Academic Musings

The first wave of students to face top-up fees starts college this school year. Although the increase is set at a 300% per unit,many students are expected to decline their entry to the University if only to get their degree at some technologically-wanting institution. Will they get value for their money?

The government had originally hoped that the new system of top-up fees would create a 'market' among universities. This means students should be paying even greater attention to what they are getting for their fees. Even if they aren't being especially vigilant, their parents, who are most likely to foot the bill for the increased costs of a university education, will be keeping a gimlet eye on what their child's university is offering for their money. But how can value for money be measured in pursuit of higher education?

Sadly, anyone searching for an improvement in academic services could be disappointed, as universities say the money from top-up fees is required simply to cover services that students are already receiving. All state universities have been going through an overhaul of their pay structures, and this has incurred additional cost, and was one of the reasons the government promoted the introduction of fees in the first place,' while some universities are responding to top-up fees by improving facilities and updating computational services in campus.

Some students may be tempted to compare hours of contact with their professors as a way of assessing value for money. Although of course, contact hours are not an indication of quality of teaching. Why would the Board of Regents want to take away the state-funded education? The cost of running a university is going up. Competing on a global scale, universities need to offer the facilities and resources for cutting-edge research and studies in order to attract and pay top-notch faculty and students. As being a research institution becomes more important for prestige in a competitive education market, the existing system of being largely state-funded and lacking long-term "endowment" simply can't foot the bill. With the government increasing taxes, education must compete with services. The result is a funding gap, which the government has decided to fill with student fees.

This was met, however, with a strong response from the students. Massive protests were put on, and anybody wandering through the University is faced by the regular spectacle of obsessive people aggressively waving petitions demanding government retraction.

Complaints come from a different perspective: We never used to have to pay much, and as a result, higher education was available to anyone who has the potential for it. Since the changes, there has been a decrease in the number of students who are not willing or able to meet the fees.
Interestingly however, at the same time as the government has been pushing the higher fees, they have also been pushing to increase the number of university and further-education graduates. However, we are lacking academic preparation for the life in the University, no thanks to the strain on the high school education standards. But the University students are now facing an amusing conundrum: The education is more expensive, yet at the same time the value of the qualification has gone down. If everyone has it, then to set yourself apart you have to pursue a higher degree and pay more money. If money is a concern to you, then chances are you won't bother. Your average domestic master's is becoming expensive as well. At any rate, higher degrees are a considerable extra expense beyond undergraduate education.

So the democratizing intention at the core of the government's initial thought is lost, since only the rich will be able or inclined to pay the extra pounds for the extra qualification to elevate themselves above the hoi polloi brandishing their now worthless bachelor's degrees. In fact the only material benefit to them will be to lump them with a debt they did not necessarily need to incur in the first place.

So what is to be done? The government has never said that it is going to back down and suddenly make university free again. Quite the opposite; they will continue to gradually raise fees as the result of this. The protesters initially got a great deal of support, but as the public and media gradually got accustomed to the notion of paying for school, the subject slipped from the public eye. The situation has devolved to the point that the protest has melted into the general corpus complaints that occupy the mind and time of the average student.

At this point, I am already paying for my postgraduate degree. Given the rate of my course, I am not entirely sure I am getting my value for money. I'll start saving for my Ph.D. now, in the hope that I will be an astronaut with a Law Degree.