekend and most evenings as a
warehouseman in a cash and carry warehouse. He also works during the week.
He's taking a computer science degree and I don't know how he finds the
time to study as well as support himself. His girlfriend is in much the
same boat. Her family aren't wealthy, living just above minimum wage.
She's
working most evenings in a fast food "restaurant" to pay her way.

-- €¢DarWin|
_/ _/


My daughter worked every spare hour in a business in Kingston, and rose
to the top even whilst still a student. After she got her degree in
fine art, she went to work for them full time, and is now a regional
manager. She hasn't picked up as much as a pencil since, so other than
saying that she has a first class degree, the time spent was of little
meaning ...

Arfa
There's more to a degree course than the technical content.
--
bert

In message , The Medway Handyman
writes
On 04/07/2013 11:45, Arfa Daily wrote:


"Steve Firth" wrote in message

-septem
ber.org...

Tim Watts wrote:

2/3 was the bit I thought parents ended up paying unless darling
Willoughby
was of a mind to take 3 part time MacDonalds and evening pub jobs on
to pay
his own way (which is one of the typical newspaper lines).

If its any help, my grandson whose parents make very little money and who
can just about get by with assistance from the bank of mum and dad gets
nothing.

He pays his own way by working all weekend and most evenings as a
warehouseman in a cash and carry warehouse. He also works during the
week.
He's taking a computer science degree and I don't know how he finds the
time to study as well as support himself. His girlfriend is in much the
same boat. Her family aren't wealthy, living just above minimum wage.
She's
working most evenings in a fast food "restaurant" to pay her way.

--
€¢DarWin|
_/ _/


My daughter worked every spare hour in a business in Kingston

Jamaica?

All together - No she did it of her own accord.
--
bert

On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 22:24:47 +0100, bert wrote:

The fact remains is that {students,parents} now pay all of it rather
than about a third, and the government pays nothing rather than two
thirds.

As for the parents paying - that's daft, because there is no real
incentive to pay fees (or the repayments thereof) *at least* until
graduation.

But it sells papers I suppose.
Back in the days of "free" university education, parents were expected
to contribute towards living costs by a means tested grant. Many
refused.

Mine did. I was not on good terms with them anyway. I worked every
weekend and all of the vacations (includsing Christmas Day) and still
graduated with debt.

They also paid, as did graduates, through a basic rate of tax
of around 30% which is probably well above the marginal tax rate of
someone repaying a student loan today. Also of course only about 2.5% of
young people actually had the opportunity to go to a university.

What irks me a bout the Student Loan system is HMRC website which
proclaims that you never pay tax on a student loan. Oh yes you do, when
you repay it, just like any other loan because the repayment is taken
out of income after tax has been deducted.

Yes, two 'two bites' scenario is far too common these days.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

In message , Arfa Daily
writes


"Adrian" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 08:27:30 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

Perhaps you can help me here Bob (my dept has no undergrads so I don't
have any contact with this side of things)

1) Fees are paid by student loan with fairly easy repayment terms - I'm
pretty clear about this part;

2) How does cost of living/rent work?

The student pays it out of 1, plus whatever they earn in a part time job
or three. Unless they've ****ed their loan up the wall, and can't be arsed
to work, in which case it comes down to the parents.

A bit like real life, really, but for the fact that the loan has to be
paid back out of their future earnings.

The thing is, these are 18 year old kids who have no concept of "real
life" in the context of having 30 grand's worth of debt hanging around
their necks before they've even embarked on finding any kind of
employment. And with it being probably their first time away from home,
they are going to **** it up the wall. It's the nature of the beast.
All the university towns are full of clubs encouraging them to drink
the night away. And digs are a joke. Back in the day, accommodation
outside of halls was reasonably priced. Now, every Tom Dick and Harry
has jumped on the bandwagon, buying up every house that comes on the
market, and converting it to bedsits as cheap as they possibly can, and
then renting them to the students for amounts that are nothing short of
extortion. The halls are not that much better. One of the
accommodations that my daughter had, was so tiny, you could just about
fit a bed in it. It was positively claustrophobic, and expensive. About
the only upside was that it was clean and warm in the building, and
there was a security guard in the foyer.

