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The students who claim that students' unions are "in the pocket of management" tend to be the ones who have failed and want to blame everyone else for their failure. They tend to be the ones who aren't happy with their life choices and want to blame the University for everything.
I believe there are too many Universities in the UK, and not all of them are worth paying to attend. But which University you go to, or whether you don't go to University at all, is a decision that you need to take personal responsibility for. Glossy PR videos and Open Day seminars are designed to show the University in the best light- they are promotional events, after all. There are plenty of independent places you can turn to to find out about the real reputation of a University.
University now will cost you around £40,000 (for tuition and living costs), plus interest. That is a clear and open fact. If you decide to spend £40,000 after watching a glossy YouTube video and nothing else, then that is your choice and your mistake.
I am not aware of a single University in the country with a dropout rate of 60%. The best universities in the UK have a dropout rate of about 2%, the absolute worst only have a dropout rate of 15%-20%.
Cat, you wanted a balanced view. I have no doubt there are people that get first or even second class degree that are happy and don't regret going to university. I think I have four friends like that, and one of them studied medicine. On the other side there are people that have had their lives ruined (for dozens of reasons) by university, and I am an example. My old employers don't really accept graduates, they have done but it's rare. If I had stayed there instead of going to university I would probably have been promoted and now be earning around 25K + benefits. Graduates these days don't earn that.
I'm not saying this happens to all students but as the videos above show university does many different things to people including drinking excessive alcohol, drugs, STDs and many others. For me maybe if I had studied a different subject, stayed in halls and gone to a different university my experience would have been different. As I have friends that went to different universities to me and regret doing so I still have my doubts about this. I find it strange that whatuni will not record the drop out rates or students that regret studying a degree at all
Lolololol. It's not like the 'university' forces people to get get together and locks away all the condoms.
Arctic clearly watched the videos, based on the comments he made. You're saying that university has ruined your friends lives - in what way? I struggle to understand how going to university can ruin a persons life. It's not like the university forces anything onto you - students are independent adults who can make their own free choices. You don't get STDs by going to university, you get an STD by having un protected sex. Same risk regardless of whether or not you're a student.
You say graduates don't earn £25,000. Some graduates do, some don't. Much like some of those at your old employer would have been promoted and some wouldn't.
Newsflash: you can get a first class degree and be a failure.
I think someone needs to put their Big Kid Shoes on and take some personal responsibility.
University makes you whap your leisure area out and have unprotected sex? Really? Are you quite sure about that?
There was me thinking that students were adult human beings who could make their own decisions. But it turns out that the Vice Chancellor was personally out making everyone do MDMA.
WhatUni is a commercial website, what they put on their website is for them to decide.
If a student wants to know about the course and their employment prospects on graduation, then Unistats will provide this information. Unistats is a Government initiative, not a commercial company, and universities have to have the Unistats information on each course page on their website.
Drop Out rates at every university in the country are recorded by the Higher Education Statistics Agency and are widely available to anyone who wants to look for them. For reference, the average drop out rate in the UK is a smudge under 8%.
Don't think that by going to Uni you're going to have an easier ride of it. You still have to work hard.
I didn't bother with Uni because I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted to do, that and I wanted to start earning money straight away. The only thing that I regret is not experiencing a student life style, but then because I was earning more money than I would have been I got to do a fair but more without having a huge debt to pay off.
I started off with some shit wages but I've worked hard and am pretty succesful now. I'm almost certainly better off than I would have been if I had went to Uni. I have a lot of friends who did decide to go to Uni, and have never used the qualifications they gained. I also have friends who have always know what they wanted to do, studied at Uni for it and have gone on to make it their career.
Uni is a good thing to do, but only if your sure about what you want to study. I think too many people feel that Uni is a right of passage and something they must do.
That's also forgetting the fact that I've an interest in history (I do have some regrets, mainly that I didn't go for philosophy with history rather than straight history) and I've learnt more about the world. I'll have to follow the robotic life of wake-work-eat-sleep-repeat, but at least at present I'm able to learn more about the world and life in general.
Price seems to be a big issue here for some reason. This year I personally got £8000ish to live off (£7000 maintenance loan and grant together, £1000 university bursary), with my accommodation costing £6000. I won't be "saddled with debt"; if I am lucky enough to get those oft-talked of but difficult to find "£21k p/a job" I'll be paying my loans off at about £40 a month.
Please answer this though: if you don't earn £21k a year, you don't pay your student loans back. How can you say university is losing you money, when if you don't walk into a decent job you don't pay any back whilst you've just had 3 years covered. If you indeed don't walk into a 21k job, with a degree, then you'd have had no chance without one, and thus your degree has just improved you already despite you not having to pay for it.
