Yes |
 |
62.1% (175) |
No |
|
13.1% (37) |
Mabey |
|
4.3% (12) |
It's Free |
|
13.1% (37) |
Really Good Bacon |
|
5% (14) |
Other(please explain) |
|
1.8% (5) |
Poll: Do You Think the Price of College in Your Country too High? Pages 1 2 3 NEXT | |
UK - I'd prefer if we didn't have tuition fees, and they simply taxed people who actually got into professional jobs slightly more over their lifetimes. It'd make me feel better than having this massive debt already with some uncertainty, although it looks likely I'll be getting a job. They would have to cut funding for humanities/arts a bit, which I think is reasonable. Those fields are very saturated & have few jobs, when we could use more scientists & engineers. (That doesn't mean that I don't appreciate art, I just don't see much value in doing a degree in it) | |
Is this question prompted by the ridiculous, politically driven, tuition hike protests going on in Quebec, Canada? Because I would say that's a prime example on how not to voice your concerns especially when you've already got it better than a lot of others. | |
Yeah in some places it is. But I want to rant about other aspects of college, prerequisite classes. I want to go to school for Journalism, and right now I'm in a Community College. Why do I need to take Chemistry and Calculus in order to transfer anywhere? It's just stupid, and just making me waste time and money. And the fact that a class I took 3 years ago but failed is still a drag on my GPA really pisses me off too. | |
Ah ha! That's a good one... there's no funding there, but they still get money merely for existing. No, they only get the money because it's relatively dirt cheap to run those courses on a per-student basis. (Lab intensive) chemistry remains the most expensive undergraduate course and in the UK, the situation was shit enough as it was ten years ago when Kings College London, Queen Mary's & Westfield and a few other highly reputable (questionable use of that word...) shut their chemistry departments, leaving only two decent departments in London (Imperial College, whose chemistry UG course has the highest drop-out rate in the country pretty much, and University College). Russell Group humanities courses can't have their funding cut because their alumni have too much political influence, the shittier uni humanities courses can't have their funding cut because they have virtually fuck all funding to begin with, which leaves the science research councils to foot the cuts, dear god in heaven, I wish I was in Germany!! OT: UK (clearly)... and of course I fucking well do (even though my class was the last to have the 'cheap' tuition fees). This country has the most expensive public... I'll stress PUBLIC higher education system in the world, and it's damned shameful. Reason: too many school leavers unsuited to university are being encouraged to go to university. Back in the 'good old days', university was purely for study and any drop-outs were a great black mark against a Registrar's office. So you can bet they were sure to accept straight A students (or rather straight C students, since getting anything better those days was a fucking miracle). I don't care if I get flamed for this, but I'm an unashamed academic elitist. If you're not clever enough to get onto a course, piss off, we really shouldn't care what your social/financial background's like. That said, too many courses exist that have no career prospects beyond very small niches, industries that just do not exist, industries that draw its echelons from those who already have qualification through practical experience or just have no perceived use to your run of the mill employer. University education in this country hasn't been any indicator to quality of further employment prospects for years (I'm inclined to say ten, but I feel it's a lot longer than that). | |
The military paid for all but $14,000 of my bachlor's degree at the community college/state schools I attended, but after less than a year and a half of grad school, I owed almost $100,000. I only owe $38k now, after paying about $1000 per month and one giant $30,000 payoff to my highest interest loan from Sallie Mae, but I've also paid $14,000 in the past two years just in interest. I didn't want to let the cost prevent me from doing what I wanted and I'm glad that I achieved that, but it's still pretty painful to think about. Because of the cost, I can't on good conscience recommend the same path I took to another person (whose parents aren't paying for them, of course), even when I have only the best things to say about my education.
