Tom Anderson wrote:
On Sun, 30 Jan 2005, Neil Williams wrote:
wrote:

Indeed! The graduate tax is so obviously the right way to do it that
i'm utterly baffled by the lack of support for it amongst politicians.
Well, okay, i'm not, since, as you say, it wouldn't be popular. It
would also be a bit dodgy making it retrospective, and if it wasn't,
we'd have to wait quite a while before it started to pay out.

Probably for the same reason that they're so averse to raising the top
rate of income tax - they want people to stay in Britain and make more
money.

Agreed - to an extent. Remember that if a graduate becomes a high
earner, they're paying more income tax anyway!

Absolutely, and there is an argument that if the government is correct in
saying that graduates earn more, then they'll also pay more tax, and so
fund their own education through general taxation without any mucking
about with fees etc. Of course, this is (a) too subtle for the average
education secretary to understand,

That assumes the problem is with the education department, which seems
highly unlikely.

(b) a waste of a perfectly good
opportunity for the Treasury to wring yet more revenue out of the public

....without raising taxes, which seems to be quite an obsession!

and (c) not true anyway, since demand for graduates isn't elastic enough
to absorb millions more of them

That's true in the short term, but probably not in the long term.

(even if they were of the same quality as
current ones, which they wouldn't be).

Doesn't that depend on the universities rather than the number of
students?

Christ, i sound like a right Daily Mail reader, don't i?

YMTTICPC!

The general taxation approach is also a little unfair on people who don't
go to university but still become high earners.

Only if you believe that capitalism is fair. Those who recognise its
unfairness have no problem with providing assistance to those who need
it.

Applying it retrospectively would be *seriously* dodgy, mind, not so
much for those like myself who paid no fees and received a grant, but
more for those who have paid the current levels of fees. To apply a
graduate tax fairly if retrospectively would mean you'd have to level
the playing field for everyone it applied to before doing so, meaning
that you'd have to refund a lot of tuition fees, and pay out "grants"
(or take them back from people who got them).

What about people with degrees from overseas universities?

That would be doable, i think. Probably more expensive than it's worth,
though.

Regarding the 50% target, I believe this is absolutely wrong.

Yes, of course - as does anyone with more than two brain cells to rub
together.

How many are the Taiwanese rubbing together? UIVMM the figure there is
well above 50%.

Equally, things like apprenticeships and vocational training (possibly
through a resurrected technical college system) should be encouraged and
funded to a significant extent instead

The government seems to have little objection to funding colleges, as
they see it as a good way of reducing unemployment statistics.
Unfortunately many of the courses there are of little practical use.

- and like in Germany this should not be looked down on in any way.

Ditto.

All of which requires a huge change in attitudes, sadly - as was mentioned
earlier, employers need to learn that a degree doesn't really mean
anything,

That depends on what kind of degree it is. An engineering degree means a
great deal.

and the populace need to stop seeing university as some sort of
essential badge of middleclasshood. A gigantic renaissance of
apprenticeships and the like would be a start.

Indeed it would, but I don't think the decline in the number of
apprenticeships has much to do with the rise in the number of university
places. AIUI a lot of it's due to downsizing - employees are now too
busy to train apprentices.

It's ironic that the highest qualifications we have, doctorates, are
essentially apprenticeships:

That depends where you do them.

i've apprenticed myself to my supervisor to
learn to be a scientist, and will spend three years basically being a pair
of hands for her (albeit an increasingly autonomous pair of hands) and
learning the trade. The clinical part of a medical degree and legal
pupillages are very much the same.

And that's very good when student numbers are high, as the lecturers can
put the postgrad students in charge of some of the tutorials.