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Is earning £21k succesful? (Read 43755 times)

Sloper

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Is earning £21k succesful?
December 08, 2010, 09:35:41 pm
Appropos PMqs today.

Personally I say no, not for a graduate which is why we need to shut 50% of universiites and return to genuine HE.

lagerstarfish

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#1 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 08, 2010, 09:43:17 pm
pends how long it takes you to earn £21k, shirley  :shrug:

magpie

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#2 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 08, 2010, 09:46:51 pm
21k a year?  I wouldn't say it was particularly successful, it's enough to be fairly comfortable but I wouldn't have thought most people earning that amount a year would consider themselves to be particularly successful.

Sloper

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#3 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 08, 2010, 09:49:05 pm
It's what our excuse for a Tory PM suggested was an annual salary for a successful graduate.

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#4 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 08, 2010, 09:51:41 pm
If you worked on ASDA tills and got 21k I think you'd feel quite successful.  That's where a few graduates will end up.  And if you've got a degree in Interpreting Ancient Farts, then 21k may be pretty good.

But it isn't all about money though, is it?  What is "success" anyway?  Respect, job satisfaction, stress, etc

The question of "is 21k a decent wage?" is different- I'd say yes.

LucyB

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#5 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 08, 2010, 09:58:38 pm
Starting salary for a teacher is £21,588. That seems reasonable to me as a starting wage; 16 years down the career ladder, I'm earning a fair bit more than that.

Academic study is by no means a guaranteed indicator of being good at an actual job. Surely you would expect your earnings to increase as your level of expertise at a particular job increases. There's no reason why having a degree should mean that your starting salary is massively inflated; it should just mean that you have the potential to earn more as you move through your career.

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#6 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 08, 2010, 10:12:25 pm
Right. Time for some ranting I'm afraid...

I think 21k is a reasonable wage for a recently (last 2-5 years) graduate. Its not a decent wage it you're trying to raise a family - or live in London for that matter... so what is a reasonable wage depends upon your circumstances.

From an academics point of view - this is a really fucked up way of introducing a new system. I can see why they want to shift the cost of HE from general public to the recipients more - I'm not sure I agree with it, in fact I dont really, but if its going to happen this is the wrong way... why?

Well, in one year, you are going to change the WHOLE way HE is funded. This means the whole way all Universities market themselves - finance themselves - make plans has to be changed effectively overnight. It will turn the system upside down. We have had a boom year or two student number wise due largely due to recession.. and next year will be bumper as people scramble to get in so they get one year at the lower rates... But when they come in for 2011.. No one knows what the feck is going to happen. It could well lead to a crash in numbers - and universities could well shut. Boom bust... crazy.. All our offers, marketing, leaflets, UCAS gubbins has to be done a year in advance.. so everyone is shitting themselves what to do..
 
If you want to impose this model - what you should do is phase it in over 5 years - so (for example) fees increase by £500-1000 per year over the coming year. Then insituutions have time to adjust or react to changes - make plans (beleive it or not most have 5- 10, 20 year plans).

A metaphor if you like is - imagine that overnight they decided to change the way fuel is taxed - so Petrol became 40p a litre (nearly no tax) but instead you payed £3000 a year in road tax. It may be a reasonable way of doing things, but it would be bonkers to do it overnight. 

Its going to throw the HE market into turmoil.... and no-one knows how potential students will react.....

 :wall:

Rant over. Apologies for going semi off topic and for the smelling pistakes... I was angry fast typing...

match

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#7 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 08, 2010, 10:25:57 pm
If I earned £21K a year I'd think I'd got it made.

Mind you, if I had a job 12 months a year I'd be pretty damn chuffed. My current average annual earnings of £6.5K don't keep one in new ice boots don'tcha know. FWIW have BA, MA, two post-grad certificates and some other bollocks, all from respectable unis. Clearly it ain't W that much!

Sloper

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#8 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 08, 2010, 10:41:13 pm
FWIW I have always been against any form of tuition fees and would much rather revert to a much smaller and more slecitve state funded HE system.

But that's not the question.

andy_e

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#9 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 08, 2010, 10:51:43 pm
which is why we need to shut 50% of universiites and return to genuine HE.

 :agree:

tomtom

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#10 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 08, 2010, 11:01:02 pm
which is why we need to shut 50% of universiites and return to genuine HE.