Arfa
But they're old enough to vote.
--
bert

On 04/07/2013 22:24, bert wrote:

What irks me a bout the Student Loan system is HMRC website which
proclaims that you never pay tax on a student loan. Oh yes you do, when
you repay it, just like any other loan because the repayment is taken
out of income after tax has been deducted.

Isn't the amount of tax you pay the same whether that income is used to
repay a loan or for any other purpose? I think I must be missing how
that is a tax on the loan rather than the income - which is what most of
us pay.

--
Rod

On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 22:41:26 +0100, bert wrote:

In message , The Medway Handyman
writes
On 04/07/2013 11:45, Arfa Daily wrote:


"Steve Firth" wrote in message

-septem
ber.org...

Tim Watts wrote:

2/3 was the bit I thought parents ended up paying unless darling
Willoughby was of a mind to take 3 part time MacDonalds and evening
pub jobs on to pay his own way (which is one of the typical
newspaper lines).

If its any help, my grandson whose parents make very little money and
who can just about get by with assistance from the bank of mum and
dad gets nothing.

He pays his own way by working all weekend and most evenings as a
warehouseman in a cash and carry warehouse. He also works during the
week.
He's taking a computer science degree and I don't know how he finds
the time to study as well as support himself. His girlfriend is in
much the same boat. Her family aren't wealthy, living just above
minimum wage. She's working most evenings in a fast food "restaurant"
to pay her way.

--
€¢DarWin|
_/ _/


My daughter worked every spare hour in a business in Kingston

Jamaica?

All together - No she did it of her own accord.

I said that.

--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 22:36:10 +0100, bert wrote:

In message , Tim Watts
writes
On Wednesday 03 July 2013 22:01 Adrian wrote in uk.d-i-y:

Given that the number of students at university has exploded in the
last few decades, was it really sustainable to expect government to
support them all to the same extent?

Well, this is back to my pet peeve. We should have stuck with less
students prefereably doing solid degree courses. But all means attract
the foreign students.

Now that we are in the mess of having a lot of perfectly interesting but
effectively useless (in term sof being able to do anything much
productive with them afterwards) my take is that we should be offering
grants for engineering, science and core arts. If you want to do "film
in the 1950's",
pay for it yourself.

The reason I include core arts as productive is that is what certain
civil servants, journalists and teachers may have traditionally taken,
particularly English, History, Economics or a foreign language. And by
god the newspapers would be better off with journalists holding a range
of proper degrees.

The remaining problem is: what to do with everyone else? The days of
entry level apprenticeships at the Post Office (telephones), GEC and the
BBC are gone, much for the worse. There are a *lot* of people who are
smart and can make a good career the old way without academic
qualifications.

One of the best technical courses was/is the HND. These should have been
turned into technical degrees. If you want to work on the global stage
you really need to have a "degree" because you are competing with people
from other countries who have them. The employer isn't interested in
arguments about "real " degrees or whether our universities are better
than their universities.
Speaking as someone with experience in international recruitment.

Still exists. We (computing) take selected students with HNC into our
second year, but not HNDs into the final year.

My wife has been involved in getting HNDs started at her FE
college....but I am taking at least one HNC student onto the degree
course next year.



--
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK: http://www.mirrorservice.org
My posts (including this one) are my copyright and if @diy_forums on
Twitter wish to tweet them they can pay me £30 a post
*lightning surge protection* - a w_tom conductor

On 04/07/2013 22:57, Bob Eager wrote:
I said that.

AOL Me too.

--
Rod

wrote in message
...
On Thursday, July 4, 2013 11:45:58 AM UTC+1, Arfa Daily wrote:

she went to work for them full time, and is now a regional manager. She
hasn't picked up as much as a pencil since, so other than saying that she
has a first class degree, the time spent was of little meaning ...

Sometimes true for real degrees too, unfortunately.


NT


I suppose you could argue that she would not have ended up with this very
good job with nice company car if she hadn't gone to the university in the
first place, but 30 grand and three years of your life is a lot to pay for a
job ...

Arfa

"The Medway Handyman" wrote in message
...
On 04/07/2013 11:45, Arfa Daily wrote:


"Steve Firth" wrote in message
...

Tim Watts wrote:

2/3 was the bit I thought parents ended up paying unless darling
Willoughby
was of a mind to take 3 part time MacDonalds and evening pub jobs on
to pay
his own way (which is one of the typical newspaper lines).

