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How did UK Government manage to increase university fees so easily? Isn't it a very big deal? What is going to happen as of next year?
What will happen to students? What is the amount that are likely to stop studying? I would like to read as much as possible about it. Thank you.
societyunderstand
Labour is the political party that wants to increase social mobility and decrease the rich and poor divide. Social mobility is the ability for someone to change their social class.
Conservative is the political party that wants to decrease social mobility, and increase the rich and poor divide. They want the rich to stay rich, and the poor to stay rich.
Labour is the political party that created the NHS, housing benefit, welfare system, free school meals, and other such things. They represent the working class.
The Conservatives are the political party that increased VAT when they were elected in the 1980s, and they did it again. They are the ones who scrapped free school uniform and milk tokens in the 1980s. Now they've scrapped other things I'll get into later, such as Connexions and Business Link.
Right now it is possible for people in the UK to get to university with Student Finance. I am an example of such a person. I get my £3290 annual course fees paid by the government and £2900 paid to me every 3 months, 3 times a year for my living costs. Because my parents are on a low income (she now gets £140 a week), she's on benefits (welfare), half of my maintenance money I don't have to pay back.
The best part is that I only pay back this money, once I'm earning! And when I do have a job, I'll only be paying back around 3% of my income every month for the next 30 years to pay it back. It's like I won't have to pay back anything at all! How could I possibly lose?
When the Conservative government got elected in 2009, they did the following things...
I know what you're thinking. Britain is a democracy, so how can all these things be allowed to happen?
Of course it's a big deal. These things are allowed to happen, because we democratically voted the Conservatives into power, and Parliament had a vote, and the vote swung in favour of the Conservatives.
That brings me to my next point. In the 2009 election there was a hung Parliament. The Conservatives had the most votes, but they never had 50% or 60% of the votes, I don't know which. Labour wanted the Liberal Democrats to side with them, so they could unite against Labour. Nick Clegg, the leader of the Lib Dems decided to side with the Conservatives because he wanted the power. He betrayed the students who voted for him, as he said that he would scrap university fees.
A bill was made, Parliament voted on it, and the vote swung in favour of the Conservatives thanks to the Lib Dems. Of course some Lib Dem seats didn't vote to increase fees, but that's what happened.
What is going to happen next year?
Did you know that university courses actually cost £9000 and not £3290. The government actually subsides the cost. The Conservatives being Conservatives scrapped that, and now they've decided to increase the fees to the maximum. My Computing course costs £8200. That's £800 less than Oxford University. That is ridiculous! I only have university for 12 hours a week or less on a full time course.
Another thing the Conservatives are doing, that people don't know about is, artificially limiting the funding of universities, so that they enrol less people. What the Conservatives are doing is getting the UCAS points of everyone who applies to university, and working out how many of them are scoring above a certain threshold. Once they find this out, they will then limit the funding of universities, so that they can't afford to enrol so many people on their courses.
This means that universities will be underbooked.
What's going to happen next year? Less people will get into university. The UCAS points for my course increased by 20 points straight after the Conservatives got elected. I'm lucky I'm born in 1992. If I was born a year after, I might not ever of got into university. I do not feel represented by the current government.
Another thing they are doing is funding private education, by funding academy universities and even worse, encouraging public schools to become academy schools.
This is not surprising as they've already sold the once nationalised Royal Mail to a German company. They also have sold some NHS hospitals to a German company. Both companies are operating under their usual names.
Why did the Conservatives get elected?
Most people who vote are 50 . I think you know that such a demographic come from middle class backgrounds. Not enough young people vote. If more young people voted, the Conservatives would never get elected again, and the youth would have more facilities.