The way student loans are currently set up, that wouldn’t work.
I’m paying around £100 out of my pay packet to the Student Loans Company right now and the amount I owe increased by £2,000 last year. But this doesn’t impact me at all - the loan will be written off after 30 years and I have no intention of paying back “in full”
The only thing that costs me extra is earning more money.
I’m also not sure I’m keen on an idea that seems exceptionally American.
Is that the group you want to engage though? One of the stated aims (which I don’t disagree with) is to get people out of their bubbles and mixing with different people (Something we as an Organisation do very well). That invariably happens with those who go to Uni anyway.
One of the things I did read is that any such scheme would invariably have an education clause, so those going to university would ‘avoid’ it. Especially so as it’s not national service as we know it. The target audience seems to be those 18 year old collage leavers who then go and do nothing but sit at home.
Personally, I too am not against the idea of getting such people to do something. But doing it in a compulsory way is not the way forward. You need a mind set change. And/or a socioeconomic change to naturally encourage people not to sit at home doing nothing. As Baldrick said:
What we need are better options for those who don’t want to go to uni. Let’s pay apprentices properly for example. Encourage more vocational learning
I met several US reservists in Iraq who were there as part of their return of service, having been paid through college by the US Army. I’d argue this works better than our ‘training bounty’, which is paid for what you’ve already done and implies no future commitment.
The fact those men chose their service is what i’m getting at
There is a difference between choosing to serve and jumping before you are pushed.
Finland does have a good system, females have the option of national service too but not compulsory. They have however up until the age of 28 if justified to complete the training and must do a set number of days and refresher training up until the age of 30 where you would do further days of training on the reserve list until 50 or 60 depending on rank. The below URL gives the basics out but it does have a lot of variables.
To be fair, with Putin on the doorstep, I’d make sure I had a really good system too!
I’ve not really been following the political discussion - too much else to do - but it looks like we need to reevaluate both our defence spending and how we provide the personnel we might need if it all goes south.
Something along the Finnish lines could work, as both our regular and reserve forces are struggling to recruit.
One of the problems I saw raised is that we don’t even have enough accommodation to properly house our current armed forces, adding in 30,000 people to that mix would cost a fortune on top of the costs already touted for the scheme.
We’ve got some ex-RIAT tents going spare…
Another problem is that the armed forces only recruit 10,000 people every year currently, so to competitively select 30,000 18-year olds every year you’d need to triple the recruitment infrastructure and staff. Would that recruitment be spread over a year? More likely, it would be concentrated away from the exam season, so you’d need even more recruitment infrastructure and staff (4x, 5x, 6x?) but only for a few months.
There’s a lot of focus on the military aspect in terms of accommodation etc but that isn’t the policy as you have the civilian service aspect part of it.
This is the bit that changes it (slightly!) from a skeuomorph idea to one that is merely impractical.
If the policy statement had been amended to say that the conservatives/tories committed to “a royal commission to examine the practicalities of a national service scheme for the military & emergency services & implement those recommendations” then that would seem more tangible than the commitment as stated.
You could use it to boost across the board & it could help to reengage society but you would need to do it right & ensure the people doing it are neither acting as tick boxes or delivering it as a fast fail so it can be abandoned.
Our armed forces are struggling to turn applicants into recruits with the process taking too long & people being rejected for silly reasons. Examples I’ve personally come across
childhood epilepsy at age 3 with no recurrence after the age of 4 with no medication since that age. Rejected from all possible roles.
treatment for depression aged 9 after a parents death. To recurrence or medication in the last 15 years. Rejected from all possible roles.
Oh & this one Army backtracks on teen rejected over breast-cancer gene - BBC News
The recruitment process is bureaucratic & over rejecting for no pragmatic purpose, from the sound of it a “computer says no” mindset being run by the same people as 111 who think a headache requires immediate ambulance deployment.
Having everyone required to do a national service?
It would mean that the recruitment system would be forced to be reworked (meaning the contract with capita could be exited without affecting their share price).
Can someone in the know tell me what is meant by “gap year commision”.
Thanks.
It’s a commission you take in your gap year
But seriously, it was a shortened sandhurst course and an attachment to your cap badge of choice for 12 months, usually for 18 yos prior to going to uni. Was withdrawn a few years ago now
Rory Stewart and Simon Akam are two who took part.
Was previously called the Short Service Limited Commission.
Good scheme, very competitive.
It was replaced with an internship programme, that happens to read pretty much identically to what the gap year commission was.
https://jobs.army.mod.uk/regular-army/entry-options/officer/
Maybe not that good… Rory Stewart never served in the army after that, so not a great return on the taxpayer’s investment in him. If the SSLC scheme, like the UAS and indeed the Cadet Forces, was for ‘awareness raising’ of the fact we still have armed forces, it didn’t prevent those forces from being steadily degraded from Tier One to Tier Three status in the last three decades.
When I served between the 1980s and Noughties, I felt that both the Tory and Labour Governments we had post-Options for Change were malevolent forces who wanted to make the UK Armed Forces an endangered or even an extinct species. 
Indeed, to make any wild animal extinct, the best way is to deprive it of its habitat - food and shelter - which has been done to service people by introducing the truly awful Pay as you Dine programme into messes, and under-investing in service accomodation of all kinds.
