Everyone has a guilty pleasure, and my guilty pleasure is the daytime TV programme ‘Loose Women’. You may mock, but its good TV! On today’s episode, a topic of debate amongst the ladies was whether it was fair to ask students to pay for higher education. As soon as I heard this, my ears soon perked up. I thought it’d be interesting to see what the loose ladies made of this...
From what I can gather, only Lynda Bellingham had been to University, but Andrea McLean had been to a Polytechnic College to study and Jane McDonald had left school, gone into full-time work and funded herself through a night school college course. Carol McGiffin remained silent; presumably she never went to University or college. The ladies were all aware how expensive tuition fees are, and they seemed almost shocked that Universities could charge their own tuition fee rate, dependent on what the University itself wanted to charge. Lynda felt that by upping the tuition fees to an even more extortionate rate, that is only discouraging students to go to University as they won’t be able to afford it. Andrea said that we need more doctors, medics, lawyers, etc, but seeing as they are such academic courses and only certain Universities offer those courses, those Universities will charge as much as they like just because they know students will pay the amount they charge because they can’t go anywhere else to study. Carol highlighted the fact that if students do proceed to go to University if the fees increase then when they graduate, they will be coming out with £40,000 worth of debt, which gives no incentive to attend at all if that’s all they have to show for it.
As a University student myself, I’m 50:50 with the points the loose ladies made. It is true, that even now the University fees are expensive. I mean, it’s £3,225 for a year at the minute, and I’ve already applied to Student Finance for the year 2010/2011 and the yearly fee has increased to £3,290. I do agree with the point that was made about it discouraging potential students to attend University due to how much the fees are, but the Student Loans Company pays for your three year study at the University, and yes, you are left with debt, but nothing happens until you’re earning more than £15,000 a year and even then you just have it deducted from your wages. So it’s never really there, in a way. I do agree that if Universities are given the power to charge as much as they want for tuition fees then they will abuse this and charge silly amounts for certain courses, particularly the academic courses like medicine. But relating back to the original question posed, yes, I do think students should have to pay for higher education. At the end of the day, you don’t have to attend University; you choose to go off your own back. I mean, if you apply to University and pay nothing, but then decide to drop out mid-way through, and then money is being wasted on someone who doesn’t want to be there, but that money could have been used on someone who was desperate to attend University and better themselves in the future. If someone drops out of University too far on in the academic year, they’re charged the full yearly fee, which I think is fair. That said, if the Universities do get the power to charge their own tuition fees, and they are too expensive for students to afford, then I do think a contribution should be made on behalf of the University so that the fee is subsidised. I mean, if once a student graduates they’re left with a nice big debt worth £40,000 and come out with a rubbish degree, then yeah, all they have to show for it IS the £40,000 worth of debt, what do they have to show for the last three years?
Rant over. But I was just so shocked that Loose Women were having a debate over student’s tuition fees and I was so interested to hear their opinions, especially from four women who have such diverse education backgrounds. Like I said – Loose Women makes for great TV.
Oh, and one final thing. I was wrong about Andrea McLean not attending University; she attended a Polytechnic College – COVENTRY polytechnic college! Oh yes, I’m attending the same University that Andrea McLean attended, and look at where she is now!
