Standard of living
May. 21st, 2010 08:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ailbheEvery so often, when I am particularly pleased with my life or my house, I remember the NCT coffee morning in my front room, where everyone lamented having to go back to work, and when I said "It's one reason we bought such a small house, we wanted to be able to manage on one salary." The response? It would be lovely, but they couldn't cope with the drop in standard of living.
I've often wondered whether they'd have said it if we'd been in one of their houses, which were all slightly more than twice the size of mine, and considerably more, um, groomed, whatever the grooming equivalent for houses is.
But then I go and sit in the garden and eat bagels again. So that's ok.
I've often wondered whether they'd have said it if we'd been in one of their houses, which were all slightly more than twice the size of mine, and considerably more, um, groomed, whatever the grooming equivalent for houses is.
But then I go and sit in the garden and eat bagels again. So that's ok.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-21 09:22 am (UTC)I can't imagine what it would take to make me go back to private health insurance as the norm.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-21 10:32 am (UTC)I think it's totally brilliant when people do that, but as a national model, it really entrenches privilege and restricts social mobility. I don't think there's anything wrong with a sliding scale of university fees based on parental income, but anything that means that it's easier for middle- or upper-class students to go to university than it is for poorer students is just Wrong, as far as I'm concerned.
Oxford, Cambridge and some of the Russell Group universities frequently argue that they could easily charge fees as high as the US Ivy League universities, in excess of $30k a year. The idea of something like that makes me alternate between terror and fury.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-21 10:36 am (UTC)"I don't think there's anything wrong with a sliding scale of university fees based on parental income"
That's why my family had to work through university when they went - you had to prove parental income was low enough, which meant having to have a cooperative parent whose income was not a big secret.
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Date: 2010-05-21 01:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-21 02:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-21 02:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-21 02:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-21 11:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-21 12:21 pm (UTC)Cambridge will not raise fees without also raising access to bursaries. It's already a very good place to go if you are on a low income, with a great deal of student support available. The admissions tutors and secretaries are all adamant that they want the best and brightest regardless of income, and that they do not want money to be a barrier for bright students. For years I have been told that a huge problem with widening access to Cambridge is persuading teachers and parents of bright but poor students not to put them off Cambridge "because it's too expensive".
I spent a chunk of yesterday reading the university's submission to the Browne review of higher education funding (http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/news/special/downloads/browne-review-submission.pdf). I note that it explicitly takes family income into account, and its preferred model is an assumption that families will commit about 10% of their income to the university education of each child, but that provision needs to be made for families that are unwilling or unable to do that, so the student can still come.
I think the biggest problem is the acceptance of a debt in families which are very debt-averse. One of my close friends at university and afterward came from a family whose biggest debt ever had been £9000 on a mortgage. To willingly rack up more than that in student debt was very alien to them.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-21 01:00 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-21 01:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-05-21 01:44 pm (UTC)