Thirty years ago I left school at 16. I would have given anything to go to university and further my education but, like many working-class kids, I needed to bring money into the house.
That and the fact that, with three O levels, I probably wasn’t bright enough.
Many of my friends have found success professionally despite doing the same as I did. Some work in the City. Some edit newspapers or magazines. And they got there without the benefit of a university education.
For in those days only the elite got to university. Not the elite in the form of the middle and upper classes, but the elite in terms of intelligence. The really bright ones. The people who could quite easily see a career as a doctor or a scientist ahead of them.
The problem these days is that the Government has lost sight of what they really should be trying to achieve.
The aim should be to offer every child, from whatever background, access to a top-quality education to determine – and this is the crux – whether they are bright enough to warrant a place at university.
Instead, university places have been belittled by opening them up to people who, quite simply, shouldn’t be there. People whose academic achievement in my day would have been a slightly dodgy looking ashtray made in metalwork – or resistant materials as I believe it’s called nowadays.
Now, they saddle themselves with debt in order to study a subject which previously was the preserve of the specialist round in Mastermind – Graffiti during the French Renaissance or some such – only to end up doing the same job they would have found themselves in if they’d worked their way up from the IT equivalent of the shop-floor.
If we really are concerned about tuition fees and the debts incurred by students, let’s make university places a privilege not a right.
There are colleges out there where you can study things like the ‘Philosophical Use of the Internal Combustion Engine 1930-1934’ and you probably don’t have to leave home to study it.
More and more I’m becoming convinced that going to university is, for many, just a jolly and a chance to live a riotous lifestyle among like-minded hedonists.
Instead it should be the first step to being an asset to the country and the community – that way we won’t have to worry about tuition fees and student debt to the same extent.
I very much agree with keeping university for those who need to be there - but disagree with the bit about it being a 'jolly' these days.
ReplyDeleteIf anything the opposite is true - the cost means that more and more undergraduates live at home and all but those with very rich parents will come out at the end owing about £20,000.
As an aside, my son starts university today (teaching degree) - he is 21 so why is it any business of the Student Loan Company how much I earn? However, I can assure you they want to know every last detail of my life, although they won't even talk to me about his application because he's an adult...
As a father to two kids currently at university I have to agree with Bazza and say that the term "jolly" isn't one I'd associate with either my son or daughter, nor with their peers.
ReplyDeleteBoth are living at home whilst studying, despite being offered places at universities away from the West Midlands, yet even by taking this route they are still saddled with a reasonably large debt (and that allows for my wife and I supporting them as best we can).
I was lucky in that most of my useful education took place whilst I was serving with the RAF, from my Maths A-Level through to a degree in electrical engineering, so I never knew what student grants or even student debt was; I think I was the lucky one. Now if only "Philosophical Use of the Internal Combustion Engine 1930-1934" had been on the syllabus, then I know what subject my masters would have been in....