Humanities and Art students blatantly subsidise Science students and it’s not cool

Humanities students and Science students live such different lives. At times a comparison between the two seems a bit ridiculous. They have to slave away in labs or hospitals, make a whole host of early starts and then carry on going to lectures and tutorials throughout their days, doing things I couldn’t dream of understanding.

For those of us who study a humanity, we can crawl out of bed much later, do a bit of reading, and if it’s a particularly busy day we'll go to one tutorial and a lecture.

In short, after we’ve both been on the same heavy night out, it’s pretty easy to laugh at a Chemical Engineering students the morning after. The reality is, we're laughing at them for getting twice the education we do, at half the price.

Science students get at least double the number of contact hours that Humanities students do. We boast about how our buildings usually look better, but this is because they weren’t purpose built for our subjects at a later date. We’re essentially paying the same as them for an education that has less content and is less tailored to our needs.

If universities are businesses, which their reactions to the strikes show they clearly are, then we’re being shafted with a far inferior product for the same price.

Apparently studying a Science means you deserve a gym where the membership costs slightly over a third of the main uni gym too

Using Engineering as an example, they received free laptops this year, and got to go field trips which are fully funded. Art and Architecture students, on the other hand, had compulsory field trips to pricey locations such as Rome and the Venice Biennale, which didn't receive the same level of funding. English students have to buy dozens of books, and these don't come cheap. Textbooks for other Humanities often cost around £50 each, and Art students have to pay for their expensive resources as well.

Now, I like living in a society where bridges don’t collapse, and someone is on hand to stop me from getting TB. All of that stuff is great. I also understand that it might cost more to teach someone that, than it does to teach me about the Comparative Political Method. However, there must be another, more fair, way to do this.

Whether it’s increased government funding for the sciences, increased private sponsorship of science students, or an increased student loan allowance. Let’s be real here, if you’ve got a degree in Biochemistry, you’re probably going to be paying off your student loan quicker than me anyway.

Humanities life

If those proved themselves to be unfeasible options, providing us with an equal degree might be another alternative. Give us more contact hours and dish out the goodies to us, not just the engineers.

The crux of the matter is this, it’s wrong that I’m paying as much for my education as medical students, chemical engineers and computer scientists are. Their tuition provides them with so much more support and help than mine does, and we all pay the same.

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