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@gavinstpier @sashakmiller @Lindsay_Gsy @Govgg 1/ Is Guernsey’s approach to HE funding the right one? (thread) Next year I’ll be sending my second son to university in the UK. I will get no States support. And he has no way to access the UK student loans system.
2/ This means that my wife and I (and our remaining son) will have to get by as best we can on the small amount that we have left over each month after paying £9k tuition fees and between £7 and £10k in living costs.
3/ I hope we manage better than we did when our eldest son went away to study - that left us around £20k in debt. Guernsey’s method of allocating funds to support study in the UK is based solely on income and declared (and I stress the word declared) assets.
4/ So it’s not assessed on actual ability to pay but on perceived ability to pay. That’s where we fall foul of the system. On paper we should be able to manage fine. In reality, we can’t.
5/ Now, I fully support the notion that we should as a society fund less well-off students to study - money shouldn’t be a barrier to education or opportunity - but we need to find a way that also doesn’t close off avenues to HE for those who have more money, but not enough
6/ to fund themselves through university; those who fall just outside the threshold of support. People like my children. Yes, self-interest is at the heart of this, but there is a wider principle at play here, one that I mentioned a sentence or two ago:
7/ money shouldn’t be a barrier to education and opportunity. Under the current system it is. But in a weird and unexpected way. One that denies intelligent children a place in university, because of their parents’ circumstances; not because they have too little,
8/ but because they have a little too much (but not quite enough). At present if the parents can’t afford the costs, the student has no way of accessing funding independently. That’s fundamentally unfair. At 18, an age when young adults should be striking out on their own, they
9/ find themselves, and their futures, being dictated by what their parents can and can’t pay for. Opportunity is denied them, even if they have the ability and desire to study at a higher level. So what do I propose?
10/ Well, either universal funding of tuition fees, with a properly means tested approach to maintenance grants. Or some kind of student loans system, assuming it’s impossible for the island to negotiate taking part in the UK system. So will it change? I doubt it.
11/ There seems to be no political interest in this. In the meantime, my family will end up poorer, we’ll spend less in the island economy, put less into pensions and that could make us more of a burden on the state in the future.
