Nobodies at fault, it's a worldwide financial crisis. The money simply isn't there to spend at previous levels. Pretty simple.

As Maniac said in the OP, this is not about university funding, it's not about tuition fees, it is about one thing - the fact that every single Lib Dem MP who voted in favour of the increase, OR who abstained, is a LIAR and deserves to be kicked out of office. I include the abstainers in this, because they promised to vote against, and they didn't.


Ghostmaker: "With regard to the Lib Dems, that is how a coalition works"

That's not good enough. The point is that the Lib Dem MPs signed a pledge which promised that if they were elected, they would vote against ANY tuition fee increases in ALL cases - irrespective of circumstances. It was an unequivocal pledge making a clear commitment which they were agreeing to be held to WHATEVER the outcome of the election.

The pledge did not say "I promise to vote against any tuition fee increases unless we need to make concessions over this as part of a deal with the Conservatives".


Nick Clegg is an idiot who has sacrificed his party's long term health for the cheap thrill of the illusion of 'power' when in fact he doesn't even have that - he just does what his master "Call me Dave" tells him to. Party members are now tearing up their Liberal Democrat membership cards in their thousands, and I don't blame them.

that's pretty funny fiedler. The money isn't there, eh? so who's running all the money through the shredder? Not me. It had nothing to do with bad mortgages, bad mortgage-backed securities, credit-default swaps, etc. and even a financial elite that saw the crisis coming but took positions to deceive clients to keep the madness going as long as possible before collapsing in a short-selling frenzy? It had nothing to do with greed, selfishness and the Capitalist condition? That's a real interesting theory fiedler, especially since there isn't any doubt about who's paying to clean up this mess. Sad things is most of the people who know have a pretty clear idea the system is reloading the next crisis just as fast as it possibly can. So there ya go, nobody's responsible for the sudden tripling of the cost of an education in the UK. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

@ghost - i re-iterate that this isn't about tuition fees, that is a debate for another thread, it is about trust in our politicians. Whilst it is easy to say that politicians lie and coalitions lead to compromises, the Lib-Dems in particular made their number 1 priority to clean up politics and end the trail of broken promises. If people don't trust their politicians they won't vote and will try to effect change through other means, this is bad for democracy, and particularly bad for the Lib-dems.

Nick Clegg should have realised that political parties take generations to recover ground lost when they make poor judgements. I believe that the Tories have genuinely changed from being a little racist and homophobic, but that image of them still lives on. I think Ed Milliband will try and distance himself and the party from the Iraq war but those who were against the war will not forget that Labour took us what they see as an illegal war. In years to come Nick Clegg and others will say they were mistaken to vote through tuition fee increases, but the electorate will remember them going back on a central promise for generations to come.

I also think that coalition politics and voting reform has suffered a massive blow. When the time comes the tories and others will say voting reform leads to more coalitions and people's impressions of coalition govenments at the moment are not great.

Let's get that man behind the curtain! LOL I didnt say any of that frothing at the mouth crap you just spouted. all I said was the money isn't there, which is a FACT. Where do you think Britain gets it's money from? Is it a great manufacturing power? No, it gets its money from investments build up over centuries of empire. If you hadn't noticed, the investment market has been returning generally less than -50% lately. No money coming in means less to spend. They still teach maths right?

^ that was directed at mcbry.

@fiedler: What you said was that nobody was at fault. I disagree. Strongly. This is not a natural disaster, it is man-made. It's not a matter of the money "simply" not being there, SOMEbody fucked us, identifiable people, entities, corporations. There are good reasons to be angry and there are guilty parties toward which that anger can effectively and reasonably be directed. Nick Clegg probably isn't one of them.

You know what mcbry, to satisfy you I am going to go with you. Yes, the financial institutions who gave out the junk bonds and bet against them, or hedged against derivatives, or issued the sub-prime mortgages artificially manufactured this disaster. But you are forgetting two key things. The economy runs in cycles. A downturn was bound to happen - big banks just made it worse. But you are also forgetting, part of the blame also falls on the consumer for taking out those mortgages knowing that he cannot pay them back. I'm not going to say any more about this on this thread, for it's about politics, not economic theory. I apologize to everyone for going further off topic. mcbry if you want to talk about it, start a new thread

“or the need to nationalize the biggest banks to save the financial system”

At risk of branching out, there was no such need. Not that it is relevant how we got into debt to figle’s argument.

