Fools Paradise

What's so great about uni anyway? I wish I’d been put off going

So the students are pissed off. I can understand why. But for many people considering university, the coalition may actually have done them a huge favour.

I remember being told again and again, when at school, that university would be the best time of my life. So much so that I entered into a deep depression in my second year at uni thinking; ‘If this is as good as life gets I may as well call it a day now.’

I mean, what exactly is so great about uni? It starts with ‘Freshers Week’; seven days of hell during which you are fed low cost alcohol by the bucket load and encouraged to make a dick of yourself so local bars and clubs can make money midweek. Then, you are crammed into stuffy lecture halls with leaky radiators and back breaking benches while completely uninspiring lecturers read verbatim from a book that, guess what? They themselves wrote and have elected to put top of the required reading list; a snip at £35. You most likely live in a ‘hall of residence’ with 300 other people exactly the same age as you; not exactly a recipe for harmony and joy, never mind the fact that you’re all at your most insecure and hormonally challenged age.

Most of the friends I have now who went to university, like me, attended the first few lectures then realised what a waste of time it was and that they could cram for the exams and get pissed (and be off campus) the rest of the time. Most of us are now doing nothing to do with our degrees, are only in contact via facebook with any of the people we met at uni and only applied in the first place because it was the done thing at the time.

Perhaps with the increased costs facing students now they’ll think harder than we did about going to university and consider other options that will be a far better investment of their money, time and energy. I wish I had.
Posted 10:58 AM on Fri Nov 12 2010
By Work Slave
757 views, 3 Comments
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    Lizzy at 04:15 PM on Mon Nov 29 2010 | flag     

    Education is always a privilege. When it is given out for free and /or given against your will people will not value it. I agree with Work Slave. My parents had a crap education and never made it anywhere near university so they instilled in me the idea that university was a pinacle of learning. When I got there to find that neither students nor lecturers were interested in knowledge I certainly got an education, but not the one I was expecting. Had I come out of that with £30K debts I would be rather the worse for wear starting my working life, but luckily for me it was 'only' £7K, which I am still paying off ten years later. If people had to pay, I imagine they would demand much better performance from the academics who resent having to take time out from their research to teach youngsters. And people would go there because they actually wanted to learn something.

    I was indeed fortunate to be one of the last students to receive a state-funded jolly but I quite clearly remember the Labour govt bringing in fees, and wanting to join a protest against this, but there were no protests to be seen anywhere on campus because it 'won't affect us'. Strange that.

    Gloria at 10:10 AM on Sun Nov 14 2010 | flag     

    From the Guardian,

    So now the same cloud settles over Millbank as front pages are cleared because a few dozen sort-of students moved from marching protest to window-breaking mayhem and Scotland Yard didn't have enough boys in blue to cope.

    Was that – a rampage around Tory HQ, a storming of roofs – news? Of course. Everybody from David Cameron to the Met commissioner was sounding off.

    But was it also the harbinger of a winter of rabid, raucous discontent?

    The Independent feared so.

    Max Hastings in the Mail feared so, too.

    John Harris in the Guardian, accompanied by a dauntingly large picture of Cameron burning in effigy, felt that "a government pledged to such drastic plans" must "increasingly expect" more of the same.

    "Travel anywhere in the country, pick up the local paper, and it's all there – the imminent hacking-back of youth centres, social care, school buildings, libraries, parks…"

    There "are at least 18 millionaires in the cabinet", he later informed us.

    Life goes on. For the middle classes education is a right not a privilege.

    For Essex men, Chavs in sink schools and the sons and daughters of blue collar workers education is privilege that is about to be withdrawn.

    Credit Muncher at 06:49 PM on Fri Nov 12 2010 | flag     

    Isn't that why they are protesting? You all had a 3 year drinking holiday subsidised by the tax payer, why can't they?