Brian, I’m really sorry, but this is rubbish; certainly in Scotland anyway (Scotsman article).

SALARY increases in the public sector under Labour are outstripping those in private business, prompting warnings that Scotland’s economy will suffer as a result.

Figures from the Scottish Executive show that, between 1999 and 2004, average wages in the public sector rose from £19,670 to £23,650, up 20 per cent. Over the same period, salaries in the private sector rose by only 18 per cent, and the average wage still lags behind at £20,000.

When I was employed as a graphic designer, I started on £12,500 and 6 years later I was on £19,000. A teacher friend of mine started on £19,000; her partner is a copper and he started on £21,000. To claim that public sector salaries are “dangerously low” is, I’m afraid, just wrong.

Sure, most public sector jobs have salary ceilings, but these are still higher than many people in the private sector will ever earn. And what is a “dangerously low income” for civil servants, exactly? Will they explode when their income drops below a certain point?

As for this graduate tax, it’s a silly idea. At least with a loan, you can eventually pay it off and be free, as it were. Is this graduate tax levied for the person’s entire working life? Or can they ever repay their debt?

If university level education leads to higher wages won’t the people that got it already be paying more to the government to pay for it than the people that did not? Why the need for a special tax?

Well, exactly. The special tax is to level the playing field, so that you can employ more civil servants (or stop the existing ones imploding) so that they can spend yet more time and effort taking money from those who have earned it and giving it to those who have not.

DK

MAs are ‘rationed’? When was that, Jarndyce?

Now consider the model of higher education where people go to university for 3 years then have a lifetime of working. In today’s fast-changing ttevhnology, that doesn’t make sense (for science and technology subjects in any case).

Perhaps it would be better if university courses were more modular, e.g. someone might go to university for 1 year, work for 5 years, go to university for 6 months, work for 10 years, and continue that way throughout their working life.

And recent TV adverts showing student loan vultures, purporting to reassure students that they won’t have to pay anything back until they are earning the earth shattering amount of £10k, really aren’t helping.

On graduate taxation, I guess we’re not going to agree. I don’t see it as penal – merely paying back some of what you’ve used once you’ve seen the benefits of it. A compulsory alumnus donation, if you like, to secure the continuation and improvement of British higher education. I suspect some of the problems associated with the current system looking like a loan is that richer parents are able to pay it up front, thereby replicating the class system within higher ed. I understand why government likes that option financially – but I think it may be very harmful indeed in its effects. On rationing the supply of useless courses, we’ll have to agree to differ. I think graduate taxation is precisely the way to do that. I’m all for equal, favourable access for poorer kids to HE, but equal access to useless courses is not something that’s going to have any impact on social mobility, or the life chances of the individual. Obviously, the rich will still be able to afford useless courses – but, so what? Let them waste their time and their parents’ money.

(Primary and secondary education, btw, I place in a different category altogether. That we have a duty to each other in civilised societies to educate to a certain level.)

Chris: I think I answered that above in the thread. Thanks.