 :agree:

I dont agree with that  - but if that were the case wouldnt it be better to do this through a gradual change over a number of years rather than slamming the door on those who had their heart set on a BA in Media management and monkey grooming at the University of Upton upon Slackwater?
Its now in the mindset/expectations for close to 50% of pupils to go to University - and you can't expect to change that overnight - fine change it, but do it more gradually. Christ, they're phasing in most of the other cutbacks why not this!

SpanishJuan

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#11 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 08, 2010, 11:52:18 pm
Fcuk me, when I graduated and landed myself a job in the big smoke I would have creamed myself getting 21k. as it was I was payed peanuts 17.5K considering the amount of work I did ( I left 7 months later having accrued 1 month in lieu and my holiday still intact) and my wage has remained static (often dipping below that original mark up, but then I chose to work for charities). The only time since I graduated I made a decent living as an ecologist was working freelance.
21K isn't successful, and I dare (no, I double dare) any Conservative MP to adopt that as their salary for a year while living in a successfully, without hand outs from daddy's estate...

Paul B

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#12 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 09, 2010, 12:08:57 am
21k seems to be a rough estimate for the starting wage for a graduate in Civil and Structural Engineering (not a particularly high graduate either). So, did he mean 'successful' or a 'succesful graduate' as in one that didn't fail (I'm guessing the former)?

Whats quite interesting is that the top level in this field (my field I suppose [Nat's too]) isn't that high compared to other sectors.

Its also worth considering that I am funded by a departmental teaching grant currently. These vary from university to university and probably dept. to dept but as I don't pay tax on it, thats a fair wage considering the lifestyle it permits.

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#13 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 09, 2010, 12:17:30 am
I'd say it's definitely successful enough to be able to afford to pay pay 9% of your salary (21k) minus 21k...

Difficult to do any real sums that take salary increase, loan interest, annual increase in 'untaxable' rate, inflation etc. but someone with a pretty good graduate entry-salary earning 30k will pay ~£68/month, significantly less than average council tax. If you've done a 4yr undergrad masters then at that rate in a 30k job you'll only have to pay ~2/3 of it off (47 yr total payback time) assuming all the factors are bodged so that everything's all fairly constant in relative to the price of onions.

I though the concept of paying >£9k/year was completely outrageous until I got the calculator out. In reality I reckon I (as a recent MEng grad in mechanical engineering) would have been better off in real terms with the proposed system than I am, having had to spend £1.2k/year up front out of the meagre £3.4k maintenance loan (that naturally comes in three parts, the first instalment coming well after the 1.2k was due and also after the first third of the coincidentally also £3.4k cost of renting a house (sans bills obviously) was due). Naturally there were lots of 9p noodles, lentils and overdrafts involved.

Five years ago there was absolutely no way a full-on course could be done without significant financial help from parents, there weren't enough hours in the day to work 20 hours of lectures plus the prescribed '20 hours' work and keep a job. Not sure what the old grant conditions were but now students from families financially below median income get 3.4k/yr grant, I seem to remember my system involved jumping through firey hoops only to be told to bugger off.

We have to pay a chunky percentage over 15k for loans. My old mates who did history, English lit etc. that are now working in GAP or similar must be fucked (I know people working in graduate engineering jobs who are close to the edge).

Whilst it's a fairer system that lets people popping out with unemployable degrees not pay much (if anything), people with well-paid jobs not noticing the cost of education as much as graduates before them, and most importantly, people who don't or can't get financial help from parents able to get degrees, I think the biggest concern is from the cuts in general. If the top-up level of fees plus a bit more were payable back on the terms that these proposed bigger fees are then everything would be smoother.

Totally agree that phasing this in slowly would cause considerably less mayhem. For what it's worth, no decent, established universities offering respected and worthwhile STEM courses (it's a real acronym for the profitable bits: science, technology, engineering and maths) will fold. The 'unprofitable' departments are already paid for by the profits that departments such as mech/civ eng produce through big central distribution of funds. Not to say that unprofitable departments of average universities won't close... Ultimately I reckon it's only going to be a problem to the old polys that haven't managed to develop really good, profitable STEM departments and if I'm being really cynical I'd say that this could be the plan.

One thing's for certain, financially easier in the long term or not, I don't think there'll be quite as many media studies students in the future.