I've no concrete idea on what I want to do in life. But for these three years at university I don't have to worry about money, I don't have to worry about what I want to do, and I get time to both learn and develop myself.
I'm doing a 5 year course (before fees went up) and I estimate it will cost me (and my parents) £52,500. And obviously a lot of that is student loan money which I don't have to pay back straight away - although because I don't qualify for any means tested grant my parents do have to support me.
Breakdown per year:
Around £3000 tuition fees
Around £4000 accomodation (based on around £100 a week for 10 months and living with parents rent free for remaining time).
Around £3500 for everything else based on a budget of £50 a week plus extras such as petrol, hair cuts, other travel.
Edit: I see that you've include 'missed income' in your figures. Strange.
http://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/jun/01/graduate-job-hunting
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2349983/Graduate-tells-struggle-job-number-shelf-stackers-degree-double-just-years.html
If you do your research you will find that nearly half of all graduates are either on job seekers allowance or in a job on the minimum wage. Google 'number of graduates who don't use their degree Britain'
Source: Labour Force Survey - Office for National Statistics
Universities make public the number of graduates in employment. Just a thought, maybe you should have researched that before going. Or let me guess, you expected someone to spoon feed you that information too?
As far as I know, no one on here is a lecturer, we are just able to offer a more balanced approached to life and aren't blinkered by negativity.
Point for future reference: using capitals won't help to make your point any better. If anything, it achieves the opposite because it puts people off reading: no one wants to be cyber shouted at.
from here
SeyUK I'm almost certain it's currently 16K, not 21K. You are adding interest to your loan. I would now be in a job that pays around 21-30K (with overtime) if I had not studied a degree. Your assumption that you are better off with a degree is an outdated one and no doubt you have been influenced by your peers that university is a good idea.
I went to my local college yesterday to enrol my nephew on a course. I asked questions like 'Can I see the figures for how many people drop out and can I see the results from student satisfaction surveys or reviews that previous students have taken part in' She said 'We cannot give out that information'. Why the hell not...will it make you redundant? Some universities really wish that whatuni/youtube did not exist
Cat...I can understand your justification but why would anyone behave like this???? All people are interested in is what benefits themselves!
All colleges/universities care about is keeping unemployment down and tuition fees. If you enrol on a course you find that they are very keen to keep you on the course. That is because they do not hit their targets and get the tuition fees if students drop out. 10 yrs ago they never cared if people dropped out because they got their targets when students started the course, not whether they complete it!!
You keep banging on about this mythical job. If you would have had such an amazing job without going to University, why don't you try re-applying for it and let us all know how you get on?
Let me guess, you going to University means you can't apply for a job.
Tuition and maintenance loans together would typically come to around £15,000 per year, so around about £45,000 for a three-year degree. Most graduates will probably never repay all of it, as the debt is "written off" after 30 years. These are facts, and people should not spend £45,000 lightly.
Universities have always been paid based on continual attendance, not on whether someone starts the course. If a student drops out, the university loses the funding for that student. It doesn't matter whether the student is paying the full cost of tuition, as they are now, or whether HEFCE paid some of the cost through grants, as they used to. A student dropping out means no cash.
I have told you where to find dropout rates for University, why don't you try doing your own research instead of blaming everyone else for your own ineptitude?
It is what it is. I suspect many people reading the thread are not as angry and worked up about it as you appear to be.
I'm not sure how there's any possible way that you can know what your circumstances would have been had you chosen to take an entirely different path in life. You *might* be in a job or you might not. The job you might be in might be well paid, or not.
I'm not really sure how these things relate to each other? Accountants don't necessarily require degrees and nor do sparkies and since you're saying they might not have jobs anyway, how is that different to going to uni and not having a job?
That's a fairly cynical outlook. They were probably expecting that you might enjoy the experience of being at university.
I went to uni, and had a reasonable time whilst I was there. It was good to get out of my home town. It was good to meet different people. I'd say, overall, the degree was probably less useful than some of the people I met whilst doing it, but it's hard to say how my life would have gone otherwise, and every degree is different.
For any number of reasons. Not enough jobs in their target area?
I'm fairly sure that every careers person who I ever spoke to was fairly clear that going to university is not a free pass into any job. Not that I ever particularly relied upon a careers advisor to make my decisions for me.
From https://www.gov.uk/student-finance/repayments
For students with a pre-2012 loan (but not a pre-1998 "mortgage style loan"), repayments start when you're earning over about £16,500. For students with a post-2012 loan, repayments start when you're earning over about £21,000.
It's not necessarily for everyone, though I did decide to give it a shot and I never regret doing that.