Fancy a few more pints in the Union bar....

[eighthobstruction]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/feb/21/david-willetts-old-people-university

....must dust off my Donkey Jacket (the one with the pocket worn through by Penguin Classics)


PS....I was not a BA student until my 40's, but spent 18-25 looking like one....

....some terse replies in the Comments section of the Guardian....

[vinteuil]

... I think my boater has been eaten by mice, and I'm not sure I can still handle a punt pole. Lost the taste for Pimm's, too...

[Thropplenoggin]

... I think my boater has been eaten by mice, and I'm not sure I can still handle a punt pole. Lost the taste for Pimm's, too...

Am I right to have the impression that a soirée chez vinteuil would be akin to that of Professor Welch in Lucky Jim, involving at least one madrigal singing session?

[amateur51]

Two Brains Willetts has form in this area - I recall arguing with him on telly in the 1980s about the daftness of differential benefit rates for over-25s, 16-25s and 16 year-olds.

Assuming that he's serious, the most obvious reform would be to restore the financial assistance to people wanting to take up courses at the OU.

I hope lots of 60+ers will take up his notion & study Latin and Ancient Greek

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

or indeed music Ams

[er my donkey jacket is still in the cupboard; my uncle gave it to me when i was twelve, it was so large then it functioned as a duffel coat...saw me through the sixties and beyond and now fits ... ahem]

[Alain Maréchal]

Its the use of "should" in the headline that worries me. "Could", "Might" or even "Ought" wouldn't sound quite so much like a harbinger of a forthcoming directive.

[ahinton]

Well, it wouldn't be "pints" for me under any circumstances; if or when I start consuming gin or single malt whisky by the 0.568261485l I will clearly be in no fit state to go on another degree course...

[Richard Tarleton]

Assuming that he's serious, the most obvious reform would be to restore the financial assistance to people wanting to take up courses at the OU.

I hope lots of 60+ers will take up his notion & study Latin and Ancient Greek

I did OU Spanish in my 50s (3 year course, partly funded by my employer) and can't speak too highly of it. Excellent course materials, first rate tuition by native Spanish speakers from a top university dept., agreeable fellow students and a summer school in Santiago de Compostela. I did get to put it to some professional use, too.

Sadly the rumours I'd heard about excesses on OU summer schools proved unfounded, at least in this case

[teamsaint]

Now call me a cynic, but could this have anything to do with university rolls falling, as absurdly high tuition fees kick in, and youth and graduate unemployment and under employment stay at sky high levels?

[Byas'd Opinion]

What does he see the point of the 60+ age going (back) to Uni as being?

Is it so they (and I'm only a few years short myself) can keep their mind active, and learn new things on the basis that knowledge has an intrinsic value? If so, great, but it's rather at odds with the general mood of the last three decades or so, which is that the sole point of education is to help you get a (better) job. Would he be happy with someone doing History of Art at St Andrews or Oxbridge, or does he just want to produce more accountants and MBAs?

If on the other hand it's simply so people can go on working, but in jobs they've not been doing up till that point, he'll have to persuade employers to take on older workers. I did a postgraduate IT conversion degree in my late 30s. Like most of the other older students on the course, I found it difficult to get a job on finishing, while the youngsters who'd just come straight off an undergraduate course waltzed into highly-paid jobs, often before they'd even sat their course exams. If you're not the sort of naive, malleable dewy-eyed youngster they're used to recruiting, too many HR depts just don't want to know.

[Resurrection Man]

Now call me a cynic, but could this have anything to do with university rolls falling, as absurdly high tuition fees kick in, and youth and graduate unemployment and under employment stay at sky high levels?

But they're not! Not in real terms. It's free money almost.....almost zero interest rate...pay £3 a month. Once you get over the threshold. I'd jump at the chance.

[MrGongGong]

But they're not! Not in real terms. It's free money almost.....almost zero interest rate...pay £3 a month. Once you get over the threshold. I'd jump at the chance.

Even at a Zero rate of interest £9,000 per year is a huge sum to pay back and is a massive disincentive for folk to go to University for EDUCATION as opposed to job training .......a sad thing IMV

[Resurrection Man]

Even at a Zero rate of interest £9,000 per year is a huge sum to pay back and is a massive disincentive for folk to go to University for EDUCATION as opposed to job training .......a sad thing IMV

Wake up.

It is effectively written off....hardly anyone is going to end up paying it.

You should go out and talk to those who have this loan. They don't give a diddly-squat about it. Neither should you...if you could, just for once, look beyond your narrow viewpoint of the world/UK.

What you should focus on is the overdraft that the banks inveigle them to sign up to AFTERWARDS. That is where the problem lies.

[teamsaint]

a 3 year degree, (and many are 4) for those kids who have to borrow all the money will leave them with debts, (any way you look at it) of nearly £50k, some of them not even 21 years old.

It is wrong, just plain wrong to saddle kids with that level of debt, to obtain a degree which often offers nothing more in career terms than the illusion of better things ahead.

The employment situation for young graduates is just bloody awful. Wages are pathetic, rents going through the roof, while the stupid ****** government encourages people to work into their 70's exacerbating,needlessly and deliberately, the poor employment prospects for the young.
This country should be utterly , utterly ashamed of the way it treats its young people.
And the ones I have talked about might be described as the fortunate ones....god alone knows what it is like for those with poor secondary education.

It makes me bloody furious.

[teamsaint]

Wake up.

It is effectively written off....hardly anyone is going to end up paying it.

You should go out and talk to those who have this loan. They don't give a diddly-squat about it. Neither should you...if you could, just for once, look beyond your narrow viewpoint of the world/UK.

What you should focus on is the overdraft that the banks inveigle them to sign up to AFTERWARDS. That is where the problem lies.

RM, the ones who don't care Diddly squat about it now, because of the "easy terms" will look at it rather differently should they ever get near to trying to buy a house, with £50 k of existing debt which, whatever the banks say WILL be taken into account on their affordability calculations.

Edit: and all of this, (debt at one end, work into your 70's at the other) is a quite deliberate attempt to impoverish the ordinary people who are already paying to put right the reckless greed of the banks and their fellow travellers.