The Price of Your Brain (Higher Education - Free for all or Fee for all?)

Name: jaygami1986

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Product:	Higher Education - Free for all or Fee for all?
Date:	29/08/06 (167 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: University is Great and is a breath of fresh air

Disadvantages: Debt

Having just completed my first year at university and about to start my second year, I have come to realize that nothing these days is free. Uno what they say "There’s no such thing as a free lunch"; well the same applies to higher education. I currently pay £1200 in tuition fees a year, and will have accumulated debts of up to £5000 by the time I have graduated. Should education be free for all or is it justifiable to put a price on someone’s head?

There are arguments for and against tuition fees, I will try to take both sides into consideration and make a final judgment based on the facts.

FOR: The argument for the proposal of tuition fees are plausible and do make sense. Nothing in life is or ever will be free, so why should education be any different? Their is always a price on a degree because people feel that this small loan should be seen more as an "investment" rather than a loan. This investment will give you a better education, give you the social skills needed in life and allow you to have a better chance at getting the job you always wanted. So is this really a justifiable reason for tuition fees?

AGAINST: The main problem with the whole tuition fees are that certain social classes are being discriminated. I mean this because statistics prove that students, who come from a middle class family, are three times more likely to go to university rather than those whom come from a less well off background.
Who are we to say only the rich and affordable should go to uni, their need to be more schemes, which help people in those types of backgrounds. The schemes which have already been implemented for such thing do not work affectively.

AGAINST: Annual Fees of £3000 were introduced from September this year. For someone studying a three year degree you will have debts accumulating to £9000, and average accommodation costs of £10000, mean that by the time a student finished university, we will have a debt which will be a minimum of £20,000.
This sum is a large amount and would take forever to pay off, looks like no chance of buying a house and getting a mortgage then.

AGAINST: The Guardian website found that this year applications for university had fallen by 4%, which is 2.5% more than the government had already anticipated. This figure does some what alarm me that people have simply given up uni because of the cost attached to it. It’s such a shame because at the end of the day, it’s the economy that looses out. The more educated and skilled workforce we have the more input we are likely to obtain in the economy in the long term.

An article written by the Guardian said that research showed that 77% of the British population thought students should contribute to some if not all of their tuition fees. So a large proportion of society does in fact think we should pay for our tuition.

AGAINTS: This year the teachers at my university went on strike and thus none of the exams or the coursework was market for the duration of the strike. I was expecting my first semester grades in December, but due to the strikes I didn’t get them till late July. I felt sickened that my tuition fees were going towards tuition that I wasn't getting in an efficient manor.

Looks like I have come out with more Cons then Pros for the tuition fees. I have nothing against tuition fees and do agree in the sense that we should pay for higher education, however I don't agree with the constant increases in the amount we pay. Where do they get their figures from?

Summary: The price of your head