“England has had a great and cheap education system for a very long time. Now suddenly it isn't viable? What's changed? Who's at fault?”

We’ve not had balanced budgets for decades; it wasn’t viable before.


@Jamiet, I know you don’t like the idea that perhaps the lib dems can see more benefit in working with the conservatives than with the labour party, and that you will be bitter with them for that, but really, you’re just being ridiculous. Both parties are “breaking” specific manifesto pledges to make the government happen. It seems as though you’d rather we’d had a minority government that couldn’t pass laws owing to the political opportunism of opposition parties.

@Maniac, you can’t separate the two issues. The fact is that for all purposes, this is not a fees rise, in that students are getting a much better deal. As a consequence, it is not inconsistent with the Lib Dem’s beliefs to vote in favour, added to which, they are in a coalition. Yes, it is easy to say that coalitions lead to compromises, largely because it is true!

“that's pretty funny fiedler. The money isn't there, eh? so who's running all the money through the shredder? Not me. It had nothing to do with bad mortgages, bad mortgage-backed securities, credit-default swaps, etc. and even a financial elite that saw the crisis coming but took positions to deceive clients to keep the madness going as long as possible before collapsing in a short-selling frenzy? It had nothing to do with greed, selfishness and the Capitalist condition? That's a real interesting theory fiedler, especially since there isn't any doubt about who's paying to clean up this mess. Sad things is most of the people who know have a pretty clear idea the system is reloading the next crisis just as fast as it possibly can. So there ya go, nobody's responsible for the sudden tripling of the cost of an education in the UK. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”

At least learn a little economics. We’ve just had a boom period where money was offered at too cheap a rate by the central banks, meaning that people ran up too much debt. This was unsustainable, so people now have to reduce debt. People not borrowing is equivalent to less money being available, because the money supply wasn’t expanding so much.

The “financial elite” did not see the recession coming, with a few exceptions (note, not Vince Cable, that was total bs), because a market is very complicated, and the people in it cannot see the wood for the trees.

Furthermore, the fact that people are self-interested is totally irrelevant. I am going to act in a self-interested manner no matter what industry I am in. Why didn’t, say, the market in office chairs collapse? Every manufacturer is trying to make as big a profit as possible for themselves. So no, it has nothing to do with “the capitalist condition”, in fact it was due to the way in which central banks acted with a monopoly on supplying money.

Yes, that there was a crash is someone’s fault, but you’re pointing the same way as the people with a spokesperson, namely the political figures in government and central banks, rather than thinking for yourself, and that is never a good way to be.

"@figlesquidge was it Brown's mismanagement or the need to nationalize the biggest banks to save the financial system"
I don't mean as PM. I mean as chancellor when he happily let the banks grow and grow and removed regulatory boundaries.

@lib Dems in coalition:
I still can't get my head round why people are so cross with Clegg. He lead the party to a very good result in the election. Surely no-one genuinely expected them to reach an overall majority? Having done this, he had a choice:
The party could stay alone, and have no say.
They could work with the Labour party and have a virtually split parliament.
They could work with the Tory's, and actually have the chance to implement *some* of their electoral policies.
Also, people seem very happy to overlook one of the other things he said in the buildup to the election: that he'd work with the majority party.

I'm sorry, but I can't see if how this works out as a good deal.

If graduates earn enough to pay it back, they will pay back 3 times what they paid before (let's assume they earn enough to pay back the loan over the piece). In fact it's likely to be more than that with the change to commercial interest rates, and the longer payback period.

If they don't, and the graduate premium is eroded (which is what I suspect), we are stuck with a bill in the future, that an incorrect assumption will have been made about.

Either way, it sucks. And it sucks even more when you see the situation in Scotland and Wales

Thread topic: It's not about Tuition fees, It's about keeping your word
My response: horseshit.
Sorry to rain on your party, you want to whine about Mr. Clegg changing his tune in order to maintain and influence a coalition government rather than identifying the real causes of the situation. Well, it's not about keeping your word. You can't expect anyone who enters government to be able to maintain the same perspective from the outside as from the inside. Anyone that would pretend that Mr. Clegg should somehow be held strictly to his campaign promises when he didn't even win but has merely accepted status as a minority voice is living in a fantasy world. Furthermore, to pretend he should stick to his words is tantamount to suggesting that a minority voice SHOULD have greater representation than their election results grant them any right to is frankly anti-democratic. And, by the way, this crisis to which the British Gov't is responding as best they can JUST LIKE THE GOVs IN THE REST OF THE WESTERN WORLD is way outside normal economic cycling. Anyone who can't see the not-so-subtle difference in culpability between a trained and experienced banker and a hopeful potential home buyer who is OFFERED the mortgage of his dreams has bigger problems than Nick Clegg.