If its any help, my grandson whose parents make very little money and
who
can just about get by with assistance from the bank of mum and dad gets
nothing.

He pays his own way by working all weekend and most evenings as a
warehouseman in a cash and carry warehouse. He also works during the
week.
He's taking a computer science degree and I don't know how he finds the
time to study as well as support himself. His girlfriend is in much the
same boat. Her family aren't wealthy, living just above minimum wage.
She's
working most evenings in a fast food "restaurant" to pay her way.

--
€¢DarWin|
_/ _/


My daughter worked every spare hour in a business in Kingston

Jamaica?

Upon Thames ... :-)

Arfa

--
Dave - The Medway Handyman www.medwayhandyman.co.uk

"bert" ] wrote in message
...
In message , Arfa Daily
writes


"Steve Firth" wrote in message
-septemb
er.org...
Tim Watts wrote:

2/3 was the bit I thought parents ended up paying unless darling
Willoughby
was of a mind to take 3 part time MacDonalds and evening pub jobs on to
pay
his own way (which is one of the typical newspaper lines).

If its any help, my grandson whose parents make very little money and
who
can just about get by with assistance from the bank of mum and dad gets
nothing.

He pays his own way by working all weekend and most evenings as a
warehouseman in a cash and carry warehouse. He also works during the
week.
He's taking a computer science degree and I don't know how he finds the
time to study as well as support himself. His girlfriend is in much the
same boat. Her family aren't wealthy, living just above minimum wage.
She's
working most evenings in a fast food "restaurant" to pay her way.

-- €¢DarWin|
_/ _/


My daughter worked every spare hour in a business in Kingston, and rose to
the top even whilst still a student. After she got her degree in fine art,
she went to work for them full time, and is now a regional manager. She
hasn't picked up as much as a pencil since, so other than saying that she
has a first class degree, the time spent was of little meaning ...

Arfa
There's more to a degree course than the technical content.
--
bert


Agreed, but she went on the course in the first place because she is a
very - and I really mean very - gifted artist. Much of the non-technical
course content - of which there was not much anyway - was arty-farty bollox
that she didn't agree with. She feels that overall, from an educational
point of view, the time and money was wasted, but the life experience was
valuable, and of course, she finished up with a very good job at the end of
it, allbeit not as a result of the degree itself or anything that actually
was learned from attendance at the university ...

Arfa

"bert" ] wrote in message
...
In message , Arfa Daily
writes


"Adrian" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 04 Jul 2013 08:27:30 +0100, Tim Watts wrote:

Perhaps you can help me here Bob (my dept has no undergrads so I don't
have any contact with this side of things)

1) Fees are paid by student loan with fairly easy repayment terms -
I'm
pretty clear about this part;

2) How does cost of living/rent work?

The student pays it out of 1, plus whatever they earn in a part time job
or three. Unless they've ****ed their loan up the wall, and can't be
arsed
to work, in which case it comes down to the parents.

A bit like real life, really, but for the fact that the loan has to be
paid back out of their future earnings.

The thing is, these are 18 year old kids who have no concept of "real
life" in the context of having 30 grand's worth of debt hanging around
their necks before they've even embarked on finding any kind of
employment. And with it being probably their first time away from home,
they are going to **** it up the wall. It's the nature of the beast. All
the university towns are full of clubs encouraging them to drink the night
away. And digs are a joke. Back in the day, accommodation outside of halls
was reasonably priced. Now, every Tom Dick and Harry has jumped on the
bandwagon, buying up every house that comes on the market, and converting
it to bedsits as cheap as they possibly can, and then renting them to the
students for amounts that are nothing short of extortion. The halls are
not that much better. One of the accommodations that my daughter had, was
so tiny, you could just about fit a bed in it. It was positively
claustrophobic, and expensive. About the only upside was that it was clean
and warm in the building, and there was a security guard in the foyer.

Arfa
But they're old enough to vote.
--
bert


They're old enough to count as an adult at about 11 in Disney or in an
aircraft seat ... :-)

Arfa

"Vir Campestris" wrote in message
...
On 04/07/2013 10:05, Tim Watts wrote:
For comparison, for interest, in 1986 at York:

Fees were 100% covered for me.

