Granted, I didn't go. I have three very good reasons why. The first is that I forgot to sign up with the SU (and that's a perfectly legitimate reason). Next time something big comes by, I'll remember to make a note of it - one that's not lost in the middle of a notebook dedicated to shorthand. Second, and I'll be honest for a second, there's no chance in hell that I would've gotten up at 8 AM to get on the coaches when I'm barely making it to 10 AM lectures (if I make them at all). And lastly, because I'm a very shoddy advertiser. Those of you asking "You were advertising something?", you've proven my point entirely. For the record, it's the WINOL radio interview with Martin Tod, the Lib Dem candidate for Winchester, that I should be shouting loudly in everyone's faces about. It's tomorrow! At 4 PM! On WINOL! So do check it out, lest I be murdered in my sleep for doing a poor job (probability of this happening: 10%; I expect I'll be awake at the time).
For those of you who don't know what's been going on today - what rock have you been living under? The coalition government has plans to raise tuition fees up to a maximum of £9000. To put that into perspective, a three year course comes up to £9870 under the current amount we pay. So if Browne's fees would come to effect, students would be paying just under 9 years worth of current fees for the average three year course. "But," some of you will say, "who cares? I'm already in uni, it won't effect me." It's a sentiment I've heard repeated since Browne's review was announced, and that sort of blind, self-centered thinking is really of no help. It's not just about you or me, it's about the future.
Clegg's said on today's Prime Minister's Questions that this will actually benefit students, as those from poor backgrounds will be able to get into uni paying less than they currently do today. This may be well and true, but there is one thing they're not thinking about: what £9000 looks like to the teenager who will likely never had to deal with that much money. It sucks to pay for uni, but £3290 is a swalloable number. £10,000 over three years is a swalloable number. £9000 for a year? That's a mind-blowing figure to the kid who's never had more than a couple hundred pounds in their bank, if even that. It's a very off-putting amount, and that's an initial reaction that in my opinion could be very dangerous to the future. Well before any higher education advisor could reach the student and convince them uni is more affordable than it appears, they will have been mentally defeated by that monstrous amount and be looking at alternative options.
Perhaps to some extent it's a good thing - it could mean potential students would focus more on courses that would set them up for something in life than ones whose use aren't readily apparent, and perhaps it would also mean alternative options like apprenticeships would become more viable. I know back in my college, we were beaten over the head by our teachers with this rhetoric that if we don't get into uni, we will get absolutely nowhere in life. They'd tell us we'd be forced out into the streets, naked to British rain, begging outside malls. We would ask passerbys not for pennies, no, but for the charitable souls to grant us a cent or a rupee, for so uneducated would we be that we wouldn't even know what currency is used in our own country. They told us, should we not go to university and have our minds educated, we would eventually find ourselves in housing estates living off benefits with ten children - not all of them ours - and we'd be abusive to our wife-and/or-husband. We would drink ourselves into a devil's rage and come home carrying a segment a plywood flooring we viciously ripped out of the local Co-Operative on our way home, which we would then use to beat our weeping spouse in the kitchen with. When not reading the Daily Mail, we would make a hobby out of screaming at them bloody foreigners.
Er, where was I? Oh yes, the potential good of the rising tuition fees. Still, it remains that people, especially of poorer backgrounds, would find it discouraging to go to university, and those lucky enough to have parents that could foot the £27,000 bill would come out at a very significant advantage.
I keep hearing the politicians say they aim to be like the American universities that charge extortionate fees, and I have to ask, why on earth would you want that? Americans come out with over $50,000 (approx £30,000) of debt from their higher education and spend the rest of their lives paying these fees back. Who on Earth would willingly want to live like that? I really don't think the USA, where everything is for profit and social care is actively shunned by a large portion of the voting population, as the loud-mouthed Tea Party has exhibited, is a good model to follow. Surely there's a better model to look to than gun-toting USA, where the people are slaves to debt and mega-corporations (The Corporation and Food, Inc are enlightening documentaries) and the 'American Dream' of prosperity is unattainable for the vast majority of the public. Let's not forget that there is a vehemently anti-intellectual movement that the Tea Party (a driving force behind the Republican victory) characterises. One of their candidates, Christine O'Donnell, isn't even aware that the seperation of church and state is written in the American constitution.
And these are the people we look to? Why isn't the government looking towards Switzerland or the Scandinavian countries, where higher education is free and the gap between the rich and poor is very low?
This issue's really riled me up recently and I just had to let some steam out. It's not the only issue of the spending cuts I've got a problem with, but I've gone on long enough so I'll just link you to Science Is Vital instead, where they can far more eloquently describe why the £1 billion cuts in science funding is an incredibly bad idea of the government's.
good, strong, well-argued political opinions.
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