Pages

Friday 13 February 2015

University fees

It costs £27,000 to go to university in tuition fees alone. When you add the cost of living for three years, you'll looking at over £40,000.

When I went to university, tuition was paid for by the state, and in addition the state gave me £370 per year for living on, and that was a lot, 50 years ago. Enough for a student, with no expenses besides lodging, food, books and beer, not necessarily in that order.

I can hardly believe that it was a Labour government that changed this free eduation into paid-for. That is such a daft idea. The education of our children is the best investment we could make, And by education, I mean education, not the awarding of degrees in subjects I can barely believe.Would I have gone to university in 1966 if the cost had been that steep? Possibly. Probably. Our family culture was very pro-education. But I didn't have to think about it, off I went to waste three years playing bridge. And just scraping a degree in Maths, which got me a decent job playing with computers, and the rest followed from that.

I recently said that if any political party were to offer to reverse this decision, I might vote for them, which for me, is a big step. And then, shortly after I said that, I discovered that UKIP says:

– Subject to academic performance UKIP will remove tuition fees for students taking approved degrees in science, medicine, technology, engineering, maths on the condition that they live, work and pay tax in the UK for five years after the completion of their degrees. 

Well - that's so close to what I want, I'm tempted, quite tempted, so lean towards voting UKIP. But they still want to leave the EEC, and I'm strongly against leaving. I voted to join back in 1975, and I still think it's a jolly good idea. So, UKIP, drop the "leave the EU" policy, and you might get my vote.

4 comments:

  1. Your education was not paid for by the state. It was paid for by the taxpayer, who had little choice in the matter.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I expect Dr Solly's parents paid tax. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. More importantly - I pay tax, and I think that because I got a university education, I've paid a lot more tax than I would have done if I hadn't got a degree. Enough, I think, to more than pay for the cost of the education. Which is why I think that the state (i.e., the taxpayer) makes a very good investment when we pay for the education of our, and other people's, children.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I suspect Solly has paid back many times what the tax payer shelled out to keep him in digs.

    ReplyDelete