Cut funding from art programs so art students get worse educations and have an even harder time finding jobs with their degrees? That sounds like a terrible idea. It's not impossible to find jobs in these areas, you just have to set very specific goals for yourself and do proper research/develop marketable skills as the career paths in these majors aren't as clear cut. | |
Eh, I think it's a overly harsh to punish teenagers for being lazy by completely barring them from higher education. They're teenagers. Some people do poorly because they're born into broken homes where they don't learn the skills required to excel in academia. I'm not sure about the UK, but in the U.S. a school won't teach you skills like time management, studying skills, or help with take home coursework. Coming from one such home, it took me until after I had dropped out of secondary education to teach myself the self discipline and direction to do academic coursework. I'm graduating this year with a B.S. in Biotechnology and seriously considering a graduate degree (because job prospects are still so terrible). I definitely think graduation rates are a problem. I think more needs to be done to push people into needed fields instead of people choosing their major on a whim (I know someone who literally went to college and changed majors to a field she knew nothing about). Strictly speaking of public education, I think the fees are somewhat reasonable in most states. States generally offer more than one public university and they generally have different pricing schemes, so you can choose which one suits your needs. Especially at the graduate level, in state tuition can be very generous. Housing is ridiculously expensive pretty much everywhere, if I dormed at my school it'd wind up being about 1/3 of the cost. Private universities are ludicrously expensive. My sister dated a guy who went to a private university for a journalism degree and wondered why he was up to his eyes in debt with no job. | |
I am currently a computer animation student in a US state university, and I am downright offended by this remark. Do you even know how HUGE the graphic design and visual effects fields are becoming. Every single poster, ad, periodical, magazine, pamphlet, and array of particles in the opening sequence of a news broadcast you have seen was touched by somebody with an art or design degree. You should take a little journey into the realm of Graphic Design and advertising and design theory, then tell me you don't need a degree in it. I already had a tough enough time finding an animation program that wasn't at one of those elite art schools which cost three times what normal US university costs, and even still I am having to scrounge around and teach myself all the programs we don't learn in the class but are still the industry standard which I will be expected to use if I'm ever to get an internship. We're already using sub-par programs which our teachers openly tell us will not get us jobs on their own, but we have to learn them because the program can't afford the licenses of Maya and 3D Studio Max for an entire computer lab. And you have the gall to tell me the program deserves less funding? I am so sorry that I couldn't afford the Art Institute of Chicago, so I'm having to leech money and time off of a state university. I'll be sure to take my BFA and get the hell out of here as soon as possible. | |
Well over here college and university are completely different, and I while I would say university tuition is far too high, most college programs are actually fairly reasonable. As such I'll be attending college for 3-year game design rather than university for 10-year psychology. | |
The UK student loan essentially acts as a tax. You pay off more per month the more you earn and if it isn't paid off after 30 (?) years it gets wiped. I'm in NI so it costs me £3,300 per year so I'm happy. Take that "rest of the UK" with your £9000 per year fees, bah! | |
In Sweden we are blessed with the state sponsoring our education, even at some of the private universities! I've been known to occasionally talk shit about the Swedish model of high taxation and state benefits, since it has a ton of flaws. But when it comes to higher education i couldn't be more thankful for it. You still have to take loans to be able to support yourself (if you don't have a ridiculously high-paying extra job), but looking at the fees you have to pay at universities worldwide i'm really happy to be living here. I can't fanthom how the UK/US can claim to give everybody a shot at the riches at the uppermost layer of society when the quality of your higher education largely depends on your ability to pay for it. For better or worse education here is based on how well you do in our version of high school or a national "aptitude for higher studies" test. | |
The UK model acts as a tax so anyone can get to university. In England you only have to start paying it once you make over £21,000 per year. It gets paid off like a tax and you pay off more of it per month as you earn more. If you don pay it off within 30 years it gets cancelled. People from lower income families get some grants they don't have to pay off and get larger living allowances. I don't see how that's unfair to poorer people. | |
Ah yes, the poor miserable peasants that must pay £9,000. May I join you in laughing at them, my good sir? I'm OK with those money.
Also, if you haven't started paying by something like 6 or 10 years, it still gets cancelled, if I recall correctly. | |
Why yes, let us all laugh at out brethren across the water. mfw fees
Now that they have stayed at £3,300 for this year they can go up for all I care, just as long as I'm in before the lock. | |
Considering most people in the USA have to take some kind of loan to go to college I'm going to say yes. | |
Paying off loans by 30 isn't bad at all, especially for a graduate degree. Seems reasonable. Except for the "working full time the whole time". I know my school says working more than 20 hours is generally a bad idea. While I'm sure the reality is much more dull, I like to think police officers get graduate degrees in a specialty that amounts to a particular cop stereotype. I'm not sure whether I'd major in "loose cannon detective who somehow never loses his job" or "rookie beat cop from a family of cops with too much to prove". I'm graduating with no debt because | |