"All I want from my politicians is that they present a program and then deliver it when elected. Is that too much to ask? " in our multi-party system?

wow, with 23% of the vote the lib dems only got 8.8% of the seats... so much for your first past the post system... so yes, 5 times smaller but i think it's shocking that the conservatives got 3.7% more of the vote and 14.4% more of the seats... (i mean really, together the two parties got 36% and 23% of the vote and hold 53% of the seats... mad!)

Never the less, for the confidence/security having a government (And a competant one at that) is sometimes more important for national interest than not. IF that means compromising on some issues then that happens to be thatway democracy does bussiness in the UK. Not too big an issue if you ask me.

"Nobodies at fault, it's a worldwide financial crisis. The money simply isn't there to spend at previous levels. Pretty simple. " - Wrong (oh wait, you said you were talking about the gov, yes, the money is not in their a/c), the confidence to invest money simply isn't there - the confidence that loans will be paid back simply isn't there. It's all about investor confidence and what investment will make the most in any kind of term - that is a failing of the capitalist free market system. In fact the only way to have avoided it would have been some kind of state-controled market, which went out of fashion with the fall of the USSr's economic system...

i am sligthly surprised that there's so little belief that a new system is needed to replace this failing one, but given that no great options appear it's not too surprising...

"But you are forgetting two key things. The economy runs in cycles. A downturn was bound to happen" - i beleive it was the banks and economists who forgot this fact, i'm not sure if the average layperson was expecting it at all.

@ "in fact it was due to the way in which central banks acted with a monopoly on supplying money." - ok i will grant you, the money supply IS run in a state-controlled, public policy way, and the fact that governments don't have to make ends meet (as they can just print currency to pay off debts) but don't because of fears over how to control the money supply is evidence enough that they think this stuff is really important, and NOBODY knows what is best.

I'm sure there are those who think a central bank which is free from political control can go about doing it's job (just like the courts) without democratic representation or economic advice from the government... i do know this leave sgovs without money and being forced to cut free university fees...

*EDIT: my figures for seat percentages are all wrong...

@ghost - so you would have me believe that government can cut 80% of their funding to universities and students can still get a much better deal? Liam Fox and Norman Lamb conceded last night that prior to the changes goverment contributed 60% of the cost of a degree and after the changes they would contribute 40% of the cost of a degree. That does not equate to students getting amuch better deal. But even if I accept for the sake of arguement that we have ended up with the right policy, i stress again that this is not the issue. I'm mature enough to know that when coalition governments means compromises and I take figles' point that the Lib-dems said before the election that they would work with the largest party, but they also said they would clean up politics and not break any of their promises.

I accept that for example, they can't scrap trident or grant an amnesty to illegal asylum seekers, but it's one thing to shelve policies because you can't get a majority to vote it through and quite another to abandon a policy that you could have stuck to no matter what the consequences. The Lib-Dems could have said, we are committed to voting against any fee rise and either nothing would have changed until after the next election or labour and the tories would have forced through an increase.

What Nick Clegg fails to realise is that by breaking an election pledge he is never going to be believed again. That has damaged democracy and more importantly the Lib-Dems as a party. I suspect that when they lose the referendum on AV, which they will, and get wiped out at the council elections, they will tell us they made a mistake, they were wrong, it won't happen again, etc,etc, etc - and no one will believe them

"so you would have me believe that government can cut 80% of their funding to universities and students can still get a much better deal?"

They get a better deal because, although they face paying more in the long term, that is not relevant to the wealthy graduate. It is far more important to have a higher income as a recent graduate (where you say, are looking for a mortgage on a first property) than it is as a graduate in your 40s.

@ghost - i note that you are now argueing that students are getting a better deal rather than a 'much' better deal which was your original arguement. I obviously should have known that when you spoke about a better deal you weren't talking about over the lifetime of the loan but about a selected period of the loan. If I offered you the same car for £9k over 10 years or £27k over 30 years I suspect you would choose the 9k option of you had a choice, but then I forget which uni you are studying maths at, so maybe you wouldn't.

