University Degrees: 3x the Cost, 3x the Value?

Expectations and reality rarely meet, and when it comes to the recent leap in tuition fees this is no exception; whilst students should expect three times more than what previous students have experienced, in reality this clearly isn’t going to happen.

Arts and Social Sciences students currently have merely six hours of teaching a week. Should new students expect their contact hours to increase by threefold? Many students would be perfectly within their right to expect eighteen hours of contact time, given the outrageous amounts of money they are stumping up.

Indeed, the current Arts students who only pay a third of the new costs already feel aggrieved by how much money they are forking out for their measly contact time and they have legitimate reasons to expect more.

And what of engineers and medical students who experience 9-5 teaching on a daily basis? Their hours cannot increase, so will the quality of their teaching suddenly triple? How would universities even achieve this? It’s quite clearly impossible.

Some limited efforts have been made to justify the increase in tuition fees. Reportedly, some students may experience seminars and lectures which will be twice as long as previous years. Yet, whilst this may be a very slight improvement, the amount of money spent per hour of contact time is still grossly expensive. This is. after all, only a doubling of hours, not a tripling.

To reflect the increase in fees the entire system needs to change. With fees now closer to the astronomical costs of an American undergraduate degree, the U.S. model of studying several subjects at university should be seriously considered.

American degrees are also criticised as not being good value for money, but they at least offer choice. Our institutions could follow this example and salvage their reputations, whilst setting a new precedent and making our education system exciting.

Currently we decide what we wish to spend our next 3-5 years doing at the age of 17, a time when we’re barely certain what music or clothing brand to identify with, let alone what career. If we’re going to embrace choice in every other facet of our lives, why not introduce a system that could only benefit people in the formative periods of their lives?

Until the higher education system experiences real systemic change, students shouldn’t expect much. They certainly shouldn’t hold out for a threefold improvement.