Born into a bankrupt system
02 April 2011
The education fees row has again reared its ugly elitist head and threatens to undermine the value of some degree courses.
About ten years ago, I was sitting on a grassy bank in Falmouth, Cornwall, content that I’d found the university where I wanted to study.
I also knew that the burden of a loan would hang over me like a dark cloud for more than a decade, but yet, the opportunities that were just over the horizon outshone the doomsayers’ warnings, and I embarked on a three-year course.
Despite having barely made an impact on my student loan repayments after all these years, I can at least think myself lucky that I wasn’t born some ten years later.
Coventry University has hit the headlines after it announced that tuition fees for some of its engineering degree courses are set to rise to the maximum permissible £9,000 a year.
This means that Coventry will be charging as much for its courses as some of the country’s top universities; including Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College, London.
But surely this is to be expected. England’s top institutions can charge top prices because when it comes right down to it, universities now have to behave like businesses. Any shrewd businessman would do the same, knowing that ingrained in most of us is the belief that if you pay more for something it must be better than the cheaper alternative. The other side of the coin is that pricing some courses at levels above other courses rather devalues the cheaper options, even if they are perfectly respectable and desirable courses of study.
In a speech given by Prime Minister David Cameron at the CentreForum Think Tank on 8 December 2010, he said:
“Today I want to talk about the future of universities in this country. We’ve seen the protests. We’ve seen the marches. We’ve seen how passionate many of our students are about this issue. Well let me tell you this. I am just as passionate. Just as passionate that young people should have the chance to go to university, whatever their background or family income. Just as passionate that they should be able to leave university without an unfair burden of debt. Just as passionate that our universities should be among the best in the world. The debate going on today is about the best way of achieving these things. But if I’m honest, the passion in this debate is drowning out some of the truth. So I want to explain the real truth about what’s going on, why we need change and why the change we are proposing is the best option we’ve got. Let’s start with why we need change. Put simply, we just can’t stick with the status quo. The university system we’ve got today is unsustainable, uncompetitive and unfair. It’s unsustainable because in the last fifty years we’ve seen a massive increase in the number of young people going to university. And yet the current model of higher education funding is simply not providing enough money to support this growing number of students. In fact, the Browne Review shows the public funding per student is now lower in real terms than it was 20 years ago. We have to address this. So what do we do? Do we radically reduce the number of student places and deny many of young people the chance to go to university? No. We want more people to have the chance to go to university; not less. So we have to find a new way of funding higher education in this country. It would be nice if we could do it just by increasing government spending. But we can’t. Even at a time of economic growth, government spending alone could never be a sustainable way of funding the growth in student numbers. And right now, it’s not just unsustainable in the long-term, but frankly unaffordable in the short-term too. I’m not going to patronise you by pretending there are pots of money we can delve into. There aren’t. We’re in deep debt. And if you want to know how serious that can be, just look at what’s been happening to some of our European neighbours, not least of course in Ireland. So if we can’t increase spending should we hike up taxes? That would mean asking people on low incomes, many of whom are struggling at this time, to subsidise higher education more than they do already. I say that’s just not acceptable. We shouldn’t ask those on low incomes to pay taxes to prop up an unaffordable university funding system that they themselves do not benefit from directly. In fact, over the course of a lifetime, a graduate earns on average over £100,000 more than someone who doesn’t go to university. Isn’t it right that those graduates’ contributions to the system should reflect the advantages they have enjoyed? We have no choice: we need change, we need to put the funding of our universities on a sustainable footing – and it’s right that when it comes to doing this, successful graduates pay their share."
It was on purpose that earlier I mentioned ‘England’ because it’s a different story in Scotland and Ireland. In these countries, and don’t forget that Ireland is directly referred to by the Prime Minister, English students can study for a fee that is significantly reduced from the proposed fee rises they would endure when studying in England.
A quick search on the UCAS (Universities and Colleges Admissions Service) reveals that if I were to enrol on an Electronic Engineering degree course at Coventry University for the academic year 2011/2012, I could expect to pay £3375 in tuition fees.
But if I were only 17 and was thinking of going to university in September 2012, I could fully expect a bill for £9,000. That’s a 167% rise but you’re getting exactly the same product. Coventry University defends this by saying that those students paying extra for their education will receive additional study materials, but £5,625 can buy a veritable library of books and manuals.
There’s no escaping the fact that £9,000 is a huge amount of money to fork out every year. It’s enough to buy a brand new car. There’s a wealth of options out there, but I just had a quick look and found that the Fiat 500 starts at £8,100. Imagine buying one of those from the garage in September, and then giving it away a year later and buying another brand new one.
Put it this way. On my way home tonight I’ll pop into a supermarket to pick up a loaf of bread. It usually costs about £1.15. And then I find that the price goes up and it now costs £3.07. It’s an identical loaf to the ones I bought last year, and yet now this everyday thing that’s taken for granted is more costly.
In those circumstances, I’d probably go home, dust off the bread maker, and start making my own, basking in the opportunity to become inventive and devise my own recipes.
And that’s what the government wants our young people to do. It wants them to ‘use their loaf’ if you’ll excuse the phrase, and become entrepreneurs.
The Prime Minister has just helped to launch a new initiative called StartUp Britain; a response from the private sector to the Government’s call for an “enterprise-led” recovery.
The PM said: “If you’ve been turning over a good idea for years now is the time to make something of it. If you’re working for a big firm but know you could do a better job on your own now is the time to make the leap. If you’re dreaming about starting up the next great British brand – now is the time to make it happen.”
Excuse me whilst I put on Rule Brittania in the background and wave the Union Jack flag.
The thing is, how are ideas ever going to get off the ground without funding? If future entrepreneurs are to invest their own money into a project after university, there’s the small matter of them being nearly £30,000 in debt.
But back to the PM.
“There are thousands of people out there who are entrepreneurs but they just don’t know it yet. There are millions of success stories that haven’t been written yet. So seize this moment. Take these opportunities. Make it happen and together we can drive our economy forward.”
Stirring stuff, but does it instil the ‘carpe diem’ mantra in all of us?
StartUp Britain aims to be a champion for the UK’s 270,000 businesses that start up every year aiming to help drive growth by accelerating, inspiring and celebrating Britain’s start-up talent. It is fully supported by the Coalition Government and has so far gathered the backing of brands including Barclays, BlackBerry, Experian, Intel, Microsoft, McKinsey & Co. and Virgin Media.
However, this opens up another debate. What is the currency of a degree? Does it really carry much kudos? Isn’t there a greater value in practical skills and nous?
As an employer looking to recruit an electronics engineer, would you take on applicant ‘A’, a 21 year-old that has been working in the industry for five years, or applicant ‘B’; a 21 year-old that is fresh out of university and has no experience in the field?
What price do you put on a degree? An industry-wide preference for experience over academic skills could render the whole tuition fees debate superfluous. Please let me know your thoughts by sending an email to: paul.wolfe@imlgroup.co.uk.
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