Prominent forum member being interviewed

[lasbar]

Originally Posted by Mac

"I spend all the money I get from EMA on gold pocket watches and hats!" - not exactly the working-class image he should be expressing.

David Cameron and Osborne had their education paid by the taxpayers...

Double standards everyone?

 

[tone76]

Is that high visibility jacket SF Approved?

 

[Ianiceman]

Originally Posted by intent

Taxes, duh. The military can be used to construct dams, etc. in local communities. The volunteers would help out communities as well without worrying about hiring unionized government workers.

It also solves the obesity problem.

I'd love to live on planet Indent where problems which have vexed some of the finest minds of economics, politics and sociology can be solved with one glib statement. You haven't thought very long about his have you?

 

[xudisco07]

Originally Posted by tone76

Is that high visibility jacket SF Approved?

I was thinking that. I'm surprised it took 5 hours for someone to mention.

 

[intent]

Originally Posted by Ianiceman

I'd love to live on planet Indent where problems which have vexed some of the finest minds of economics, politics and sociology can be solved with one glib statement. You haven't thought very long about his have you?
Waiting for your proposal here, Einstein.

 

[The Silverfox]

Originally Posted by Ianiceman

I'd love to live on planet Indent where problems which have vexed some of the finest minds of economics, politics and sociology can be solved with one glib statement. You haven't thought very long about his have you?

+1000

In any case, yeah the guy looked like a twat and had the opinions of one.

Being a recent graduate myself, I have no sympathy for those protesting against tuition fees raises. The simple fact is that producing good education services is an expensive endeavour, and price-fixing does not change the ammount of resources needed to be put into it, it just ruins the market-clearing function. If prices are too low, there's a mismatch and you get shortages and need to ration. For those who have the grades, I'm sure it's all good fun to have your education at the expense of someone else, but if we're talking about actually helping people I would say it's a lot better to be in a situation where you have the choice of either not going to school or taking a loan, than it is to be forced out with no means of ammending the situation.

Back to the gentleman in question, I liked some of the individual pieces, but put together they were just way too much. Especially given that he was being interviewed on a topic of financial aid and his essential argument was that the aide is necessary to pay for schooling, when he looks like he spends all of his aide on hats and horn-rimmed glasses. Not that there's anything wrong with hats or horn-rimmed glasses, it's just that looking like that when you're pleading for funding for "essentials" is a bad pitch.

 

[Raralith]

Originally Posted by lasbar

They're the same crying when immigrants are needed to do jobs the natives are not educated enough to do themselves...

If you don't invest in your own people ,you will have to pay the consequences...

Not everyone can afford to pay tuititions fees up to £9000 a year and the ones who can through their parents are not automically the brightest students...

At the end of the day ,the country is losing on talents and brains...

I think the problem is, which I'm sure I'll get quite a bit of flack for, that not everyone should be going to college. College isn't for everyone, and even if it was free, it doesn't mean you need to go if all you genuinely just don't care. If you have the desire and yern to go to college, I think it's a good place for you. If you are not sure what you want, maybe you should consider going into the work force instead, or going into a skill school where you can learn specific work skills (welding, mechanic, etc...). If your parents are rich and can afford to send you to college, but you just don't care, a diploma isn't going to do you a whole lot. If you cannot afford college, but you really need the diploma (accounting, etc...), a loan sucks but at least you'll have the drive to make more money and pay it off which makes it a worthwhile expense.

 

[mr. magoo]

Originally Posted by Sanguis Mortuum

So only working-class people can stand up for the rights of other working-class people?

When I was a kid, there was a trend in protest movements to "dress up" for protests: generally be neat, wear dress pants, maybe a tie.

The reason was to suggest that protesters were serious young people, not just dirty, angry hippies, and that the message you were trying to espouse had "broad" appeal.

Perhaps that was his motivation.

 

[George]

Originally Posted by lasbar

David Cameron and Osborne had their education paid by the taxpayers... Double standards everyone?
Their tuition fees would have been paid, but their education grants, for housing, food etc. would have been means tested, and given their respective parents wealth, they'd have got **** all. Like me. The whole student fees thing seems unfair, but is it really? Consider, why should someone who starts work at 16, remains on a low wage for most of his life pay taxes to fund free tertiary education for those who will have a much better lifestyle once they graduate. There is no free ride, no matter what politicians promise, things unfortunately have to be paid for.

 

[Ianiceman]

Originally Posted by intent

Waiting for your proposal here, Einstein.

I'm not smart enough to know the answer to an enormously complicated problem like this, but I am smart enough to know that it will take a lot more than some knacker on a message board solving it with a throwaway statement. If it was as simple to fix as you suggest don't you think someone in a position to implement it would have done so by now and thus be hailed as an economic/social genius?

I'm not 19 years old so I no longer know everything about everything.

 

[Mac]

Originally Posted by lasbar

David Cameron and Osborne had their education paid by the taxpayers...

Double standards everyone?

I have my education paid by the taxpayers, but I'm not justifying stupidity with popular opinion. I think it's wrong.

Originally Posted by academe

This is mean-spirited and not entirely true... I think young people from very low income families do really benefit from EMA. I know several young people from workless households (i.e. parents on benefits or on disability, etc.) who have genuinely found their EMA helpful.

