# FILE NAME: 00001799.soc
# TITLE: Should university education be free? [8b1250da5dbdeeea91c2b5de774ba2a6]
# DESCRIPTION: 
# DATA TYPE: soc
# MODIFICATION TYPE: original
# RELATES TO: 
# RELATED FILES: 
# PUBLICATION DATE: 2025-10-12
# MODIFICATION DATE: 2025-10-12
# NUMBER ALTERNATIVES: 4
# NUMBER VOTERS: 5
# NUMBER UNIQUE ORDERS: 3
# ALTERNATIVE NAME 1: Statement 1 - University education should not be free, but the costs should be made clear to students and the value of the degree should be clear to the employer.
# ALTERNATIVE NAME 2: Statement 2 - Free university education is too expensive
# ALTERNATIVE NAME 3: Statement 3 - University education should not be free. A degree is something that should be needed to get into the career you want and should at least have some weighting towards meaningfulness and be worthwhile in the long run as you end up with a high paying career that you couldn't otherwise have met. With no fees the universities wouldn't be able to sustain either the quality of education or the facilities that are available to students. The consensus opinion of the group was that university education should not be free, however, the group did agree that university education should be more accessible to people from all walks of life. The group felt that this could be achieved by providing more grants and bursaries to students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. The group felt that this would allow more people to access university education and also reduce the amount of debt that students are left with after graduating.
# ALTERNATIVE NAME 4: Statement 4 - “We believe that University education should be available to everyone and fees should be paid for by the government. To prevent the fees being a burden, we believe that the government should work to fund the costs, and to prevent it from affecting the students, the repayments should be based on the student's future earnings. This will ensure that the government will be able to recover the costs, but the students will not have to pay it all up front. Also, by removing the financial barriers of university education, we will have the best chance of having the brightest people realise their potential.”
2: 4,3,1,2
2: 3,4,1,2
1: 1,3,4,2