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#14 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 09, 2010, 06:20:04 am
Whatever the answer, success shouldn't be equated with earnings anyway, so I'd object to the premise of the question.  Fulfillment and happiness are far better indicators of success than earnings.  It's much more preferable to be happy in a job earning peanuts than earn loads in a job you detest.

Personally I think uni should be a place where the motivation should be academic excellence as opposed to a money making institution. HE should be smaller, state run, and reserved for the genuinely academic. This seems to be the direction it will be going in, is anyone realistically going to spend 27 grand for a degree in 'animal welfare', this sort of thing doesn't really belong in HE.

Jim

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#15 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 09, 2010, 09:21:07 am
Its not a decent wage it you're trying to raise a family
why not?

galpinos

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#16 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 09, 2010, 09:49:43 am
Starting salary for an engineering graduate in my industry (Energy, Process/Chemicals and Oil and Gas) is £25k in London (£22k in the North)

Five years ago there was absolutely no way a full-on course could be done without significant financial help from parents, there weren't enough hours in the day to work 20 hours of lectures plus the prescribed '20 hours' work and keep a job. Not sure what the old grant conditions were but now students from families financially below median income get 3.4k/yr grant, I seem to remember my system involved jumping through firey hoops only to be told to bugger off.

Really? Are you telling me that everyone at uni has parental help? Did you have a job at uni? Did you work the holidays?
I really think that students whinging that they haven't got time for a part-time job on top of their studies undermines their argument. They have. Plenty of students do and come out with firsts. The real world involves working more than 40 hours a week (unless you're an engineer - lucky you ;)) so why should students. I would say many don't hit 40 hours of study/lectures for much of the year.

Having said all the above, I think higher education should be free. It should be  academically selective, not financially selective, and having 50% of the school leavers going to uni as a target is a joke. 50% going onto further learning consisting of 20% going to uni and the rest going to vocational qualifications that actually mean something would be ideal in my view.

The current plans will be very financially intimidating for academically gifted people from a lower income background.

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#17 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 09, 2010, 10:29:31 am
As an MEng grad - i managed to sustain part time bar work in my first year only - after that - i couldn't work in term time and attend lectures and labs, and study -  but i did manage to help fund myself by finding paying summer placements which bigged up my CV and coffers

 i cycled every where, nearly got scurvy from living so cheaply and didn't get a loan until my final year.

i was the last year to get a grant (pretty tiny) - and one of the first few years to get the loans.

parental support received was £16.50 a week (this was what my dad paid my mum in child support when i was a bairn, and he continued to pay me it at uni)

rent was £25/ week hovel (cf £40 average or above at the time)

i didn't have to pay tuition fees, i don't think i would have gone to uni if they  had been introduced then - if you grow up a bit skint (3 siblings, single mum) - you become really averse to getting in debt - it's like being hyper-risk averse.

i used to write down everything i spent to last pence  :-[

these days its even more comon for students to run cars? eat out, eat takeaways? ha i feel myself coming over all like that minty python sketch  ;D


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#18 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 09, 2010, 11:13:25 am
Do 17or 18year old kids really think about the financial implications of doing anything. I cetrtainly didn't when I was that age. Do they spend hours worrying over how this debt is going to effect them in the future. I would guess not. If they want to goto uni they will go. If they have rich parents they will be paid for. If not they can borrow it.
I chose not to go and went climbing full time for years because I wanted to climb. This took me out of the earning loop for the best part of six years. Cost far more than being thirty grand in debt just in lost earnings but would do it all again.
Going to uni to study something that won't give you any career at the end of it is surely the same. You make your choice and get on with it.
Thirty grand is not a lot of money spread over the next forty years of work. And with what's on offer if you never earn more than 21k you never need to pay it back. Seems like a bargin to me.
 

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#19 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 09, 2010, 11:18:30 am
Remember, that's 21k in 2016 prices. Which is, what, 17-19k in today's prices, depending on inflation. Not a great wage at all, and barely more than the current threshold which is £15K. One potential saviour is that although you'll pay more, you'll pay it off over a much longer period, which means you pay less each month.

Not sure what to think of the governments proposals for fees. On the face of it, they seem idiotic.

They're going to cut the deficit, right? No. Both the HEPI report and the IFS report show that in the short term government borrowing will go UP. BIS is saving £2.5bn in Uni funding, but the government will be handing out over £5bn to pay fees up-front. The only difference is that this is classed as a loan, not expenditure, so it doesn't appear on the books as government borrowing. It's an accounting dodge.

