Reader email showing depth of feeling against Policy Exchange’s university funding proposals

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

After my post on Friday about Policy Exchange’s recommendation that universities “create a market” by charging up to £5,000 for student fees and allowing a tiered system, I thought others would be interested to see the email I received from a reader in response.

The message I received – as well as the comments in the orginial post – shows the depth of feeling on the unfairness of the Policy Exchange recommendations:

“We had 12 years of Blair pledging to get more and more of us into University – but at what cost? It would be fascinating for someone to do a study on the psychological impact of graduate debt on our generation – how much we’ve changed in our attitudes to consumption, financial planning, budgets and so on – from our parents’ days.

Being 26, with multiple thousands of pounds worth of student debt on my shoulders is wounding. Actually writing that sentence made me feel sick. It inhibits my ability to make positive financial decisions – like taking out a mortgage, taking a career-break, not using credit cards.

I’m one of many people who would have risked missing out if Policy Exchange had their way. I was the first in my family to go to a red-brick, and paid my own way through 4 years of study stuffing envelopes, pulling pints, silver-serving, cold-calling and ultimately dressed as a 16th Century wench giving bored Americans historical tours between lectures (no joke, it involved wearing a bonnet) – because my student loan didn’t even cover my rent. There’s no amount of historical reenactment you can do in your spare time that would pay for a 500% increase in tuition fees. I simply couldn’t have gone.

Would I do University again? In a heartbeat, for all the magnificent things that you can do there, and even though I go green when I think of the debt. Would I pay 5 times as much for it? Ultimately, that’s not a choice, it’s a fact – you either have the money or you don’t.

Do Policy Exchange genuinely think 18 year olds will sit down and think carefully about the various pros and cons of attending Oxbridge for 5k over the university down the road for 2K? And then sit back in years to come and reflect on how savvy they were to find the best budget option for them?

How dare we turn a decision about attending University into anything other than a sheer desire to learn in an environment you find thrilling and challenging. And make such a crippling financial decision before you’ve even earned your first paycheck.”