Grant was £2100/year.
Room in halls was £21/week (30 weeks/year)
Dining was typically £1 per proper meal in college. Self catering was
available and you could mix as you wished.

Guinness was about 80p/pint

So bringing that upto date using the BoE inflation calc:

1986 grant in 2012 terms = £5211
1986 room per week = £52
Dining / cooked meal = £2.50
Guinness = £2

As a fellow Yorkie of an earlier vintage I might point out the rooms
aren't what they were. I went on a tour around James a few years back.
Most of the rooms were en-suite, and they provided proper cookers and
fridge freezers. As an inmate in Goodricke Cell Block C we had no fridges
(I bought one second hand in the end) shared showers & baths, about 1
between 5, and a baby belling 2 ring cooker between about 20 people.

Andy


In the halls that my daughter lived in in Kingston, there was a toilet /
shower in the room in a tiny prefabricated 'pod'. Other than that, all
kitchen facilities etc were shared among whole floors. In later
accommodations that she stayed in, it was all small damp rooms, poorly
converted from houses that had been snapped up and converted cheap by
'landlords', and communal bogs and bathrooms - the standard one per house
with probably 8 students or more to share them. Also, a communal kitchen
with one small fridge for all of them to get their food into.

We were actually quite disgusted that the kids had to live like this, and
felt that reputable universities should be a bit more concerned about this.
It wasn't so much the actual conditions that we objected to, but the
standard of the accommodation for the extortionate rents that were being
charged by these unscrupulous landlords, and the almost impossible terms of
the rental agreements for ever standing any chance of getting your (also
extortionate) deposit back. The fact that just about every 18 year old is
now encouraged to go to 'uni' (how I hate that Australian-ism) has resulted
in an explosion of gullible students and parents for
eye-to-the-main-chancers to buy up houses, and take advantage of them all as
they try to get somewhere to live before all the rooms run out.

As ever, in this ripoff country, it's not about educating the kids to
achieve something useful any more, it's about seeing how much money they and
their parents can be relieved of, for the minimum return. And I include the
actual course in that as well ...

Arfa

"bert" ] wrote in message
...
In message , Bob Eager
writes
On Wed, 03 Jul 2013 13:08:24 -0700, jgh wrote:

Bob Eager wrote:
Of course, the costs haven't changed - it's just that the student pays
rather than the taxpayer

The students are *supposed* to pay, but the overwhelming expectation is
that the student's parents pay. I've never seen newspaper articles on
"how to pay your university fees", but piles and piles of "how to pay
your child's university fees".

The fact remains is that {students,parents} now pay all of it rather than
about a third, and the government pays nothing rather than two thirds.

As for the parents paying - that's daft, because there is no real
incentive to pay fees (or the repayments thereof) *at least* until
graduation.

But it sells papers I suppose.
Back in the days of "free" university education, parents were expected to
contribute towards living costs by a means tested grant. Many refused.
They also paid, as did graduates, through a basic rate of tax of around
30% which is probably well above the marginal tax rate of someone repaying
a student loan today. Also of course only about 2.5% of young people
actually had the opportunity to go to a university.

Which was probably about the 'correct' percentage of kids that were actually
bright enough and qualified enough to truly take advantage of what used to
be very advanced level education in properly useful subjects.

Arfa



What irks me a bout the Student Loan system is HMRC website which
proclaims that you never pay tax on a student loan. Oh yes you do, when
you repay it, just like any other loan because the repayment is taken out
of income after tax has been deducted.
--
bert

"ARW" wrote in message
...
Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Thu, 4 Jul 2013 18:57:21 +0100, ARW wrote:

Do Mothers have this special memory that allows them to remember
everything that her kids have done wrong? And this is EVERYTHING from
birth to present day.

That's just women in general regarding any men folk they have been
associated with. The only special bit about it being a mother/child
relationship is that they have known you since before birth.


You mean she didn't tell of the time you kicked her bladder and she
wet herself walking down the High St?

No. She did not mention that:-)


But she went on and on about us ruining her 25th wedding anniversary
party. And that was back in 1991.


And my Dad was not in the clear. He got a bollocking for breaking his leg
on their honeymoon.


Do women have a second menopause?

--
Adam


No. They just never actually finish the first one ...

Arfa