(00:00): Hello and welcome to the Merlin English Afterthoughts. Throughout this series we'll be looking back at previous audio blogs and discussing them in a bit more detail.

(00:09): Today we'll be looking at episode number 9. The native audio blog titled to pay or not to pay the debate over university tuition fees. Now as usual I'm here at www.merlinenglish.co.uk/members where we have this episode's full web page along with the transcription and additional resources.

(00:30): Around the world then the topic of university fees and tuition is something which seems to be gaining more momentum as personal debts increase, as government debts increase the question of whether higher education should be free if this should be paid for is something which is being put more into question now than ever before.

(00:52): Today we’re going to be focusing on the UK university system for me this is something that I have experience in something that I am somewhat knowledgeable about and we’re going to be exploring if the system has always been like this, how it has changed over the years and the reasons why it has changed.

(01:11): We’re going to pull up a little graphic here to give us a bit of a visual. We’re going to be looking at some key events to see where the price has increased and how that has changed from 1998.

(01:23): The histories of universities in the UK then goes back to the 11th century the first university to open in England was Oxford and then in the 12th century shortly after Cambridge University opened. Nowadays of course these two are seen as the two most prestigious universities that we have in the UK however during that time higher education, university was something which most people perhaps didn't even consider. This was not something that the average person would have a desire to attend.

(01:55): It was only in the 1800s when things like the industrial revolution occurred that there was a requirement for peoples academic disciplines to be more widespread more jobs were created there was more need for a wider variety of skills and that caused an increase in the creation of more people universities across the country.

(02:20): Of course following on from world war two there was a similar phenomenon the need to rebuild the country of course required a skilled workforce as well as during that time you had things great innovations in science and technology where there was a need for people to be more academically savvy people needed to have more skills than just their manual labor.

(02:44): By 1998 then over a hundred universities had popped up all around the country and up until then these had largely been government funded this means that students would not have had to have paid tuition fees but they did have to pay things like their living expenses.

(03:01): It was only in 1998 that the UK government introduced the first tuition fee and at the time this was a thousand pounds per year so this was still reasonably cheap and there were also many opportunities to have things like grants and scholarships so university at that time was very accessible to most people and was a relatively low price.

(03:26): This stayed in place then for around eight years and in 2006 the government increased the price of tuition fees for the first time and this went from £1,000 per year to £3,000 now this was a very controversial thing at the time there were large student protests across the country and people were quite dissatisfied with that increase in tuition fees

(03:51): Only 4 years later then the prices were increased again and this went from £3,000 to £9,000 and the idea of this was that £9,000 was a cap this means that no university could charge more than £9,000 per year.

(04:09): The idea when they put this into place was that that's the higher level universities the better universities would be on the higher end of that scale while the mid level or low level universities would offer tuition for a cheaper price. Of course universities these are a business at the end of the day so this did not quite work out and instead of having this balance every university just set their cap to £9,000.

(04:39): This means that it didn't really university you were going to be paying the same price again this was met with widespread protests you think in the space of 12 years this has gone from £1000 per year up to £9000 per year which is quite a dramatic increase.

(05:00): The most recent increase then was just a couple of years ago in 2021, and this price increase was nowhere near as significant as the previous ones in 2021 they increased it from £9,000 per year up to £9,250 per year and this is going to be the average price that most universities are charging for you to attend university, a bachelor's degree at university in 2024.

(05:30): It's worth noting then that there are some differences here in the way that the UK government functions. The UK government is the larger government of the united kingdom however for smaller decisions such as education these are determined by the countries themselves by England, Wales, Scottland and Northern Ireland.

(05:52): Now for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland as i've just mentioned all of this applies however for Scotland, Scotland is different Scotland still offer free university to Scottish citizens and if you were born in Scottland if you live in Scottland you do have access to university for completely free

(06:13): Now that we've had the chance to look at the history of universities in the UK and how tuition prices have changed over the recent years Were going to take a look at how that is impacted enrollment and applications to become a university student.

