Cash cow universities spell it out for todays students

I have few regrets in my life, but like all of us nothing is ever perfect. In hindsight I made some bad job choices, was let down by certain friendships and made the occasional monumental fuck up. If given the opportunity to travel back in time, then yes, I’d probably tweak this and that, but I’d never alter the four years I spent at polytechnic in the eighties; that was fundamental to my make-up. Watching then expectant students getting their A’ level results and the panic to get on a course somewhere maybe anywhere, was a total contrast to my own experience. My two E’s in History & Politics back in ‘84, left me feeling like I’d just conquered Mount Everest, securing me a place at Sheffield to study Public Administration. The opportunity was a door opener for me, however if I was a teenager today then I would think twice about following the same path. Students in my eyes, have become enslaved; sold down the river by a higher education system, that feeds off them and doesn’t provide the tools of advancement they need. Entwinned with societies avarice, a shrinking skilled job sector and a lack of light on the future, means graduation day, is no longer the means to that pot of metaphoric gold. I didn’t really have a mental map as to where the journey was going to take me, turning up at the student’s union on Pond Street all those years ago. The country then like now was politically divided and the threat of terrorism was always in the air. I donated what I could to the striking miner’s buckets, had sympathy for Derek Hatton and Militant and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, when Norman Tebbit was stretchered out of the Brighton Grand. The fundamental changes though that were occurring in society and the shift to the service sector, ironically suited me as I planned to get a job in media and my future qualification with my gift of the gab was the only ticket I would require. Subsequently polytechnic was a life of riley. I lived within my means on the annual £3k grant, sometimes it was tight, but it was always doable. Rent was cheap, the bus into town only cost 10p and you could get pissed and have a kebab for under a fiver. If I ever wanted to go home or see friends – you just jumped on a train, which was easy and affordable. I always knew though, I’d never be an academic; failing to make one tutorial on a Friday morning, for the whole of the first term was a case in point, but I could always muster up my game when called upon – I was the only 1 of 5 lads in a house consumed by drugs and alcohol that survived the first year and go onto graduate with a degree. The IIii I eventually achieved 4 years later was nothing special; my overall effort didn’t deserve more, but it was the lessons in social interaction and independent living that was my true text book. It didn’t take long to secure a job with a newspaper selling advertising in London, which I soon moved to, relatively debt free, joining the treadmill of life for proper. I was lucky to have studied when I did as further education in many ways has become a fallesy of what it was created for, morphing into a cash cow for an ever burgeoning list of establishments, that saturate an over inflated market. Back in the eighties only 20% of 18-30s took this course. Maybe we didn’t see it as a priority then. People still had reasonable job opportunities and one could eek out a reasonable existence but fast forward 40 years and it’s a different playing field. Now take up rate for further education is over 50% and adult establishments have trebled nationwide. The new breed of universities offer a diverse range of courses which on average on their competition with living costs leave students with a £50k debt. That’s disgraceful especially if you’ve been mad enough to take a degree in Harry Potter or David Beckham studies. It’s a joke that Durham of all places get away with it and charge what they do. It wouldn’t surprise me if the lecturers dressed up as Dumbledore for some added value. What with the country then reliant on the service sector and subsequent career paths for graduates further diminishing, it must be a scary and pressurised environment. Many are forced into the zero hour job market or unpaid internships desperate to find a rung on the ladder. It’s no wonder then that mental health is so rampant in young people which is a direct legacy of establishment greed and the chain of debt that keeps them in their place, but that is for another day.