We Need to Talk About the Money

It’s a complaint guaranteed to make you squirm with embarrassment as you say it: “We’re paying for this!” Not until you become rich and famous and can angrily demand “Don’t you know who I am?” will one phrase cause so many people to roll their eyes at your back.

Even among students, a group not known for having money rolling in waves out of their pockets, the money we pay isn’t really mentioned. Sure, there’s some grumbling about rising fees when we first apply, but then the forms are signed and money is paid and we stop thinking about it. We quietly push it to the back of our mind, and the student finance letter to the back of the drawer.

How many students can honestly say they know exactly where their money goes? Have you ever had it explained to you? Would you know where to go to ask? I can’t complain about how the university is using the money from my fees because I don’t know how its using the money from my fees. It’s assumed that no one will ask. Maybe we’re too afraid of conjuring images of middle-class bluster and angry letters-to-the-editor. Or perhaps nobody thinks we’re bothered. I’m sure some Music students would disagree.

UEA Music students react badly to school closure

Before you break out that rather fetching tin-foil hat, this isn’t a call to the barricades to reclaim our cash. Instead it’s merely questioning the fact that we give up interest into the money we’re spending a little too quickly and far too easily. It may well be that every single penny we give is vital to our degree and the running of the university. Or it may be that the university staff are cutting corners and skimming off the top in a fiendish plan to swindle us all and escape to Thailand. Who knows? Either could be true. If it’s the former, they can just tell us and we’ll be happy and go about our studenty business (as long as the business is after 11 AM). If it’s the latter, I want in.

There shouldn’t be any assumption that we can’t ask about the price of our own education. After all, we are paying for this. Is it so much to ask what exactly we’re paying for? In the words of the film Jerry Maguire: You had me at hel… Er, that’s not right, I mean: Show me the money.

Do you think more questions need to be asked, or are you happy as long as you get your piece of paper at the end of your degree? Let us know in the comments section!