Of course there's going to be the few people who depend on EMA, but for the most part, it's money to spend on drink and drugs and other luxuries. I hope they take it away.

 

[The Silverfox]

Originally Posted by Raralith

I think the problem is, which I'm sure I'll get quite a bit of flack for, that not everyone should be going to college. College isn't for everyone, and even if it was free, it doesn't mean you need to go if all you genuinely just don't care. If you have the desire and yern to go to college, I think it's a good place for you. If you are not sure what you want, maybe you should consider going into the work force instead, or going into a skill school where you can learn specific work skills (welding, mechanic, etc...). If your parents are rich and can afford to send you to college, but you just don't care, a diploma isn't going to do you a whole lot. If you cannot afford college, but you really need the diploma (accounting, etc...), a loan sucks but at least you'll have the drive to make more money and pay it off which makes it a worthwhile expense.
Precisely... And who is supposed to be the judge of who should or shouldn't go to college? It's very simple, let the person who is the decision-maker and the beneficiary of the education, ie the student, be the one to bear the costs, and let they themselves make the decision if the net benefits are worth it. If your salary increase from college is not sufficient to justify the cost of going to college, you shouldn't be doing it... If someone wants to do it regardless, we are not talking about an investment in their future productive capabilities, but rather an entertainment service consumed for the student's enjoyment. Nothing wrong with that, but once again why should someone else other than the student pay for it? If the education is a worthwhile investment, the student will be willing to take out a loan in order to get the education, and those bright enough to be "deserving", whatever that means, will get their educations. If the education is not a worthwhile investment, the student will probably not be willing to take out a loan, and therefore those who's educations would not benefit them or society sufficiently will not waste their or our money being educated for no reason. Nobody seems to understand the very simple fact that prices matter. A price isn't just some sum of money you must pay that is arbitrarily picked, it is a rationing mechanism and a mechanism for weighing the costs against the benefits, and when you **** around with the price, you distort the reflection that the price is supposed to give of economic realities. That being said, there are reasons why a government student loan programme makes sense, as there are serious asymmetrical information issues involved in student finance. However, there is no question in my mind that the cost of the education should rest with the student, even if the financing is arranged through a government institution, and this includes that the student should pay an unsubsidized interest rate on the loan, including during his/her studies.

 

[Ianiceman]

Originally Posted by Raralith

I think the problem is, which I'm sure I'll get quite a bit of flack for, that not everyone should be going to college. College isn't for everyone, and even if it was free, it doesn't mean you need to go if all you genuinely just don't care. If you have the desire and yern to go to college, I think it's a good place for you. If you are not sure what you want, maybe you should consider going into the work force instead, or going into a skill school where you can learn specific work skills (welding, mechanic, etc...). If your parents are rich and can afford to send you to college, but you just don't care, a diploma isn't going to do you a whole lot. If you cannot afford college, but you really need the diploma (accounting, etc...), a loan sucks but at least you'll have the drive to make more money and pay it off which makes it a worthwhile expense.

This is loosely what used to happen in the seventies when kids did an eleven plus exam and those more academically inclined would go on to a prep school and study vocational traditional degrees. Those less academically inclined could do woodwork, metalwork etc. (or typin, book keeping, nursing for girls) and go on to get engineering apprenticeships and due to strong unions end up time served with well paid jobs. It was hardly utopian and had plenty of flaws (what if someone's inclination to college develops late when they are already fed into a technical track) but the biggest obstacle is that England doesn't make anything any more so there are very few jobs for those non academics to aspire to. So now they drift I to college and study some meaningless non-vocational degree and nobody wins. Bald the ships in th works were once built in my city, and there were 140 coal mines in the county employing thousands of technically skilled lads. Thanks to Thatcher there is no shipbuilding nd mining any more and we pay France for coal. What did she think all those people were going to do for a living with their trades decimated overnight?

 

[George]

Originally Posted by Mac

I have my education paid by the taxpayers, but I'm not justifying stupidity with popular opinion. I think it's wrong. Of course there's going to be the few people who depend on EMA, but for the most part, it's money to spend on drink and drugs and other luxuries. I hope they take it away.
Of course you will always find extra money useful, but useful isn't the same as necessary. I remember back in the '80s when there wasn't the plethora of benefits that are available to the unemployed, disabled &c. that there is now and that did not stop kids going to 6th form, tech college etc.

 

[Mac]

Originally Posted by Ianiceman

This is loosely what used to happen in the seventies when kids did an eleven plus exam and those more academically inclined would go on to a prep school and study vocational traditional degrees. Those less academically inclined could do woodwork, metalwork etc. (or typin, book keeping, nursing for girls) and go on to get engineering apprenticeships and due to strong unions end up time served with well paid jobs.
Not to be a stickler, but wasn't comprehensive education in the UK introduced in '64?

Originally Posted by George

Of course you will always find extra money useful, but useful isn't the same as necessary. I remember back in the '80s when there wasn't the plethora of benefits that are available to the unemployed, disabled &c. that there is now and that did not stop kids going to 6th form, tech college etc.
That's the thing. EMA is to incentivise kids who have single parents or are in poorer families to stay on at school and help with their education. However, there was a recent survey and something like 90%+ kids who do get EMA would still stay on at school even if they didn't get it - surely that tells us something.