I told you so...

"Darling - we bought you a hoodie - why not join a nice gang of yobs instead"


Education in this country will now only be the choice of the rich.

Unlimited fees - or even capping at £7kPA will make a degree almost impossible to achieve for vast numbers of talented, intelligent and motivated young people. I would never have gone to college in these circumstances. My father was already dead and my mother was struggling to get by with two younger children.

If a student does decide to go for a degree - they will almost certainly have to try for a cheaper college with less to offer and poorer teaching and fewer facilities.

Even attempting to seduce the public by saying that loans need not be paid until you earn £21K is a potential disaster, meaning that many will only take work at or below that level and be stuck in poorly paid and underachieving jobs - leading to lack of ambition and resentment. Why would anyone earning 20K ever take a pay rise of go for promotion - you would need a 10k leap in income to justify the change - and how will that ever happen?

Employers will know that they can employ degree educated students at low wages and keep them there for years because they won't be able to risk advancement.

Very soon the education system will polarise the public to 1930's levels - with the children of the rich educated but unambitious and lazy, and the children of the poor uneducated - or so mired in debt that they achieve nothing in life. Even the ones who attempt to get an education will be so tied to part time work that they never excel at their studies.

Personally - I think that the standards should be much higher - but education is now a marketable commodity and everyone has the 'right' to a degree - something I find infuriating - there is a huge sense of entitlement that many students have developed over the last 15 years. I cannot subscribe to education for the masses being a market driven product - that's obscene.

It's also being mooted that all University level teaching must be accompanied by a teaching certificate.... why would I spend two years, self funded, to get a qualification geared towards FE rather than HE when I already have 2 degrees and 20 years teaching experience, accompanied by the fact that teaching at my level is so poorly paid that I am regularly broke - the two technicians in my department literally live hand to mouth.

It's a complete, fucking joke.