Shooting A Dream Down In Flames...

[jayjay]

Uni is tough if your family aren't rich.

This is steering the topic off course, but I'd like to comment that this isn't really true. The government's student support is good at making sure university is accessible for everybody. If your house's income isn't great, then you get a larger non-repayable grant. The loan part is repayable over a very long period and depends on your income (you don't start paying it back until you earn a threshold amount). If anything, it's less generous to the richer families who don't realise that because it's means tested, they should supplement their children's loan/grant with their money.

Ahem... back on topic then.

 

[Mysterious Sue]

ohh god. Well it's tough for those whose parents aren't rich or poor then - for the one's who have to pay for it themselves (not by a gov. grant or by mum and dad). Anyway no-one should have to be means tested. It should be free for all. In my opinion.

 

[SaiyanHajime]

I think people forget that you have to pay that money back. You have to pay back more than you were given in loans.

At £9 grand a year for the course only, no other expenses such as living costs, travel costs, books and feeding yourself, I struggle to see how for a great number of courses it's worth it.

And I hoep that the rise will increasingly put people off going. But I doubt it, because people say stupid things like "anyone can go to uni cuz you can get a loan lolololol!!!!!!"

I think uni should be free, but I think it should be a heck of a lot harder to get in and a lot of courses should just not **** exist. Courses which are just offshoots of other degrees, even more specific and useless, with poor content and nothing to teach you.

As for means testing, it's bollocks. If your family are split up regardless of their income or how much both parents give you, you'll get more money. Which is **** stupid. They pay attention to the bank accounts of your individual home parent (and their spouses, who may be completely unrelated to you and have no effect on how much money you receive), not the other parent away from home. You could have a rich father who doesn't live with you and pays money into your account every month and you'd get extra grant or whatever.

Still, even with maximum grants and crap... you still have to pay a heck of a lot back. I dread to even think. I payed for my final year up front, so I have less loan to pay than most people, but we're still looking at well over £10 grand. And for what, exactly? And to think, now anyone going off to uni will have a loan like that from education fees alone after one single year.

People really need to do their research before deciding to go to uni. And the problem is schools practically force you to apply. There is no looking into options for individual students, the ideology that you must go to uni is enforced so heavily at a-level/btec it's practically rammed down your throat. Most colleges force you to apply to uni as part of the course. You can of course decline later, but in forcing kids into this frame of mind it makes us believe that if we don't have a degree we will be worthless, which in many cases simply isn't true. There are plenty of non-university courses out there as well that would be more beneficial to many, many people. But because they aren't standard recognised courses, no one even knows about them.

This isn't off topic I don't think. It's very much on topic.

 

[Mysterious Sue]

I think uni should be free, but I think it should be a heck of a lot harder to get in and a lot of courses should just not **** exist.

I think you hit it right on the head there

There also needs to be more advice for students still at school about how the loan system works. Maybe it's improved now, but in my day we were just told to apply for whatever we wanted basically. If I did it all again, I wouldn't have taken out such as large a loan as I did. They're basically selling something to 18 year olds who've never handled large sums of money before and expecting them to deal with it maturely. It's nothing short of criminal really

 

[Gavin]

People really need to do their research before deciding to go to uni. And the problem is schools practically force you to apply. There is no looking into options for individual students, the ideology that you must go to uni is enforced so heavily at a-level/btec it's practically rammed down your throat. Most colleges force you to apply to uni as part of the course.

Sorry if you had a crap school/college experience, but that's a huge, huge generalisation about something that you couldn't possibly actually know.

You're absolutely right that there's an expectation that A' levels will lead to uni though, but I'm not sure why anyone would even do A' levels in the first place if they weren't, themselves, thinking about higher education. A' Levels alone are pretty much worthless except as a stepping stone.

 

[Mysterious Sue]

A' Levels alone are pretty much worthless except as a stepping stone.

Absolutely. If you weren't thinking about a degree, you'd be much better off doing something vocational, getting some actual experience in the career that you want.

 

[SaiyanHajime]

But when you're 16 and leaving GCSE, no one gives you any of this info... And to be honest, are you old enough to judge? Probably not. Best to stay in education 'till it's no longer free if you're in the slightest unsure of what you want to do, I thought. Most people would just end up higher positions leading from **** jobs otherwise, such as supervisors. (Oh wait, they do anyway, even after uni.) It takes a lot of drive and knowledge you've acquired yourself which, at 16, seems a bit much to ask. This is why the US education system is so much better than ours. At the time I would have argued that at 16 I was entitled to my opinion, but it was a **** opinion that I should have been denied.

It's definitely not just my college that heavily encouraged students to go to uni, regardless of practicality. Peep had the same experience at a completely different college and so did a friend up in Sheffield. It's implied that there are no other options. I wasn't even informed about foundation courses until I said I did not want to go to uni, and then that was forced upon me instead... and then uni forced upon me on foundation. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do and I wasn't able to because of the "you have to go to uni" ideology. I figured staying in education doing something I enjoyed was the best bet all the while I had the option, since I didn't know what else I wanted to do.

Uni itself really is not the best bet for everyone, and creative courses in the UK are all the same - failing to teach you anything and encourage self teaching. Since a degree in a creative course isn't worth anything at all (it's the portfolio that counts) and you can teach yourself at home, why bother paying for something so worthless but extortionately expensive??

 

[nadroJ]

. I figured staying in education doing something I enjoyed was the best bet all the while I had the option, since I didn't know what else I wanted to do.

This is pretty much what I did. I knew I wanted to go to Uni (like you, it was pretty much the only option 'given' to me) but didn't have a clue what I wanted to do. I'd really enjoyed media and had always been good at English, so decided to study Film because it combined my love of film with my love of writing and meant I could get a degree at the same time.

At this point in my life (going into my third year) I've realised that the BA in Film alone is going to be worth sweet FA on my CV, and I'm therefore going on to do a Masters degree in PR. I'd looked at a PR course when deciding what uni course to take so knew it was something I'd always been interested in, but hadn't realised quite how much until now. Ideally I'd like to get my MA in PR and also gain some work experience in the field, then use these skills and qualifications to get into the PR industry, ideally in the theme park/tourist attraction side of things but I'm also quite open to many other aspects of the PR field. It just sucks that I've only realised NOW was I want to do, purely through my own thinking rather than from any help from tutors and teachers throughout my life. Which sucks too. Surely they're meant to be there to guide us and get us where we need to go, not just push us all through the education system, get in a load of debt, come out with a degree and suddenly find ourselves on the other end, **** ourselves because we haven't got a damn clue what to do next. Obviously I realise that a lot of this work is down to us, gaining work placements and experience etc, but I've personally found that the 'help' and 'guidance' on offer really isn't that useful at all.

Oh well, here's hoping the MA will put me on the right track, and in a few years when all you lot are groaning about the latest awful PR stunt it'll be me who was behind it ;]