On School Fees

Despite the predictions of many, until now I haven’t felt that the new government in the UK was a total disaster. I didn’t vote for them, casting my ballot instead rather unenthusiastically for Gordan Brown, but I didn’t think it was a huge crisis that the Tories went on to form the (minority) government. Cameroon didn’t strike me as having the harsh evil streak of Thatcher, and as they were forced into a coalition with the libdems, I figured they wouldn’t be able to do too much damage that would hurt the country in the long term. But it seems I was wrong. Of course it was obvious times of austerity were on the way, and the first of the announced cuts I could stomach. Higher taxes have not yet been purposed, but if they were, I would be fine with that. I am not, however, at all happy about the plans to allow universities to charge any fees they like. Having quality state universities accessible to all is, along with the NHS, one of the best features about England (and I say England, not Britain, as these laws do not yet apply in Scotland, thankfully). The universities here are not free, but by coming in under the £4,000 mark, they are just about manageable for all. I know- I took out a bank loan to pay for my own studies in a prestigious UK university. Even as it was, I didn’t bother applying to Oxford or Cambridge (although I was encouraged too) because I knew that the £4,000 fees + the “collage fees” that those two universities are allowed to charge would simply add up to too much for my budget. By the time I approached graduation, I owed so much money that I was essentially unable to look for jobs in academia, which had been my chosen career path. I would not have been able to accept an academic job and still pay back the money I owed to the bank. And that was when fees (+charges) came to about £4,000 a year. If they had been higher, such as some of the ridiculous £12,000 per year figures being floated, I simply wouldn’t have bothered at all, certainly not with a PhD. The price would have just been too high to justify. As it is, I worked two jobs, seven days a week for over two years to help pull down my loans. My family helped as much as they could. I have a job that pays over double the national average wage. Even so, I cannot at the moment, approaching my mid-30s- imagine getting a mortgage, the deposits in the current market are just too restrictive. So if I find myself in this position, I cant imagine how a graduate finishing 3, 4 years in the future will feel. They will be burdened with even more debt than I ever thought possible, stuck with a no-doubt still tight job market, destined to spend years grasping at straws to rise above the miseries of student-style life in the UK. Unless, of course, they happen to come from nice wealthy families, like David Cameron’s or George Osborne’s, who can pay their ridiculously high fees, and help them with that first-time buyer deposit on their house. As it was, I was always acutely aware at UCL of being a bit less well off than my peers: my parents earned less than most of my classmates, and I had been to mediocre state schools, not refined public ones, or even comprehensives. Someone like myself finishing school today would feel no doubt like a total outcast, if they made it to a top university at all. More likely, they will not. the imaginative will go abroad to more hospitable places, like Holland, Canada or Australia, or they will accept a place beneath their capabilities in England, or they might just decide that the supposed benefits of university don’t justify the grotesque costs, and if they did choose that, I certainly would not be able to blame them.