Demolishing the graduate tax

Today's game for the blogosphere seems to be demolishing the graduate tax. Actual Journalists have done the heavy lifting of working out how much more the tax would cost each graduate, so here's a rag-bag of unintended consequences I thought I'd throw out there for shits and giggles

(1) no-one will complete a degree or technically "graduate", however graduating comes to be defined by HMRC. They will complete the requirements of the course right up to that point and then drop out before the exams, accepting that their first employer will apply a slight risk premium to their first salary and that everyone thereafter will accept that they de facto completed the course to an employable standard. Possibly genuine professional qualifications (lawyers, vets) would bear the tax, but it hardly seems likley for lawyers to take that fall practically alone

(2) since the tax is intended to recover the cost of higher education presumably I can simply study for a degree in America and come back afterwards to take up my first job untaxed. So our universities will only cater to people who cannot count, people who are terminally ill and the poor, since anyone who can afford the cheaper long-term option of paying the flat fee will do that instead. Alternatively the tax will fall on graduates of any university anywhere, in which case what cost is it recouping?

(3) non-UK graduates will be cheaper to employ as they will need a relatively lower salary than their UK counterparts to achieve the same earnings. (There is something wonderfully suicidal about a government willing to implement a policy that will make it harder for voters to compete with unenfranchised foreign nationals.) Alternatively the tax will fall on all graduates of any nationality making the UK simply a less attractive place for skilled mobile labour

(4) Unscrupulous universities in poorly-regulated or politically inpenetrable territories (say the former USSR, the Middle East or China) will charge a premium for degrees which they will be "selective" in admitting the candidate has achieved. Employers - sure. HMRC? No thanks.

(5) Since the UK government will be almost alone in administering the rules on the graduate tax scrupulously and fairly, no graduate will work for the government, unless the government pays a 5% premium.

Comments

[botogol]

I wonder if UK universities would helpfully issue non-graduation certificates, confirming that the individual in question completed the coursework and passed the exam, but failed to [what? sign the official graduation book] and therefore did not graduate.

[Seamus McCauley]

Botogol - I fear they would find public funding hard to secure if they so openly abetted tax avoidance!