UK competition law throws doubt over CI student fees
Tuesday 23rd August 2011, 2:58PM BST.
A new competition law in the UK could affect university fees for Jersey students
COMPETITION laws mean that Jersey’s special relationship with UK universities over tuition fees could be in jeopardy.
It follows a recent UK government ruling which means that universities would be breaking the law if they negotiated with Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man over fees as a group as they have in the past.
As a result, Jersey students hoping to go to university in September 2012 could be making applications without any idea of the costs involved.
Instead fees will have to be negotiated with each individual university and it is not yet clear what this will mean for courses starting next year and into the future.
It will not affect the fee levels for students starting courses next month, which have already been agreed.
Education director Mario Lundy said officers from the three Islands had already begun to talk with a number of universities to try to forge agreements to solve the problem.
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From next year it looks likely that tuition fees will be at least as high as fees charged to UK students, which at many universities will be £9k.
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“Solve”? what is there to solve? It is like the reciprocal health agreement, Jersey must pay ts way like everybody else. There is nothing special orunique about Jersey students. As far as the UK is concerned, they should be treate like foreign students. End of!!
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2. Scouser
A person from French Polynesia on the other side of the world is capable of studying in the UK for cheaper than someone from Jersey. People from the British Overseas Territories (Gibraltar, Cayman islands etc) go to university in the UK as if they were from the mainland.
Jersey people are British and European Citizens and are discriminated against on a rather flimsy basis. If Jersey kids shouldn’t get this benefit because our government doesn’t pay the UK government, why should French kids or British kids from other parts of the overseas territories?
As it happens, Jersey kids do to contribute to the UK. They pay tax whilst they are over there (VAT), many of them get jobs whilst they are there and a large percentage of them actually end up living in the UK afterwards (so the Jersey government pays grants to those kids even though they never come back to the island).
It’s not fair.
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Why do you continue to live in Jersey when it is quite clear that you would prefer to live in Liverpool.
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My comments are in response to 2@Scouser.
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Special relationship my a**. I was born in England and lived there until I was 5. Had I
Come from any EU country, having never stepped foot on British soil, I would have been charged British fees. Yet as I grew up here, my fees were about 6-7 times that of what they should have been. Absolute joke
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Jersey people are British and European Citizens –
only when it suits you lot
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Gibraltarians also have flights subsidised.
Not a complaint, just an observation. Particularly interesting as you can get from Gatwick to Gib on easyJet considerably cheaper than you can get to most UK airports from Jersey.
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Err! without being a pedant, I don’t think the French or the Polynesians have a housing system like Jersey and unlike Jersey people they (the French) are actually European. If you don’t like the way Jesey is treated, hop over the fence and see it from a different perspective. Live with it or deal with it!!!
Great beaches though!!
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Other countries make their own agreements with the UK based on UK students being allowed to go and study there. Also, you can’t say that the students contribute to UK tax by paying VAT, that’s ludicrous. By that reasoning all holiday makers to Jersey would have a right to use some of Jersey’ education system!
This argument gets so boring, you cannot have any rights to special treatment at UK universities unless you are either a UK taxpayer or your Government makes an agreement of some sort (which will no doubt mean your Government contributing some money or benefitting in kind). Either way money would have to go from the Jersey taxpayer to cover the cost since there is no ‘in kind’ in Jersey. Why on earth would you think there is something wrong with that?
The fact that your child MAY choose to remain in the UK is neither here nor there, if they choose to stay they will then contribute taxes towards the services they use while they are there, NOT towards the services they used while at University there. Your tax isn’t to pay for what you DID use it is for what you ARE using. What you should argue for, Sam, is that if Jersey taxpayers help fund students to go to the UK to get degrees then the students must return and contribute to Jersey with what they have learned.
Unviversity isn’t mandatory education and you (allegedly) earn far more over your lifetime if you have a degree, therefore that degree should be paid for by the person who undertakes it, one way or another. Why should people who take up a trade pay for others to go to university?
The world needs to get away from viewing degrees as being for everyone, all that is happening is that degrees are now being dumbed down just like school has been. Degrees aren’t for everyone, not everyone wants to move into a line of work that requires one. And if you make your parents pay for a degree that you then don’t bother using you should really pay back your parents!
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Radio 2 today said that people with degrees earn 85% more than colleagues who are educated to GSCE level.
Shut up or pay up, you will earn more with a degree therefore it costs more to get one.
Easy.
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11. One of our relations works for a big supermarket in the UK, he employs people on the checkouts who have degrees and student loans to pay, I would shouldn’t imagine they earn 85% more than their colleagues!
If you have a sensible degree – engineering, medicine etc I am sure you earn more – but if it’s media studies, surfing, etc I guess it’s the supermarket checkout for you.
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I agree that the Uk taxpayer shouldn’t subsidise CI students. However, the reason that CI fees are discounted is because our students are considerably cheaper for universities than other overseas students.
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