Would you have gone to university if you had to pay for it?

[doodab]

Just a quick poll. My gut feeling is that quite a lot of people of my generation wouldn't have gone to university if they had been faced with an upfront bill of £30k in tuition fees and no grant.

[Zippy]

Maybe. I wouldn't have been happy about sharing the course with a bunch of spoon-fed thickos though.

[wim121]

Im in the younger generation (under 30) and I've been doing my degree and at the end, should have only had to pay £1k or so, no loans or anything.

I wouldnt pay near £10k for a degree, but then again, Im not an idiot like most students. People pay £10k just to have a massive party for a few years, end of.

[mudskipper]

I didn't. But if I had I probably wouldn't have.

[Mich the Tester]

Im in the younger generation (under 30) and I've been doing my degree and at the end, should have only had to pay £1k or so, no loans or anything.

I wouldnt pay near £10k for a degree, but then again, Im not an idiot like most students. People pay £10k just to have a massive party for a few years, end of.

Jealous?

[Freamon]

I did, grandad.

[Mich the Tester]

I did, grandad.

Well I went to poly and I had a bloody good time, partied a lot, played a lot of rugby, learnt how to climb rockfaces, how to kayak on a whitewater course, how to blag my way into a free VIP tour of an Irish distillery, how to drive a forklift, how to apply scientific method to the study of population movements and pretty much anything else, and how to shorten the phrase 'I am' with the correct use of an apostrophe, something which Wim121 obviously didn't learn. All of this was at the expense of the Great British taxpayer.

I certainly would not want to deny anyone else the same opportunity.

[BrilloPad]

I had an offer to work at a chartered accountants. And now I would take it.

I know the government needs to save money om higher education - 50% cannot go to university. Why can't we keep the decent degrees and scrap media studies etc. ?

[Mich the Tester]

Why can't we keep the decent degrees and scrap media studies etc. ?

Because politicians and their assistants studied 'political sciences'.

[Arturo Bassick]

I would not be choosing to do a degree right now due to the cost. It is prohibitive. It is a monstrous figure to contemplate. It used to be that Degree students would be fast tracked, but my question is how much more will they have earned by the time the "slow track" catches up?
I do believe that business will start to take up the slack and pay off student loans for new recruits, but you can not rely on getting one of those jobs when you start.
I believe that this rush to send everyone to Uni is a mistake and that we should remodel our education system. Some people are academic and should go to Uni, some are more practical and should go to a poly and some will only ever be manual and should be apprenticed to the trades. Each educated as they require and able to switch should they be late developers. We MUST recognise that each method of education and each qualification is valid.