PAH. FOUR YEARS TO PAY OF £44K?! ARE YOU JOKING?!
Lmao, the average post-grad in the UK does NOT pay off £44k in four years. Hell, not even the upper-class people could pay that off in four years jesus christ! That is not how it works at all, I'm afraid, and I wish it did, otherwise I'd have been the first one racking up a ****-ton of debt to get an amazing job like that. I've spoken to people first hand paying back student loan, and people fresh out of university, and heard mainly the same thing: they can't get a job, and paying back the debt is very hard.
Like seriously, think about this. £44k debt repaid in four years? That's £11k per year. That's over half of the average post-grad's wage, IF they even get a job! Now trust me, I know the figures, because I researched them fully along with help from first-years at uni and family and friends, and they really are not that high any more. The number of people coming out of university and going into jobs is definitely NOT 61%. Less than half go into jobs after 6 months now.
Higher lifetime payout? I'm not sure where you got the information that this directly correlates with a uni degree, but that's kinda false, and would be a huge prejudice within the working world. Of course, if you want to move up to a different job within your unit that requires a degree, then yes, you won't be able to move up, but then that also applies to post-grads who also don't have said degree.
First of all, I'm not sure how you construed what I posted as meaning that grads pay off 44k in four literal years. What I said is that four years of 12k better pay every year goes into paying off debt, and the remaining x minus four years goes to, well, life. Also, I included links in my previous posts, so you know where I've been getting this information. Also, I find it difficult to take it at your word to just "trust you" on your research, because I've been citing my figures with links I've found this very day. So if it's definitely not 61%, find a source that corroborates with that. It's bad form to criticize someone else's sources just to say trust me when you're asked to provide your own.
You seem to think that having a degree anywhere means super jobs, super wages, no worries. I don't know about America, but I can tell you that in England, that is not the case. Getting a job in England is extremely competitive, and you have to be the best of the best at the moment to find a decent one. This involves experience, and having every extra qualification you can think of to show that you're not just some run-of-the-mill post-grad. The same applies here in Germany to a lesser extent. Here in Germany, a lot of focus is put onto apprenticeships, because the government realises that university just isn't getting students the future and jobs that apprenticeships can. A lot of students now take on apprenticeships here, because it's a much more rewarding scheme, that doesn't land you in debt that you can't pay off, and grants you entrance to the working world a lot more successfully than uni does.
I don't seem to think that at all. I'm telling you what I think the numbers tell me. You talk a lot of qualitative description, but do you have anything objective to back it up?
Germany doesn't emphasise university, because it realises that university is a dying cause, and more and more people are looking to apprenticeships, because they are more successful, and more rewarding to the apprentice.
Well, apprenticeship has been part of German culture ever since, well, the Middle Ages, so I'd definitely not attribute their continued emphasis of apprenticeship completely to anything recent. Apprenticeships have been successful in Germany for hundreds of years, and their system is just well-developed compared to other countries. That has been the case even before university became accessible to most people.
I'm also baffled at how the average student debt in the UK is so high when tuition in the United States is higher. From topuniversities.com: "For home students, institutions in England and Wales can charge up to a maximum of UK£9,000 (US$13,430) per year for undergraduate degree programs." It's nice to know there are caps on tuition in the UK, but anybody who's familiar with American private colleges will know that annual tuition runs several multiples of that number.