Protests in London.

I think the big problem here is going to grants/loans and working situation. 

They just don't have the set up here. 

I went to Glasgow and our food was made in our dorm.  No students worked there. 

I worked in one of the dining halls at PSU.  Our hours were set around our classes each semester.  We scheduled exam week separately.  We were never asked to work when we couldn't. 

Campus jobs like that just are not available here.

I have little sympathy for Cambridge Uni though.  One of the colleges just bought the O2 centre.  Another one just admitted that they have a  1.8 million dollar wine cellar and they own almost the entire town.  No student who is needy should have to pay anything to go there. 

I have little sympathy for Cambridge Uni though.  One of the colleges just bought the O2 centre.  Another one just admitted that they have a  1.8 million dollar wine cellar and they own almost the entire town.  No student who is needy should have to pay anything to go there. 

Cambridge and Oxford charge additional fees for the individual colleges.

Oh I know.  I'm just saying Cambridge can plead poverty all it wants, it doesn't mean I believe it. 

Oh I know.  I'm just saying Cambridge can plead poverty all it wants, it doesn't mean I believe it. 

No, I totally agree.

I think the big problem here is going to grants/loans and working situation. 

They just don't have the set up here. 

I went to Glasgow and our food was made in our dorm.  No students worked there. 

I worked in one of the dining halls at PSU.  Our hours were set around our classes each semester.  We scheduled exam week separately.  We were never asked to work when we couldn't. 

Campus jobs like that just are not available here.   

I started uni 9 years ago and although there were more part-time jobs available then than now, very few people at my uni had jobs while they were studying. I think I only knew of about 5 people who worked during term-time (although Exeter is known for being a bit of a 'rich-kid' university and quite a few people there had rich parents). I didn't have a job during the school year, but I worked full-time during the vacation periods, which gave me about an extra £2,000 per year to live off on top of my loans (as a student, if you only work during the vacations, you can claim all your tax back, but if you work during term time, you have to pay taxes).

My parents didn't support me financially at all, except in paying the tuition fees, which were only about £1,000 a year and the government expected them to pay anyway (if the household income was below a certain level, the fees would be waived... which is what happened with my roommate - she lived with her mum, who earned less than £15,000 a year, so the government paid her fees and gave her the full loan amount. However, her dad was rich and gave her an extra £3,000 per year to live off as well; so there was me, paying full tuition and living off £3,000 in loans per year, while she paid no fees and had £6,000 a year to live off!).

One thing I've always been proud of with the UK education system compared to other systems (i.e. the US system) is that university fees are low and it costs the same in home fees to go to any university (for example, it won't cost you any more in tuition to go to Oxford/Cambridge than to go to a local polytechnic, compared with somewhere like Harvard or Yale, where tuition is so high that unless students are rich or can get scholarships/funding, they have little hope of being able to attend). When I was studying in the US, I really felt sorry for the students who were trying to hold down a full-time job (or 2-3 part-time jobs) as well as their full-time studies... I don't feel it's fair on the students to have to work so many hours just to pay for school - surely their school work ends up suffering for it and with a job as well they can't concentrate as fully on their degree subject?

I think it depends on the student.  The best semester I had was when I was taking 21.5 credits and working. 

I'm not saying I want students to be forced to work three jobs, but I had way more free time in the UK as a student. 

I couldn't imagine working on campus at Glasgow, the culture of student workers just isn't there.  But most people I knew at PSU worked and it was no big deal.   

It would be great to see more grants for students in UK careers that can't be outsourced to other countries because it needs bodies here to do it... social work, healthcare, teaching. But instead employers fork out large sums of money to recruit these people... spoken by a social worker who came on a work permit.

If more people were encouraged and saw the incentive to study for a career then some of the shortages could be filled.

I am another one of those people who worked all through college, but I also made a choice to start at junior college then transfer to a state school because I didn't get a penny for tuition from my parents other than a roof over my head and I definitely didn't want to go into debt. My BSW and MSW are called professional degrees and it makes me proud to have them. Yeah it would have been nice to go away to college and have that whole college experience, but sometimes you really have to look at the bigger picture.

When I was studying in the US, I really felt sorry for the students who were trying to hold down a full-time job (or 2-3 part-time jobs) as well as their full-time studies... I don't feel it's fair on the students to have to work so many hours just to pay for school

I don't feel its fair that my tax dollars are paying for students to booze it up in their free time. 

- surely their school work ends up suffering for it and with a job as well they can't concentrate as fully on their degree subject?

I would completely disagree.  Obviously it depends on the person, sweepy generalisation blah blah.  But from my experience when you have to pay for it yourself and make sacrifices to do so, you darn well are going to make the best of it.  Frankly, you don't have the money to waste.

But I also realise that it's a western world problem that we can argue over tuition instead of worrying about getting our next meal so for that, it seems insane. 

Yeah it would have been nice to go away to college and have that whole college experience, but sometimes you really have to look at the bigger picture.

These quotes fit nicely into why the protests really made me mad.  People are setting things on fire and whatnot, not because they have an oppressive government murdering dissenters or whatever but because they might have to get a part time job or live at home.  Good grief. 

People who complain about not being able to afford to live with their friends (because they can't afford it) or not having free time to go out (if they have to get a job) or any of the other nonsense complaints, well those folks don't deserve a free education because they clearly don't understand the value. 

We will have to wait and see if they were students. Initial reports say some of those in the destruction were not students and maybe the same people who show up at football events to riot.

Oh, I don't think the violent ones were students to begin with. If they were they were incredibly well versed in roit tactics and well organised.  But the regular students joined in later.

You get a bunch of mad people together and sh*t happens. Whether some kid got a bit crazy and threw a brick through a Starbucks window is irrelevant.

The focus should always be on creating the best workforce and social systems. This means educating the highest percentage of the population to the highest levels. This means attracting seeking out and supporting immigrants too.

Why is it that we as a society will go scouting to wherever and recruit those with potential athletic ability, bring them back and surround them with support of all manner and yet somebody who may or may not have the potential to find the cure for cancer or create a new way of conserving energy is left to try and find a part-time job bussing tables, or take out some crappy loan? I don't want that person bussing my table. I want him/her doing what they do best.

And when it comes time to go in the booth and vote, I don't want some idiot in there pulling the lever because he thinks "eastern european immigrants flooding in" have screwed things up. I want him/her to understand economics enough to know who to blame, and to know that growth comes from investment.

Conservatism (world-wide) has always despised education, it teaches us to open our eyes and to think.       

I've heard it tossed around that university education for everyone is becoming a thing of the past.  More and more people will learn a skill or trade or other qualification rather than the fuzzy tennis ball all round general education. And just look at people like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg who were drop-outs but have gone on to become millionaires. You can see how the incentive to get a degree will not attract the very bright. So who will be getting degrees? Very rich playboy types?

I kind of don't understand the comparison to drop-outs like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg, because while they are dropouts, they're both former HARVARD attendees, which means they had a fairly good/successful secondary education prior to attending university.

The majority of people who aren't going to university, at least in the U.S., are not coming from stellar educational backgrounds like these two gentleman.

I just don't think those two are enough of a reason for me not to support a university education for those who really want it. Whether they *need* it may be another story.

In a way, this shows what a scam tax-cuts are for the middle class.

Back when I first came here, in the early 90s, university was free for those who got in. Taxes were also generally higher, both for individuals and especially for corporations. You think that the changes made since then have worked out to benefit most people to the tune of £9000 a year (plus interest?)