4 ms·

Ha, a generation of English students will thoroughly enjoy this. For a bit of context, he was the head of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK which gained a lo

by smcl 4y ago

Ha, a generation of English students will thoroughly enjoy this. For a bit of context, he was the head of the Liberal Democrat party in the UK which gained a lot of popularity among younger voters leading up to the 2010 UK General Election. This was in no small part due to a pledge they all made to not increase University tuition fees. They were fancied to do very well in that election - Clegg was young, spoke really well and outclassed everyone in pre-election debates[0]. However they didn't do quite as well as hoped - while they added about a million votes over the previous election, they ended up losing a few seats in total. However they ended up in a fairly powerful position, since neither of the two bigger parties - Labour and the Conservatives - had enough MPs to form a majority government. So whoever could form a coalition with Lib Dems could basically win. They chose to enter a coalition with the Conservatives who then proceeded to lifted the cap on tuition fees and basically every university in England and Wales promptly hiked their fees to the maximum allowed. In response they didn't do much other than wring their hands and offer meek apologies. The party was quite understandably crucified at the next election, losing 49 of their 57 seats and they've been the fourth party - behind the Conservatives, Labour, and the Scottish National Party[1] - ever since. [0] - This was a pretty low bar, though. For example one of the memorable parts of the first debate was that during his closing statement he namechecked the audience members (name, location and issue) who asked the candidates questions. The media liked this. Needless to say, all the candidates did the same in the second debate :D [1] - They do pull more votes overall than the SNP, but due to how the UK system works they don't get as many parliamentary seats. Understandably they pushed for a proportional representation voting system which would help ... but that failed.

mft_ 4y ago
> This was a pretty low bar, though. For example one of the memorable parts of the first debate was that during his closing statement he namechecked the audience members (name, location and issue) who asked the candidates questions. The media liked this. Needless to say, all the candidates did the same in the second debate :D It always shocked me that this was what the media jumped on, and seemed to matter most to people. Really shows how appallingly low the standard of political debate and reporting has become. (Personally, I'd be much happier with someone who didn't spend time on such obvious PR guff, and was a good and incorruptible administrator of a country.)
- smcl 4y ago
  Yeah it's weird. I don't actually remember TV debates being a big thing before that election, did we just start it for 2010?
  - housecarpenter 4y ago
    Yeah, televised election debates weren't a thing in the UK until 2010.
    - mnd999 4y ago
      I still don’t know why we have them. It seems to make elections even more about personalities and individuals than politics. It’s amazing how many people when presented with a list of policies will vote one way, but when presented with a list of names and parties will vote the other.
origin_path 4y ago
There's a bit more to the story than that. British universities were pushing hard for the raised tuition fees at the time, a legacy of Labour's drive to drastically increase the numbers of people going. They claimed that they were going broke and needed the possibility of charging more to decrease class sizes and scale up their operations. They also claimed that very few universities would actually raise prices to the new cap, that in most cases the new prices would be hardly different. The coalition, both Tories and Lib Dems, were completely suckered by this claim. They came to see raising the price cap as an unpleasant compromise, needed in order to ensure education remained high quality at the very highest end (russell group etc). What actually happened next showed that the claims of universities were a lie: every university immediately raised their prices to the max and faced with a tidal wave of new money, the academics that had been claiming they needed it to benefit students immediately went on "strike", except it was the sort of strike where they continued to turn up and do research (the fun bits), but refused to mark students exams. In other words they held students hostage at the start of their careers. I remember because I was there at the time. Because the university sector has pathetically weak management this tactic worked very well, and within months the "strike" was ended by the simple expedient of allocating nearly all the new money to wage increases for lecturers and other academic staff. The new money was swallowed whole by the existing system, the big promised expansion never happened. The ironic thing is that universities are heavily biased towards Labour/Lib Dem voting, with university towns being much more orange than typical, even though it was the Tories who gave them all massive pay rises and Clegg who notionally opposed it.
- smcl 4y ago
  > They also claimed that very few universities would actually raise prices to the new cap Yeah I remember this too - the commonly-held belief was that only the top Universities (Oxbridge, Durham, LSE and UCL, plus Edinburgh/St Andrews for English students) who would max it out, and that the rest might just allow themselves a little bit more to balance the books. Looking back it seems pretty obvious that it wouldn't go down like this - who wouldn't want to give themselves more money? I didn't recall all the details of the aftermath though (the strike + the capitulation) though, that was a pretty interesting turn. I guess it was after 2011 when I moved abroad.
- 4y ago
DrBazza 4y ago
> Ha, a generation of English students will thoroughly enjoy this. They might well do, but it was their parents that didn't stop them and say 'perhaps you ought to get a job, do an apprenticeship, or basically anything other than a BA in Madonna Studies and 70k in debt by the time you're 21'. This is another political legacy of Blair trying to get every kid through university and has resulted in pointless degrees and an increasing percentage of the population in debt. And can't afford to get on the house ladder.
- concordDance 4y ago
  That last bit is 90% due to the insane 10x increases in house prices over the last few decades.
  - lmm 4y ago
    Well, they're perfectly sane from the point of view of supply and demand. Boomers have pulled up the housing ladder behind them by blocking anything from being built.
- smcl 4y ago
  You're deliberately using frivolous, made-up degree to try to dismiss the point. No matter, let's pretend someone doesn't have a "BA in Madonna Studies" and they have a degree you might respect more, like a BEng in Civil Engineering. Do you think they should have 70k in student loan debt that (with the UK's famously awful salaries) they'll be paying for over a decade? Of course they shouldn't. Hell, even less well-off European countries like Czech Republic manage to offer tuition-free higher education under the age of 25 - I don't see why non-Scots UK students shouldn't at least have more affordable tuition. I'd also add that in the UK student loan debt is orthogonal to the problem of young people being unable to get onto the housing ladder. Remember that Scottish students do not incur the same level of student debt (on account of the government paying tuition) and they have similar troubles buying property. Salaries and house prices control this, student loans barely figure into it.
  - DrBazza 4y ago

