It’s fair to say University life isn’t cheap. Shopping at Aldi and ‘drinks deals’ in Revs aside, there are times when it seems hard to fend off the ‘University of Life-ers’ argument that university is pretty poor value for money. With fees set to triple next year, and rent hikes showing no sign of slowing down, is it time we come to expect more value of money from our degree?
Those who choose to go straight into work rather than follow the University route typically give themselves a three or four year advantage in terms of work experience. Of course, for some vocations no amount of experience is sufficient without the right qualifications. But with companies such as Siemens now offering ‘Business Academy’ programmes; a 5-year contract with a salary rising to over £25, 000 and a fully funded degree, is the standard three year course necessarily worth doing?
Students have generally relied on the assumption that upon graduation there will be a host of well-paid jobs ready for them to walk straight into. Graduate employment has traditionally been an area in which York struggles; just 64% of York students had found a job within six months of graduating last year and the current state of the graduate job market seems set to exacerbate this problem.
Those students arriving in York next year will have an even more legitimate reason to question where exactly the vast amounts of money they pay out to the university in the form of tuition fees goes. Students on courses with minimal contact hours, such as History or Philosophy, could face the prospect of paying nearly £90 a lecture or seminar. Far more expensive than, for example, tickets to see a lecture given by the Dalai Lama at the Royal Albert Hall this summer – just £65. I doubt any lecturer at the university would take offence if this position was scrutinised. Sleeping through a Thursday morning lecture will become a luxurious act of pure hedonism.
This all begs the question, why exactly is the pursuit of higher education still so revered? Most see continuing their studies at degree level as a natural succession from A-Levels and the culmination of 16 years of education. But if we no longer see the degree itself as representing good value for money, are we just paying for a piece of paper at the end? Our time at York will cost each and every one of us around £30,000; if, in some parallel universe, it was offered to us, I wonder how many students would be happy to pay £20,000 for a first-class degree certificate and never come to university in the first place?
Although some might be tempted, there’s no way I would be. Boiling your university experience down to the class of degree you gain at the end of it is entirely the wrong way to go about things. University is about more than the certificate at the end, it’s about meeting new people, moving away, joining societies and playing sports. It’s about spending three blissful years studying nothing other than the subject that really interests us.
Sitting on Facebook in the few weeks before my fresher year at York began, seeing picture after picture of my friends from home having a good time in a new city with new people, I couldn’t have cared less about the three years and tens of thousands of pounds I was travelling 400 miles away to ‘waste’. I was genuinely excited about the new experiences that awaited; meeting new people and finding myself. It sounds horribly cheesy but it really is true.
Arguing that we’re only here to get a better job and a degree under our belts would be to demean what are probably going to be the best years of our lives. Things like finding new friendships, having the chance to play sports and go out on their socials and, even, spending our nights in Willow aren’t sold to us in the prospectus, but they’re what really make our time here. Once you start work, you don’t really stop until you retire, when, I imagine, queuing outside a Chinese buffet at two the morning will be slightly less appealing.
University is a chance to delay the inevitable and spend your last few years before spending the rest of your life on the grindstone doing just what makes you happy. I see no reason why that isn’t worth the money.