When I was a young nipper, students rioted over common public concerns like the Vietnam War or here in the UK, the Poll Tax. Yesterday, the student demonstrations over the imposition of higher student fees in universities turned into a riot. The students marched past Conservative Central Office headquarters in the Millbank Building, and some took it upon themselves to storm the building, break down windows and doors, swarm to the roof, and hurl at least one fire extinguisher off the roof, narrowly missing several people on the ground.
Now there is a long tradition here of students getting a university education for free. This ended several years ago with the imposition of tuition fees (covered by student loans) by the Labour Government. These fees are now expected to rise to £9,000 / year (around US$13,500) in the next four years, with the student loans expanded to cover them. The repayment of the loans will be gradual, over 30 years or so, and repayment will not kick in until the graduate is in work earning more than £21,000 a year (around US$30K or so). If the graduate loses his or her job, the loan repayments cease. After 30 years, any further balance will be written off. (Note for USans: most university education courses last only 3 years here, not 4. Thus, the total debt for tuition would be around US$41,000. Further, this only applies to English students. Those from other countries of the UK will not pay this much, if anything at all.)
Those of you who have been in higher education in the US recently will laugh at this. For some of you, the total debt of the English student over three years will be your debt for just one year of your four-year degree.
Now it would be lovely if we could afford to send 50% of English teenagers to university for free. We cannot. The numbers of students, combined with the national deficit, means that continuing to fund everyone’s university education is impossible under current conditions. One would think that businesses and the rich would be happy to suffer higher taxes for this purpose. One would be wrong. The rich and business would flee to lower-tax jurisdictions in an instant. Globalisation, which has involved removing many barriers to international business, has had the corollary effect of maximising the opportunities for businesses and the rich to move around to a place where their tax expenditures are minimal.
I am also of the opinion that getting something (a university degree) for nothing is not a good way to start one’s career. When I started at Columbia Univ. in 1970, tuition was $2,500 a year. It’s now more than $40,000. I had $1,600 of scholarships, and $500 in a loan from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. This left my parents to fund $400 a year. I was left with a debt of $2,000 when I graduated. It was paid off by around 1980 or 1981 at $50 per month or so. If we accept that one 1970 dollar is worth 16 2010 dollars, that would have been US$32,000 in today’s money. Yes, it’s quite a lot. However, graduates tend to get better jobs and keep them longer. So repayment of the debt is easier for them.
The students should be cracking the books and not rioting. Demonstrations are natural: who wouldn’t be annoyed at the withdrawal of a state benefit that would hit him or her in the wallet? When these students end up being taxpayers, I expect that they will not demonstrate against higher taxes to pay for education, especially if those taxes hit them hardest.
Universities here (which have been slackers at hitting up their alumni/ae for cash, as the government has always provided most of their funding) need to get better at fundraising from grateful alumni/ae, and start building up cash funds out of which to fund scholarships for those who are most deprived among their students. They need to find students from poor backgrounds who can benefit from a university education, and fund them through their degree courses.
The government needs to ensure that the students do not suffer during their time at university, but needs to ensure that they have good jobs to go to, and that future students do not expect a free education, but appreciate that the goodness of education is made clearer through ensuring that they themselves help to fund it.
I blame Tony Blair 🙂 OK, that’s too easy.
Another topic: I’m flabbergasted at how many American college students enter university with the major of “Undeclared”. They have no idea why they’re there, but they must have a college degree!
Kids, if you don’t know what you’re doing or what you’re seeking… you’re just sucking up oxygen in that undeclared major. Make a decision, or alternatively learn a trade while you figure out what skills and education you want. Go learn to be a plumber or an electrician or something practical… at least that shows you have some motivation, rather than just floating on after high school.
As an American (originally), and as a product of that system, I would counter that I am flabbergasted that a 19 year old English boy or girl is expected to know exactly what s/he wants to do with his or her life. University is an opportunity to leave home, spread your wings and fly a little bit. American education is a generalist one up until university. When you enter university, you are expected to have an anticipated major and follow that course of study for two years, at which time you must actually declare that major. During the two year period, you learn enough about your anticipated major subject to decide whether you wish to gain your degree in it.
I suppose that some of the fixation here on getting a major subject locked in so early has to do with the history of the United Kingdom, where for centuries people were mostly fixed into the same educational and social strata that their parents were fixed in. So if you were a peasant, you mostly stayed a peasant. In the 19th century people began to break out of that mould, and ability and luck began to count as much as who your parents were (although the upper classes would still sneer at the industrialist who made good and got a peerage or a K).
At Columbia, it is required now as it was when I attended and, indeed, since the early part of the 20th century, that every student should get a good general background in history, culture, literature, art, and music. There are two course tracks, Contemporary Civilization, and Humanities. You are required to take two terms of CC and 4 of Hum. These give you a grounding in world civilisation in terms of history, literature, economics, philosophy, and various other disciplines. One term of Art Humanities gives you a background in Art History, and one term of Music Humanities gives the student some idea of how music fits into the general history of culture down the centuries. Not every university does this, but it’s one of the reasons why something like 20,000 boys and girls applied to Columbia last year, and only around 8% were admitted. The Engineering students are required to take these courses as well—meaning that the engineers-to-be have at least some nodding acquaintance with the culture into which they will be putting their construction projects. The Humanities students are required to take one year of actual science courses, rather than the two years of “Poets’ Science” that used to be required up to 1970.
Also remember that a US university education is 4 years to a BA/BS degree, rather than 3 as it is here.
The Americanization of education strikes me as a spectacularly bad idea. I have seen what mortgage it puts on students. You think it will stop at £9K a year? That the payback terms are fixed forever? No way, once that is through the cap will be lifted and in a few years unis will get to be just like the US.
Furthermore, this raising fees goes hand in hand with killing the block grant to universities, basically making them dependent only on tuition fees, strongly commercializing education as a product. It will kill less popular and artistic studies that do not have that return in the marketplace on money invested by the student, thus destroying that knowledge.
See my new post for a response to your comment,; it was too long for a LJ comment, sadly.
The students should be cracking the books and not rioting
I believe the conventional wording for that is: “Hey! You kids get off my lawn!