(06:29): We have a graphic here then from the House of Commons library and this breaks down some statistics about people applying to attend university in the UK. Along with this then I’m going to share some numbers from the House of Commons library website and we’ll go through these now.

(06:46): So if you look in the top right then we can see that the number of university applicants was at an all-time high in 2021 and 2022. So here it says that there were 2.86 million students in total attending a first degree in the UK. We can see then at the bottom right how undergraduates and other degrees are declining this means that more and more students are participating in full time studies as opposed to part time studies. We can see again in the top right a slight dip there in the 2011 to 2012 year and this was due to some reforms however shortly after these bounced back and the students student attendance continued to increase.

(07:36): If we look in the bottom left hand corner we can see a dip there in international students or overseas students and this was likely a result of Brexit. It says here then that there was a 40% drop in applications following on from that and by 2023 there's been a 67% decrease in European students coming and studying in the UK uhh as a result of the UK leaving the European Union.

(08:05): So there then are just some interesting numbers, some interesting statistics, hopefully this gives you a bit of an idea of the type of people who are attending UK universities in 2024.

(08:16): Now then we need to go on and look at how student debts are repaid in the UK. So I have another graph then here which shows the student debts within England. When we can see in the 1990s of course tuition was free so there was more or less no student debts and as the tuition prices increased so did of course student debt.

(08:41): Now in 2012 the income contingent loan system was introduced and this started from the 2013 to 2014 school year so an income contingent loan this is a loan which is repaid based on how much you are earning so currently the threshold for repayment is £27,295 this means that until you are earning over £27,000 per year you will not have to repay anything.

(09:15): Now once you are earning over that a proportion of your salary will be put towards repaying your student debts. Currently that is at 9%. So that means anything you are earning over £27000 will have 9% of it taken to be put towards repaying your student debt.

(09:36): In the audio blog then we looked at an example that took the average UK salary and we showed how that was repaid So the average UK salary then is £31,500 per year. Now if we minus from that the threshold of £27,295 this would give us a number £4,205.

(10:02): So this is how much you're earning over the threshold. So for that £4,205 per year you will be deducted 9% of that to repay your student income debt. So this would work out as £378.45 per year or £31.53 per month. So for the person earning the average salary of £31,500 each month they will have to repay £31 towards their student debt.

(10:38): Now of course as you earn more money that 9% is going to be larger. If we put this up by a scale of 10 if we say you are earning *£315,000 per year then your repayments are also going to be a degree higher so it would be £310 per year, if that makes sense.

(11:01): Now for this being taken out of your salary this is done automatically it's similar to how things like tax and national insurance is deducted so if you're working a regular job a regular office this £31 per month will be automatically deducted.

(11:20): So before you receive your salary the government already take out that £31. So for most people they will not even realize that this is something that has been taken out. Most people will not even notice that they are repaying this which is good.

(11:34): Another good another great benefit to this system is that after 30 years if you haven't repaid your debt it is wiped clean from your accounts you will no longer have to pay that after thirty years.

(11:47): Now this system is good because this means that no matter what your situation is you are never going to be too financially burdened by repaying your debt as long as you're earning under £27,000 there's no financial pressure you're still going to be able to pay your bills to buy food you're not going to be going bankrupt or broke over repaying your student debt. There's a safety blanket there with the threshold of £27,000.

(12:15): Now for me I think this is a great system that works very well it makes university accessible to everyone but as you can see from the graph this does cause there to be a huge student debt problem within government budgeting. So if this system is sustainable I don't know I'm not sure I guess time will tell and we'll see how new policies come about and the changes they try to make to that but for now that is how uk student debt is repaid in 2024.

(12:49): So today then we've looked at the history of universities in the uk. We looked at how tuition prices have increased over the years and also how they are currently repaid. So I hope you learnt something new, thank you very much for watching until the end and I will hopefully see you in the next one.