(source - telegraph.co.uk)
I went to university, well three in fact (Dundee, Grenoble and Clermont Ferrand in case you’re curious). I learnt lots of things I’m sure; I just can’t remember most of them now.
It’s funny but I don’t actually have that many memories of university life, well, actually it’s probably pretty understandable if you think about it.
I was of a generation that was lucky enough to be able to afford to go to university without having to take out a debt my children will still be paying off as adults. Even though we lived off ten pounds a week, we were also lucky enough to enter further education at a time when a pint cost less than a pound in the union bar, so that’s a bag of potatoes and nine pints a week, sorted.
Life was spent being vegetarian and existential, listening to the Cure and putting the world to rights. Not forgetting chips in curry sauce on the way home of an evening (that was Dundee not Grenoble).
Maybe we didn’t appreciate how lucky we were, OK, no maybe about it.
It seems unfair, and actually more than unfair, but wrong that as our society is progressing, and one would hope improving, that young people can’t experience university life without crippling debt any longer, that students must now investigate the profitability of any course they study.
I know there are some Mickey Mouse subjects out there, but what about literature, history, philosophy, and a hundred other similar courses, will the world be a better place if nobody studies them anymore?
I may not make direct use of what I learnt in lectures (even the ones I was awake in), but university certainly played an important role in making me who I am today, and that must count for something, like with most things in life I just feel that people should be given a choice.
