University - Still on the Agenda?
So today was the day of the NUS protest against the rise in tuition fees. I started off the day wondering why the student body was marching whilst the prime minister was out of the country, but then remembered that of course one of the main targets was Nick Clegg and his pre-election promises of no increases to tuition fees. I remember hearing these promises during the election campaign and at the time laughing at them. There was no way that they would ever have stuck to that, it was just a way of reeling in student voters!
So the students were marching against the proposed rise of the maximum tuition fee rate to £9000 a year. Which is backed up by the statement that universities don’t have to choose to charge the whole amount. Well the same is said for the current system, yet when I applied to university only 1 university which I looked at wasn’t charging the full amount. Cuts to funding in all other areas of a universities existence are of course going to mean that they will charge as much as they can get away with just so that they can survive, particularly on courses which aren’t in areas generating large incomes through research.
This astronomical increase in fees is going to seriously limit the numbers of students going to university. Anyone who thinks otherwise is bonkers! Already the average amount of debt a student is in when they graduate has risen from ~£12,000 to ~£23,000. That’s a daunting figure to enter adult life with! If student loans continue to fund fees at the new rate then the average student will stumble into graduate life with a burden of ~£39,000 … to me that’s just plain ridiculous. No one is going to want to get themselves in that much debt are they? And if loans stop covering the fees then who will be able to afford to go? The rich and privileged and the people whose parents and grandparents will bankrupt themselves in order to ensure that their offspring can get a good education.
While all this is going on and affecting would be students and current students, the graduates of the UK are faced with the highest graduate unemployment rates in recent years. This begs the question of is it even worth going to uni? I could be in my dream job after 3 years on the job training, be in far less debt and probably have a better hands on skills base than I emerged from uni with. Yet university promises us a better job market when we graduate! Employers at the moment only seem to care about experience. So that limits my job market to the pubs and shops I worked in to pay my way through my degree. So did I waste 3 years and £24,000 just to end up in a dead-end, menial, uninteresting, irrelevant job? That seems pretty pointless and wasteful to me
I feel that I have got a bit rambley! … Basically what I’m saying is that to my mind the government is doing a pretty good job of destroying all reasons someone would have to go to university. It’s not going to secure them a better job at the end of it, they’ll end up in masses of debt, they won’t have enough money to survive on, let alone party on due to student loans not increasing with inflation and now fees are going to rise to a level no one is able to pay … is this really what they want to happen? … Aren’t there enough young people out there already who have fallen off the track because they can’t advance their life or career no matter how hard they try? … When will society lift the barriers that have been put up against young people? We’re not all chavs you know, and especially in the case of students … wearing a hoodie doesn’t mean that we will attack you!
