I, on the whole, support tuition fees. Why? Because I do not think that poor people, with less earning potential than myself, should have to subsidise my education. If someone is working really hard driving a taxi every day, why should they pay for me to go to some fancy-pants university and get a piece of paper that entitles me to earn more money than them?
But I am not entirely decided on the issue. There are lots of good reasons to support not having tuition fees. For example, it probably puts people off going to university (I have not checked the stats, but I imagine this is the case). That argument in itself has factors that both support and oppose tuition fees.
The alternative, as well as realise though, is not a free education. I cannot be “free”. It has to be paid for in a capitalist economy. The alternative is an education paid for by the state, and thus reclaimed from taxes.
Either way, some one pays.
You could argue though that in a progressive tax system, the same person pays. Imagine these two scenarios:
Scenario 1, tuition fees. I pay £20,000 to go the university, except I do not pay it, because it is a student loan, taken by PAYE when I start earning. So I pay nothing up front to go to university. I go, do my degree and then graduate. Then I get a job and if I earn plenty of money I repay my student loan via the PAYE tax system. If not, I do not pay it.
Scenario 2, no tuition fees. There are no tuition fees so I pay nothing up front (just like above). i go, do my degree and then graduate (just like above). Then I get a job and if I earn plenty of money I pay a higher tax because the government has to fund all the education (as above). If not, I do not pay it (as above).
The scenarios above are basically the same. Either way, university is free at the point of access and funded by reclaiming the money using taxation. What difference am I missing?
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Tags: higher education, tax, taxation, tuition fees, University
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 13th, 2014 at 7:58 pm and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.