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Spiralling uni fees is pushing top talent into dead-end jobs

RACHAEL OWHIN is trying to raise £10,000 in ten days.

She’s been offered a place on the University of Oxford’s MSc in migration studies. Even with savings and a bank loan, she’s short of cash to take up the place later this year. On her hubbub page, she writes: ‘As a second generation migrant myself, I am interested in researching the experiences of migrants, particularly in the African Diaspora, and their access to opportunities.’ At the time of writing, her crowdfunding page has raised just over £5,000. She’s well on her way to making the target.

IRONY

There’s a bitter irony here. Rachael’s crowd funding efforts highlight a gross inequity in the country’s higher education system. Postgraduate education is ridiculously unattainable. Fees are spiralling out of control, and we’re at the point where crowdfunding seems like the most sensible option. In fact, it’s become so common that an organisation named Student Funder opened its doors last year to help postgrad students crowd fund their degrees.

It goes without saying that higher education should be accessible to all who want to pursue it. That prospective students have to crowdfund their degrees demonstrates the abject failure of a government that chooses not to invest in education.

I have a huge amount of respect for those who get creative when faced with the prospect of an eye wateringly expensive postgraduate degree. I had a go at being a postgrad student myself, and failed miserably. It’s easy to get judgemental about those who apply for postgrad degrees without the funding in their pocket first. I was one.

Eager and passionate, I was so driven; I genuinely thought that you couldn’t put a price on a love of learning. It’s that faith, that love, and that passion that leads so many to apply and be damned. I went for it, took out a loan and hoped that things would work out. It didn’t.

As well as fees, there are living expenses. Though I needed a part-time job to survive, the university insisted that a full-time degree student shouldn’t work alongside a degree if they wanted to pass.

I was to treat the masters like a nine to five job. But without the money I needed to live comfortably in order to focus on education, I quickly wilted. I eventually found a job, but the terms of work were too rigid for me to concentrate on the degree properly. I ended up going for the short-term survival option.

It’s not as simple as insisting that would-be post grad students just get a job to save up to study. Most of us want to do the degree to get the job. Personal savings, like Rachael’s, barely stretch to tuition fees. Change is not impossible, but the political inclination isn’t there. Other European countries have different priorities. In Sweden, for example, higher education is completely free.

It’s not realistic to assume that someone in their early to mid-twenties has a spare £20,000 in their bank account.

Yet an increasing number of professions require a postgraduate degree before they’ll take you seriously. The fees will continue to climb. Wasted talent is instead funnelled into dead end jobs. Crowdfunding is an ingenious solution to an endemic problem but people will only put their hands in their pockets for so long. The system needs a change.

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