What surprises me is that businesses aren't being asked to contribute to the cost of degrees, whilst students and society benefit from having degree level students, so do business. I don't know if it still exists but the CITB (Construction industry Training Board) used to charge a levy of 2% of construction companies' turnover which went to training bricklayers, carpenters, surveyors etc. If every industry did the same and that money went directly to relevent training courses, business would get the students it needed and contribute part of the cost.

+1Maciac, that's good thinking.

This is an excellent point, Maniac.

I don't know what it's like in other fields, but in Engineering, at least, companies do make a lot of donations in terms of labs and equipment.

"If I offered you the same car for £9k over 10 years or £27k over 30 years I suspect you would choose the 9k option of you had a choice"

But that isn't what's happening. Its either 9k with a percentage of your income over 15k being paid back each year, or 27k with a percentage of your income over 21k being paid back, up to a limit of 30 years. The expected repayment amount is actually about 13-14k, and the new system means that if you are not highly successful, you don't have to pay very much at all.

The use of the quantifier "much" is irrelevant really, and it is petty for you to pick up on the fact that I dropped it.


"What surprises me is that businesses aren't being asked to contribute to the cost of degrees, whilst students and society benefit from having degree level students, so do business. I don't know if it still exists but the CITB (Construction industry Training Board) used to charge a levy of 2% of construction companies' turnover which went to training bricklayers, carpenters, surveyors etc. If every industry did the same and that money went directly to relevent training courses, business would get the students it needed and contribute part of the cost."

The benefits of an individual degree are pretty well focused on the student who has that degree, firstly. Secondly, businesses can't pay for anything, only people can. When you charge a business for something, you are actually charging people, be it the customers, the shareholders or employees, people get charged. I suppose the question you ought to be asking is, do you want to charge the person who actually gets the degree to pay the lion's share of the cost of getting that degree, when said person gets the most notable benefit, or not?

@Ghost - I accept your point that business doesn't pay for anything only their consumers do, but in some cases those consumers can choose to consume or not. At present part of my taxes go towards enabling students to gain a degree in games animation for example or vetenary services or nursing. If my tax contribtion were reduced and then I choose which industry to support, wouldn't that be a fairer way? I may choose (with others) that elect a government that funds the NHS to get nurses through degree course, but equally I may choose not to buy computer games if the true cost is prohibitive.

Also, if a nurse earns £50k more over their carear by being degree qualified than say a till operator but 20k has to go back to the government, is that enough insentive for people to choose nursing over being a till operator bearing in mind that till operators may earn more than nurses during the initial years.

@mcbry and abge - thanks for the support

@ghost - my apologies for being petty over the dropping of the much qualifier, my position as deputy vice president of the pedant's society demands that I am petty at least once a day.

PS - well done ghost for making a thread that isn't about tuition fees, about tuition fees.

"@Ghost - I accept your point that business doesn't pay for anything only their consumers do, but in some cases those consumers can choose to consume or not. At present part of my taxes go towards enabling students to gain a degree in games animation for example or vetenary services or nursing. If my tax contribtion were reduced and then I choose which industry to support, wouldn't that be a fairer way? I may choose (with others) that elect a government that funds the NHS to get nurses through degree course, but equally I may choose not to buy computer games if the true cost is prohibitive."

Indeed, it is totally unreasonable for the consumer of a computer game to benefit from the government funding the teaching of the programmers. That is why we should place the cost of the degree on the student, who will then make the decision based on whether or not they can make the money back by charging more for their services.

"Also, if a nurse earns £50k more over their carear by being degree qualified than say a till operator but 20k has to go back to the government, is that enough insentive for people to choose nursing over being a till operator bearing in mind that till operators may earn more than nurses during the initial years."

It may not be... in which case the pay of a nurse get should go up. Mind you, nursing shouldn't be taught in lecture theaters, but in wards, it is primarily a practical field, not an academic one. That they are now degrees shows how the previous system was failing.

Finally, you cannot get away from the issue of tuition fees. There is one helluva difference between just raising fees and implementing the Browne review. You were trying to restrict the debate, and in so doing ignore a lot of material that justifies the Lib Dem's position

I think if we can agree that NOT raising fees is unaffordable at this time, then it follows that it is not unreasonable for the Libdems to have broken a promise that it transpires is impossible to keep. One could look on the bright side and be thankful a subsidised higher education is available at all. wasn't always so and still isn't in many nations.