The joys of Philanthropy

[Raithe]

And thus, philanthropy is alive and well in the modern day...

 

BBC News - Oxford University record donation cuts fees for poorest

 

Oxford University will use a record donation to abolish the tuition fee increase for its poorest students - keeping fees at

[Gfted1]

It only cost 9k pounds / year to go to Oxford (for the non-poor)?

[Raithe]

If you get through all the qualifying examinations and wotnot. That and the assortment of testing and usual "sell yourself to the univeristy" thing you have to do...

 

Edit: But that's just tuition fees note. That's not covering living expenses, books/study materials, the cost of booze and wild parties.. and all that jazz..

Edited July 11, 2012 by Raithe

[Gfted1]

That seems really inexpensive for such a prestigious university, for example Harvard costs $38,500 per year for a full time student.

 

I was under the impression that "uni" was free for you guys. Thats obviously not the case but does the government pay a portion and thats why the tuition is so cheap? Are less presigious universities free?

[Raithe]

Okay, its changed in the last few years.

 

What it used to be was that you got a "Student Grant" from the government that covered basic tuition if your family earned under x amount. As the amount of money your family made went up, the amount the Student Grant covered went down.

 

What the government has also set up, is a system of "Student Loans" which you can take out that cover the cost of tuition as well each year, have a ridiculously small interest rate, and you only have to pay back when you earn over x amount per year. If you hit 45 without ever getting an income over that amount, the debt is wiped.

 

A few years back, they scrapped the student grants and basically shifted everything to the Student Loans side of the market.

I knew folks who would take out the loans, stick them in high interest accounts and plan to not touch them for the years they were at uni, pay them back and keep the interest.

Of course, by the end of 3 or 4 years, the number that actually didn't touch that money was quite a bit smaller then those who planned not to touch it ..

 

Of course, if you switch degree courses, or have to retake a year, that's not actually covered in the money you get access to, so that's purely from your own pocket from the get go..

[Tigranes]

In New Zealand, we have a similar system of loans, except some great idiot decided it'd be nice to abolish the interest rates as an election promise. So now you have thousands of idiots that get nothing out of university except several tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money they won't bother to pay back except at the minimum legally required rate of like three cents a week.

 

Anyway, seems nice, and of course that's very similar to how most other students that get funding support get it, one way or another.

[Pidesco]

That seems really inexpensive for such a prestigious university, for example Harvard costs $38,500 per year for a full time student.

 

I was under the impression that "uni" was free for you guys. Thats obviously not the case but does the government pay a portion and thats why the tuition is so cheap? Are less presigious universities free?

 

American (and Canadian) university tuitions seem fairly ludicrous to Europeans, right up there with American health care costs.

 

Here in Portugal, a public University sets you back 1000

[Gorgon]

It only works as long as these educations are marketable. For the top 10 maybe they still are, but people who have to pay their own way might choose another school. So you wind up with schools full of people with rich parents rather than talented individuals and eventually they erode their own brand. It's been a suggested consequence of the economic crisis anyway.