In the last century there has been major changes to higher education. “Going to university, an experience confined to less than 2% of 18-year olds before the Second World War, is now almost a rite of passage for a third of young people in the UK. The present government aims to see half of all 18-30 year olds experiencing some form of higher education.”(Anon, 2015) As early as 1939 there was only 39 universities in Britain and a small number of 50,000 students attended. This was because universities were an elite, high class and cost institute. As of today the number of institutions stands at 168 and the number of student’s participants rose to over 1 million for the first time. Some of the major social changes to higher education were because
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This was a result of realising taxed money was just not enough for funding universities. Even after this flat-rate fee money was still short, Tony Blair proposed top up fees. Top up fees meant different universities could charge top up tuition fees in accordance to the level of funding needed for different courses. This proposal caused uproar and even protests and lead to Labour party making a new manifesto in 2001 going against the idea. Despite this many big changes were made to higher education in 2004. The Higher Education Act meant that tuition fees were to be replaced by loans paid back on an income based term. Only once a student started earning over the bracket of 15,000 could the loan start to be paid back. The more the students earned, the larger amount was to be paid back monthly. Fees differed to each university and each course. This meant unis could charge between 1,000 to 3,000. To ensure equal opportunities for poorer students more grants were on offer from the government and bursaries’ from the universities themselves. Labour argued that this system was needed to keep Britain’s universities up and running however this system would leave students in large amounts of debt causing stress that could affect their grades and even put them off university all
This was a result of realising taxed money was just not enough for funding universities. Even after this flat-rate fee money was still short, Tony Blair proposed top up fees. Top up fees meant different universities could charge top up tuition fees in accordance to the level of funding needed for different courses. This proposal caused uproar and even protests and lead to Labour party making a new manifesto in 2001 going against the idea. Despite this many big changes were made to higher education in 2004. The Higher Education Act meant that tuition fees were to be replaced by loans paid back on an income based term. Only once a student started earning over the bracket of 15,000 could the loan start to be paid back. The more the students earned, the larger amount was to be paid back monthly. Fees differed to each university and each course. This meant unis could charge between 1,000 to 3,000. To ensure equal opportunities for poorer students more grants were on offer from the government and bursaries’ from the universities themselves. Labour argued that this system was needed to keep Britain’s universities up and running however this system would leave students in large amounts of debt causing stress that could affect their grades and even put them off university all