Three years at uni: Where your money ACTUALLY goes

There was a meme on the internet recently that stated the question: 'what’s the most stupid thing you’ve ever spent your money on?' The answer, in jest, was three stock images collaged together of university students graduating.

Despite the fact that the rising costs of going to university can be made light of in posts like these, the reason that they are funny for many students is the fact that, well, it’s true.

In July, university minister Jo Johnson released a statement revealing the latest rise in the cost of acquiring a degree – a £250 increase from £9000 to £9250 passed by many newspapers as news that wasn’t even worthy of being published.

Jo Johnson is Boris Johnson's
less-shaggy-haired younger brother

The fact is, we’ve simply got used to the government enforcing these rises without any challenging from MPs in parliament or the public – so we just accept it and carry on. But the truth is, paying £9,250 for a year’s education is ridiculous and extortionate anyway – but for many, it doesn’t actually make any sense.

Why have students started paying more?

In recent years, especially before general elections, you might’ve heard that classic adage – the one about how Nick Clegg and the Lib Dems promised to cap tuition fees at £3,000, but ended up letting them increase to £9,000 (and that’s why people hate him, apparently). Well, whether it was his fault or not, that’s exactly what happened.

Before 2012, tuition fees for one year at university were £3000. That means you could’ve completed a whole degree for the amount you pay for a single year these days. With tuition fees at three grand, universities still received a lot of funding from the government. But the government decided to stop pumping money into universities and make the students pay it instead. Their funding actually dropped by around £3 billion between 2011 and 2014.

What we pay for…

Supposedly, this rise in price is beneficial. There’s a focus on ‘higher-class teaching’, ensuring students get a ‘truly world-class education’. It’s actually quite entertaining that they have to use these meaningless adjectives to try and justify the outstanding debt that we all get into.

In some places, such as the ‘Universities UK’ website, they provide some detail as to what that actually means. At the University of Roehampton, it says there’s ‘3600 hours one-to-one study skills’. What? That’s right, there’s no explanation of who that’s for, whether it’s per student, what ‘study skills’ are… nothing. At the University of East Anglia, apparently they’re investing in ‘Awards for the Best Teachers’. Try not to laugh.

Southampton University's official website provides the first university-written guide to where the money goes when you use Google.

They say 35% of the income they receive from students is used to 'support the running of academic departments, ensuring students receive a high quality education'. 35% is £186,000, according to them.

At Southampton University in the period of the 2015/16 period, there were over 17,000 undergraduate students at the university. If the calculator is correct, with each student paying £9000 for one year’s tuition, that’s a total of £153,000,000 (million) pounds per year. Stop for a minute and think about that number.

35% is probably a bit more than £186,000, don't you think?

Students are racking up thousands of pounds in debt
 due to the rising costs of studying at university.

University tax

The Universities UK website also claims it uses the money for ‘campus improvements’. Alright, fair. At the SOAS university of London, £33 million has been spent on that (note that lack of development into what improvements there were.) At Oxford Brookes, £1.2 million went on WiFi in halls of residence.

And that’s where the problem lies.

The money we all pay, marketed as a ‘fair’ payment because everybody surrenders just as much as the next person, goes on stuff that most of us simply don’t need. What we need from the university (i.e. the teaching, paying the lectures, and the books, for example) might cost five grand for the three years. But we’re effectively paying university tax – and seeing the money go on some structure in the university that we probably won’t notice at all.

It’s not fair!

The people who live at home and commute are suffering even more. They’re not living at the halls at all. The worst part of it is that we’ve still got to pay for printing, books, replacement student cards, equipment etc. – the list goes on. But you’ll still get the people who say ‘it’s all going towards your future’. Actually, it isn’t.

People try to fabricate reasons why it isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds. Not to get political and stuff, but the excuse that ‘slashing tuition fees would raise tax’ is quite a ridiculous one. It wouldn’t make tax £9000 a year for students, I’ll tell you that.

‘Enterprise centres’, ‘career mentoring schemes’ and ‘small business placements’ are just a few more of the empty excuses they have for the cash.

Will we actually not have to pay it back?

The stance of this article may make it seem like a single-minded attack on university schemes and tuition fees. But it’s actually just the truth, without any fact-bending.

Yep, it's a stock photo. University students are never
 that happy when they graduate.

There’s that one excuse: ‘you only have to pay it back if you earn over £21,000.’ Hello? Isn’t earning more than that exactly what university is for? And then there’s the 30-year-wipeout-rule. True. After thirty years, your debt is cleared. But chances are you’re going to be earning over £21,000 for a substantial amount of that thirty-year period – and shovelling out money back to your government while you’re at it. Logic, ladies and gentleman.

That's not it...

There's more than one nail in the coffin of all this debt that students are running into. It's quite nauseating to read. I'm no Russell Brand, and I'm not expecting anything to change. But people need to know what they're getting themselves into.

As this article from the BBC states, average student debt after graduation from university is currently sitting at around £50,000. It gets better.

Of course, as well as the fact that we pay £27,000+ for tuition, it is easy to forget that at the same time, there are no longer student grants, we receive maintenance loans, and we have to pay for accommodation at the same time - something else that has ballooned in price. One student residence in Coventry's base rate sits at a glorious £142 per week, almost double what a student can expect to pay for a shared house. But it's all part of the uni lifestyle, they say!

No family earning an average wage can afford £9000 per year for university, £6000 for housing, and living costs on top of that. But still, students are encouraged to study away from home 'for the freedom'. Or maybe they're clever enough to study at one of the best universities. But the chances are, the university in their area doesn't suffice.

And that's where the cherry on top of the cake is placed.

Interest

Interest, which most people don't even know about, begins as soon as courses commence, in first year. In the same article linked above, the BBC tried to contact the Department of Education for comment. They refused.

The fact that interest is even charged on the loans while students are studying and not working - i.e. not able to start paying it back, is stupid. And there aren't enough expletives to describe the figure. This autumn, with fees rising to £9250, interest is rising to 6.1%. That means that every year, 6.1% of the amount you borrow (without any choice, of course), will be added on top of what you already need to pay back. So £9250, plus your maintenance loan which might be £6000, equals £15250. 6.1% of that figure is £930.25. You've got to pay an extra £930.25 per year for not paying your money back straight away. Fair? I don't think so.

Personal experience

I’m not just plucking all this out of the air. I’m not just an angry person. And inspiration for this article actually comes from the fact that I attend university myself. Alright, if you study politics, or law, for example, you may be a bit closer to getting your money's worth. For journalism, a Bachelor of Arts subject, we were in for two days per week last year. Two days. And considering I was in university for a total of around thirty weeks per year - sixty days in total, that adds up to a price of £120 per day. One hundred and twenty pounds. Oh - and don’t forget that university courses start early October and end in mid-May.  Isn’t that good, they say? A long summer? Yep. A long summer - and an even longer debt.

By Joseph Connolly