We are a group of year 10 students at Acland Burghley school doing GCSE Citizenship& This is our petition to abolish or lower tuition fees.
Right now in the UK, to go to university is £9000 and that’s just for the Lessons. Altogether, at the end of university you have to pay back over £27,000 and that is not including all the grants you have received. The reason we are doing this is because paying £9000 a year for lessons is totally absurd. The Government has recently estimated that almost 45% of student loans taken out will never be repaid. This is getting very close to 48.6% where the Government has said they will start losing more money than they gain. You only start paying back your loans when you earn over £21,000 a year and if you don’t earn that much after 30 years, the loan is forgotten. A reporter has said “We are concerned that the Government is rapidly approaching a tipping point for the financial viability of the student loans system.” Most people don’t end up fully paying back their loan until after they are 50.
There is a massive lack in Meritocracy at the moment due to the rising of the tuition fees. Middle class students do not want to go to university because they do not want to be in a lot of debt. This is extremely bad because now people are do not have an equal chance of opportunity.
I’d like to change this so more people can go to university and have a higher chance at getting somewhere with their lives. The amount of money that the Government is spending on this is ridiculous. It’s reducing the money they spend, which could be spent on other things, and possibly stopping them having more University Graduates to do jobs. Everybody wants the ‘now’ generation to get far with their lives, and achieve great thing, but how do they expect us to do that when doing well is now associated with a high amount of money? A high percentage of family’s in the UK are or previously have received benefits so money is a thing that they are very worried about. The amount of lower class students going to university has drastically decreased. Personally, I think that it is sad that soon, only people who came from money get to go to university and achieve great things.