by smcl 4y ago

mft_ 4y ago

> This was a pretty low bar, though. For example one of the memorable parts of the first debate was that during his closing statement he namechecked the audience members (name, location and issue) who asked the candidates questions. The media liked this. Needless to say, all the candidates did the same in the second debate :D It always shocked me that this was what the media jumped on, and seemed to matter most to people. Really shows how appallingly low the standard of political debate and reporting has become. (Personally, I'd be much happier with someone who didn't spend time on such obvious PR guff, and was a good and incorruptible administrator of a country.)

smcl 4y ago
Yeah it's weird. I don't actually remember TV debates being a big thing before that election, did we just start it for 2010?
- housecarpenter 4y ago
  Yeah, televised election debates weren't a thing in the UK until 2010.
  - mnd999 4y ago
    I still don’t know why we have them. It seems to make elections even more about personalities and individuals than politics. It’s amazing how many people when presented with a list of policies will vote one way, but when presented with a list of names and parties will vote the other.

origin_path 4y ago

There's a bit more to the story than that. British universities were pushing hard for the raised tuition fees at the time, a legacy of Labour's drive to drastically increase the numbers of people going. They claimed that they were going broke and needed the possibility of charging more to decrease class sizes and scale up their operations. They also claimed that very few universities would actually raise prices to the new cap, that in most cases the new prices would be hardly different. The coalition, both Tories and Lib Dems, were completely suckered by this claim. They came to see raising the price cap as an unpleasant compromise, needed in order to ensure education remained high quality at the very highest end (russell group etc). What actually happened next showed that the claims of universities were a lie: every university immediately raised their prices to the max and faced with a tidal wave of new money, the academics that had been claiming they needed it to benefit students immediately went on "strike", except it was the sort of strike where they continued to turn up and do research (the fun bits), but refused to mark students exams. In other words they held students hostage at the start of their careers. I remember because I was there at the time. Because the university sector has pathetically weak management this tactic worked very well, and within months the "strike" was ended by the simple expedient of allocating nearly all the new money to wage increases for lecturers and other academic staff. The new money was swallowed whole by the existing system, the big promised expansion never happened. The ironic thing is that universities are heavily biased towards Labour/Lib Dem voting, with university towns being much more orange than typical, even though it was the Tories who gave them all massive pay rises and Clegg who notionally opposed it.

smcl 4y ago
> They also claimed that very few universities would actually raise prices to the new cap Yeah I remember this too - the commonly-held belief was that only the top Universities (Oxbridge, Durham, LSE and UCL, plus Edinburgh/St Andrews for English students) who would max it out, and that the rest might just allow themselves a little bit more to balance the books. Looking back it seems pretty obvious that it wouldn't go down like this - who wouldn't want to give themselves more money? I didn't recall all the details of the aftermath though (the strike + the capitulation) though, that was a pretty interesting turn. I guess it was after 2011 when I moved abroad.
4y ago

DrBazza 4y ago

> Ha, a generation of English students will thoroughly enjoy this. They might well do, but it was their parents that didn't stop them and say 'perhaps you ought to get a job, do an apprenticeship, or basically anything other than a BA in Madonna Studies and 70k in debt by the time you're 21'. This is another political legacy of Blair trying to get every kid through university and has resulted in pointless degrees and an increasing percentage of the population in debt. And can't afford to get on the house ladder.

concordDance 4y ago
That last bit is 90% due to the insane 10x increases in house prices over the last few decades.
- lmm 4y ago
  Well, they're perfectly sane from the point of view of supply and demand. Boomers have pulled up the housing ladder behind them by blocking anything from being built.
smcl 4y ago
You're deliberately using frivolous, made-up degree to try to dismiss the point. No matter, let's pretend someone doesn't have a "BA in Madonna Studies" and they have a degree you might respect more, like a BEng in Civil Engineering. Do you think they should have 70k in student loan debt that (with the UK's famously awful salaries) they'll be paying for over a decade? Of course they shouldn't. Hell, even less well-off European countries like Czech Republic manage to offer tuition-free higher education under the age of 25 - I don't see why non-Scots UK students shouldn't at least have more affordable tuition. I'd also add that in the UK student loan debt is orthogonal to the problem of young people being unable to get onto the housing ladder. Remember that Scottish students do not incur the same level of student debt (on account of the government paying tuition) and they have similar troubles buying property. Salaries and house prices control this, student loans barely figure into it.
- DrBazza 4y ago