England's New Scheme for Funding Higher Education through Student Fees: ‘Fair and Progressive’?

From September 2012 most home undergraduates at English universities are being charged fees of £9,000 per annum. These are funded by a government loan, which attracts interest from the moment they start their course; after three years their accumulated debt exceeds £30,000. They can also borrow to cover their living costs, on the same terms, so that those studying in London can graduate with a debt of more than £50,000—although those from low‐income families can obtain grants and universities are encouraged to provide bursaries and other support to students from underrepresented groups. Graduates start repaying their debts once their annual income exceeds £21,000—at a rate of 9% of the difference between their income and that figure: until the debt is fully repaid it continues to attract interest, by as much as three percentage points above the current inflation rate. Using data from a calculator on a government website, this paper shows that the highest‐paid graduates pay back less than those on middle incomes: the ‘squeezed middle’ pays back more not only than those on low incomes but also the better‐paid and those whose incomes increase more rapidly. This has differential effects according to occupation—and sex; and middle‐income groups also contribute more to the costs of widening participation programmes, which all universities charging more than £6,000 per annum are required to fund.     

Bidirectional Associations Between Sibling Relationships and Parental Support During Adolescence

Sibling relationships and parental support are important for adolescents’ development and well-being, yet both are likely to change during adolescence. Since adolescents participate in both the sibling relationship and the parent–child relationship, we can expect sibling relationships and parental support to be associated with each other. Theoretically, it can be expected that there is either a spillover from one relationship to another (congruence hypothesis) or that one relationship can compensate for the other (compensation hypothesis). However, research examining these associations in adolescence is limited. The present study longitudinally investigated the bidirectional associations between sibling relationships and parental support during adolescence. For five consecutive years, data were collected using self-reports of 428 families, consisting of a father, a mother, and two adolescent siblings. The mean ages of the first-born (52.8% males) and second-born (47.7% males) were 15 and 13 years at T1, respectively. For the second-born siblings, prospective associations were found between sibling relationships and adolescent-reported parental support in early adolescence, with no differences between same-sex and mixed-sex dyads. These associations were not found for first-born siblings or for parents’ reports of support. The findings suggest a spillover from the sibling relationship to adolescent-reported parental support only in early adolescence. Findings and implications are discussed in terms of the congruence/spillover and the compensation hypothesis.     

A search for obligatory paternal alleles in a DNA database to find an alleged rapist in a fatherless paternity case

Abstract: A sexual assault case resulted in a pregnancy, which was subsequently aborted. The alleged father of the fetus was unknown. Maternal and fetal types were obtained using the 11‐locus AmpF?STR^® SGM Plus^® kit. The national DNA database was searched for the paternal obligatory alleles and detected two suspects who could not be excluded as father of the male fetus. Additional typing using the AmpF?STR^® Minifiler^? kit, containing three additional autosomal loci, was not sufficient to exclude either suspect. Subsequent typing using the PowerPlex^® 16, containing four additional loci, and Y‐Filer^? kits resulted in excluding one suspect. Searching a database for paternal obligatory alleles can be fruitful, but is fraught with possible false positive results so that finding a match must be taken as only preliminary evidence.