Universities minister Jo Johnson misses a number of vital points about what he calls student frugality (Frugal students won’t need help from their parents, says Jo Johnson, 4 October). He makes no mention of the stress many students suffer over their finances, not least the means to eat regularly and healthily. As for parents, Mr Johnson should be aware that parents on middle to low incomes will rarely be in a position to subsidise their children, a cause for parental anxiety. Blithe comments on students making choices over lifestyle, or that students can save from what in most cases will be meagre earnings, really don’t help. Yes, students can work, and many do, but will not earn enough to save.
Against all this, there is the chaos which is Student Finance England (SFE), which can (and does) lead to students either beginning or continuing their studies at the start of the academic year with no confirmation of what they will be receiving from SFE or when. Fine, let’s encourage students to be lean, fit and frugal, but too often financial uncertainty contributes to insecurity, depression and isolation. Or is Mr Johnson suggesting it’s all a matter of “character”: a student can go hungry and still perform at the highest possible level, if, that is, he or she is relatively monastic and disciplined in lifestyle? The fallacy of division, Mr Johnson?
Bruce Ross-Smith
Oxford
• Rather than the paltry offer by Theresa May to freeze student fees, the government should be ashamed that it is doing nothing to reduce the extortionate interest rate of 6.1% on loans. How can a rate of 25 times bank base rate of 0.25% be justifiable?
Ian Arnott
Peterborough
• It is not too difficult to agree that the current loan system is probably the worst of all possible structures of financing higher education, especially since it seems that the UK spends too little. Martin McQuillan (Never mind the students, tuition fees are a bad deal for the taxpayer, 3 October) sets discussion onto a useful thread by considering where the money comes from and goes. In so doing he suggests that 75% of loans are never paid in full. One of the problems in following this through is lack of data, especially now that ownership of much of the debt is privatised. It is generally assumed that graduates will earn more than others, but the figure of 75% figure casts doubt on such assumption.
The threshold repayment earnings (old version and revised) are near the median earnings for the UK. A very rough simulation of returns from the loans, based on only 20% of graduate incomes below median, produced tax returns over 15 years which would see the debt easily cleared. In order to produce a lower return I have to set a greater proportion earning below the median and fewer in the highest income brackets. It appears to me that perhaps graduates as a whole do not earn significantly more than others. Where can one find detailed data to enquire into this?
Ray Hall
Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex
• Theresa May’s raising the threshold for repayment of tuition fees to £25,000 will cost most graduates money. Interest on a debt of £50,000 at 6.1% is £3,050 per year. For every year that graduates earn less than £25k, the debt will increase by that amount and the interest the following year will be even higher. For years in which they earn more than £25k but less than £58,900 they will be paying off less than the full amount of interest and the debt will increase. Only those earning £58,900 or more will be reducing their debt and then very slowly. Abolition of tuition fees and the writing off of the debts is the only fair policy.
Ros Campbell
Leeds
• Professor Gowar’s textbook demolition of neoliberal education philosophy (Letters, 3 October) evokes a strong memory of the last Labour government’s withdrawal of funding from lifelong learners studying for no immediate qualifications, or for none higher than they already possessed. Then as now we heard various bogus arguments about students benefiting only themselves “personally”, as if individuals don’t live in society or as if personal and social could be separated as with a knife. Then, unreason ruled, hallowed learning institutions were savaged and life chances blighted. The unsound philosophy of atomisation is easily refuted: this time round, let’s hope we can end it.
Michael Ayton
Durham
• Pace Michael Rosen, whatever is driving the disastrous education policies of the present government, it is most certainly not “Pisa-envy” (Letter from a curious parent, 26 September). While Rosen is right to be sceptical of the value of these international comparisons, those systems which are most regularly successful in Pisa do seem to have certain characteristics in common, regardless of cultural differences. Three of the most important seem to be: (i) a properly comprehensive system of secondary schooling; (ii) a heavy investment in the education and training of a truly professional teaching force; (iii) a curricular emphasis upon problem-solving, rather than upon the acquisition of large amounts of factual information. It does not take an expert to recognise that these are not the chief characteristics of the English education system. Those of our politicians who quote Pisa as the justification for their reactionary policies are treating the electorate with nothing but cynicism and contempt.
Michael Pyke
Campaign for State Education
Shenstone, Staffordshire
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