Still, at least the government will eventually get that money back, since it's a loan, right? No. Not everyone pays their loans back in full, so the government is still subsidising HE, just through the student loans company, and not BIS. Again, both the HEPI report and the IFS report show that total, long term government HE spending will go up, not down.

Still; it'll create a market in HE. That's good right; poor Uni's will shut and since the money "follows the student" Uni's will have to improve their teaching and provide students with what they want. No again! For so many reasons, HE doesn't work this way. To pick just one example, there's an incentive for ALL Uni's to charge the full £9k, since one of the reasons students will judge University quality is on how much they'll charge in fees!

So: students pay more. The Government pays more. It doesn't make a real market in HE. What's the point? Well, since everyone ends up paying more, the Uni's get more money. This is why I'm not sure what to think. Funding for Universities has fallen on a per-student basis by more than 20% over the last decade. Our HE institutes are slipping rapidly against competition from emerging economies and something has to be done. Either you drastically cut student numbers and keep funding levels similar, or you increase Uni funding. Both look politically difficult in the current climate. The governments proposals look more and more like a cunning ruse to increase HE spending on the sly.

galpinos

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#20 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 09, 2010, 11:21:45 am
I've another point I think that seems to have been a bit lost in the whole debate is how much as "we" paying, in total, to universities for each course and are they value for money? Are universities charging over the odds for what they provide?

I realise that university employees post on here (tomtom?) and I'm not having a go. I'm interested in your opinions because I'm a bit baffled by university funding. It currently costs overseas students £15,100 a year to do the course I did. Is this what it costs the government to send a UK resident to uni? That seems quite a lot for the 20 hours of contact time for 36 (I can't remember how long terms are) weeks a year.

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#21 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 09, 2010, 11:38:33 am
feel myself coming over all like that minty python sketch  ;D

Featuring Michael Poloin?

tomtom

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#22 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 09, 2010, 11:45:19 am
Glapinos..
Depends on the course..

NonSTEM subjects probably 6-8k a year
Semi Stem (geography env science) 9k+
science (Chem physics )c. 12-15k
Medicine greater than 20k pa..

Costs are estates, staff, infrastructure, marketing admin etc..

9k fee paying students in science subjects will still be heavily subsidised... At the expense of arts subjects etc..

AND Oxbridge get extra anyway due to their 'tutorial' system (don't get menstarted on that!)

Sorry for typos, replied on my phone during a mid lecture break!

Stu Littlefair

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#23 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 09, 2010, 11:45:35 am
Galpinos,

University funding is byzantine. Universities get money from the government for teaching, they get a separate pot of money for research from the government and then more (separate) research grants (again from the government, amongst others) for specific research projects.

Out of this pool they fund staff, pay buildings costs, admin costs etc that support both research and teaching with most teaching staff (supposedly) spending 50% of their time on each.

On top of that, some degrees are more costly than others. An english degree requires little more than a lecturer (who are often relatively junior and hence cheap) and a library. A physics degree requires equipment, labs, support staff and a lecturer who is usually more senior (and hence expensive).

So the question "How much does a degree cost", doesn't have a simple answer. However, Universities currently get, from the government, about £6400 a year per student to cover the cost of their degrees.
As hinted at in my previous reply, this probably doesn't cover the real cost, which is subsidised from other income streams. (Edit: see tomtom's post for a fair estimate of the "real" cost of different degrees)

Internationally, this is cheap. It's below the OECD mean. It's less than half what the US spends. Less than Switzerland, Canada, Australia,  Germany etc, etc.

You also get a lot more than the 20 hours of contact time you quote. Our students get 15-20 hours of lectures, plus a further 5 hours of lab time, plus another 2-3 hours or so of supervision per week. Also, all that material has to be prepared, assessed and so on. We have a staff of about 40 people who work flat out for more than half the year to teach a cohort of ~300 students. The £6400 we get from government works out at 48k per staff member if you assume that all our buildings, labs, lab equipment, computers, printing etc costs us nothing (or is covered by research expenditure).

Stu Littlefair

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#24 Re: Is earning £21k succesful?
December 09, 2010, 11:50:57 am
Incidentally, out of the 20 countries which spend the most on HE, the UK and Finland are the only two who have cut HE spending per student over the last 20 years. Over the 1992-1997 period, the UK's spending per student dropped 21%.

The OECD average increased by 8%. The US increased by nearly 30%.

 

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