Oh they are, I majored in "By the book humorless white cop" Most officers if they have a degree have one of the following in order of commonality: A lot of people double up on the first two because for most colleges there are only a few classes different between the degrees. My BS was Criminal Justice/Abnormal Psych my MS is Sociology/Criminology. Sad part is I STILL sometimes get psychologist and psychiatrist mixed up. I'm on track to retire at age 50, I hope to have a doctorate by than so I can either Professorize full time or become a correctional facility psychologist | |
Another Swede reporting in. lolz | |
Living without the loans aren't that hard. One must simply adjust to a less extravagant lifestyle, which means (among several other things) not spending 500 SEK per week on booze! | |
So naturally you play foil to a partner who is some combination of quirky, hot-headed, or funny? And is probably a minority? Maybe an Asian jokester, or a Latina who recites apropos quotes of Shakespeare? Man, Dick Wolf should pretty much hire me right now. I don't even want to think about retirement. I'd kill to find a Bio related job that wasn't teaching and offers a pension. | |
If you live at home that is, try paying for food and rent with the standard grant (is it 3000 nowadays?) and tell me how that goes. | |
Pretty well actually, provided you work 7-8 weeks during the summer. It's not a good life, but it works and it sure as hell beats having to repay the loans. | |
Yo free education, bitches. *gang sign* | |
Well, that might work. Depends on where you live, what you get paid and how good you are at managing money. I'm going to start at Gothenburg so the rent alone is going to be bloody massive. I'll just to have cross my fingers for a well-paying job and/or flee to a country with lax immigration laws to avoid my debt. *Nods satisified-ly* (Also, what kind of Swede doesn't drink excessively much?) | |
Free education here aswell! ^^ | |
Why should university be free in the UK? Teens who decide to work instead of going to university would otherwise have to fund your education/piss up so that you can potentially earn more than them after graduation. Tuition fees mean that you pay towards your own education which studies show increase your life time earnings. You will only start paying it back, at a very competative rate, once you start earning a good salary, at a higher rate the more you earn. sounds like a sound investment to me. But students will always complain... and steal traffic cones. | |
My last partner was a black woman (Caribbean descent) who was about 20 years older and a foot shorter than me and was also very much a joke maker and a fan of using metaphors and similes you'd never heard before. "That girl was pricklier than a blowfish" Her rank and name was, and I swear I'm not making this up, Sgt. Pepper. Salt and Pepper coming to NBC this fall. The only jobs I can think of for a Biologist involve lab work. | |
Finnish university education is funded by the State through the Ministry of Education. Students enrolled in regular degree studies pay no tuition fees. | |
Hey don't forget Wales. We pay the same you do. Not sure about Scotland, though England gets to pay the whole shebang. | |
Here it costs like £60 or $100 each semester. Yeah, I can live with that. | |
Scotland is fucking stupid. They and people from the EU get free fees but people from NI, England and Wales pay £9000 despite the fact we are in the EU too. Still, they have an extra year at uni and thus generally miss out on industrial placements in many of their degrees too so I don't mind. | |
I would so watch Salt and Pepper. There are a fair amount of animal related jobs at zoos, or as a park ranger. But I enjoy eating and having a roof over my head. I also don't particularly enjoy working with live animals. | |
UK here, and like you guys I made it to the £3,300 lock-in. Anyone younger than me, or anyone who had to retake their year, has to fork out the full 9. Compared to that I'm happy with my current loan, but I can't help but feel a bit pissed when I'm paying three grand and my Social Research module has had half of its lectures cancelled. Then to make matters worse we just got a tutor who's horribly and unprofessionally biased towards one of the two supposedly equal schools of Sociology research. Naturally, I prefer the other one :( | |
Maybe (you probably should know you spelled it wrong), because, well, college is expensive. However, down here in the Netherlands, we can manage and try to make it accesible to as many people as possible. It's not that hard to get government support for free, and if you can't manage with that, the state will pratically lend you money for free, after which you have 20 years, as I recall, could be even more, to pay it back. But since the government has to cut heavily in it's expenses, college is one of the things that will get more expensive. The most noticable ones are: you only get the free government support for four years, five for the technical studies, it will get harder to switch between studies, but the worst and by far the most ridiculous one of them all, is that you have to pay a fine of 3000 euros, yes, you read that correctly, 3000 euros, if you fail a year and have to do it twice. For me, it's starting to look like studying is becomeing for the upper classes again. The key to the problem is the same key to every problem: money. But this one creates a downward spiral: since we can't educate people in high levels anymore, they won't be able to make as much money, so we can't finance new people to study in high levels, etc. etc. Education is a very dangerous department to cut on when it comes to cutting expenses, and definitley when they are complaining at the same time about ''how the quality of education is going downhill''. And these are the people that are ruling my country. God I'm a lucky man. | |
Yes; that is to say, we have to pay for it. That being said, right now the sum of my grant and bursary does outweigh my tuition fee costs :D and that's with SF fucking up my income figures : / (Hopefully gon' get that sorted, should have 1.5k more; even if that comes in a lump sum after I need it I ain't complainin' :D) Wouldn't want to have to apply the year after I did; 9k a year is silly. I mean, doing Maths I could still have that make financial sense; but there's no way I'd be happy paying so much education. Anyway, back to revision and/or sleep. Exam tomozzow. Massive hanging cables? Bring it on! | |
| Pages 1 2 3 NEXT | |
Hello Escapists. I come to you with a question:
Do you think the price of college in your country too high?
Sorry for the serious question but try to make fun of it if you want.
You,ve got to love the cost of uni in Ireland.