Discuss
After 750 years I think my own alma mater has got something right. Don't tell me money has had nothing to do with it; money is everything.
Those brilliant minds the college creates occasional pay back. Are they the exception to the rule? We can't all rule the world and win Nobels. Those who do attract funding. Brands are centuries old.
How many took their paid-for education and moved abroad?
Should financially insecure, unattractive educational establishments survive?
How many drama schools do we need?
Unlike health services, higher education cannot be free at the point of delivery. Unless the tax payer is going to dictate which subjects are taught.
Don't get me wrong. Support for those institutions that cannot expect to be 'going concerns' is warranted.
And there's nothing wrong with drama school, but how many actors has the UK produced over the last fifty years who were educated at the state's expense only to move abroad?
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Yes, especially the exam boards at GCSE, they charge up to £20 per head for each exam entered. When I first started teaching the boards didn't have complaint departments, they do now.New comment
And I got away with a first degree at the state's expense ... and three friends went on to do SECOND degrees also at the state's expense. The three subsequent postgraduate courses I have done have been paid for in turn by a) me b) my employer ... and c) me again. With 50% of the £2,900 on swimming coaching over the last seven years paid for by my swimming club
Many of my contemporaries got degrees in England then moved abroad. If they are paying anything back now it might be to their former college. On the other hand some payed small fortunes to do MBAs and had those fees paid of in a few years.
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I'm reminded of the argument that nobody should get anything because some people will abuse it. [I know that I'm not being fair to you here Jonathan but...
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Education is our right. Until we make it impossible for the rich to buy a better education we're doing it wrong. I don't care if someone is rich and doesn't have to pay as long as their spawn go to the appropriate place of learning, and that means by ability.
We're stuck in a half-way house because Labour politicians can't bring themselves to educate their children in the same places as the rest of us have to go to, and Tories can't out-and-out stop the poor from going to school at all.
Stop this, "give back to your country" crap--it's a distraction. I pay for my education, but I don't, explicitly, intend to give back anything. I don't mind paying my taxes to train doctors, mechanics, whatever, who disappear to Africa and give, me, back not jot one.
What I do object to is that access to education is unfair...
[...singing the internationale...]
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If education to degree level is considered so important and is already covered from nursery places, to school, why on earth can it not include university?
The only caveat is that personally I have earned so little I would have had the debt written off