Author Archives: Craig Brown

Getting involved in the Association of Liberal Democrat Engineers and Scientists

By Craig Brown | 27th February 2012 - 1:24 pm

The Association of Liberal Democrat Engineers and Scientists (ALDES) organises a fringe event at each conference. Our fringe event this Spring is entitled ‘The UK Space Industry: An Unsung Success Story’ – a topic very close to my heart, as an engineer designing space missions out of an office in Hertfordshire. Yes, ladies and gents, the UK ‘does space’. And what a lot of people don’t realise is, we do it very, very well.

The UK space industry has bucked the national trend and has seen impressive growth during the recession. Areas such as satellite broadcast, communications, equipment and support services …

Posted in Conference | Tagged ALDES | 2 Comments

Opinion: The truth about the graduate contribution

By Craig Brown | 29th June 2011 - 2:23 pm

There is a real danger that many prospective students will be put off from going to university due to the confusion, half-truths and lies, often left unchallenged, relating to the new system of university funding and graduate contributions.

A bright light which breaks through the fog can be found over at MoneySavingExpert.com, where Martin Lewis pares things back to the bare facts. His Student Loans Guide 2012 makes the following key points:

Existing students stay on the old system of loans
Students don’t pay anything up front
Graduates will pay back £540 per year less than they do under the current system – graduates will have more money in their pocket each month
Graduates who earn less than £21,000 don’t pay back anything
Graduates will owe more and be in debt longer but this debt will not affect credit ratings
People shouldn’t think of the new system as a loan but as a graduate tax
The rules may be different for students in Scotland and Wales
Most people will never pay back all of this debt as the debt is wiped out after 30 years

A graduate tax: the very thing that the NUS has been calling for. It is a crying shame that the NUS has decided to be political over the new changes rather than do the right thing by the people it professes to represent.

I would be extremely disappointed if there is a single person put off going to university due to the spin put on the changes by the NUS. Let’s hope that as many prospective students as possible find their way to MoneySavingExpert.com where they can actually get some honest expert advice on what to expect when they take up their courses in 2012.

Editor’s note: You can also watch a video of Martin Lewis explaining student funding from 2012 on YouTube: