Places for the Rich at University

Ok, so it’s really rare for me to post this often but today I saw a news article which touched a nerve.

The story was about university and discussed whether wealthy students should, in effect, buy their places at university. You can read the article here. The latest on the story is that David Cameron has rejected the proposals, but I’m not entirely convinced.

Now, I already know of cases whereby people have simply bought their way into university. People who fail their A-levels can still end up at a university because their parents pay their fees up front. This is an obviously unfair practice, but I can’t really blame the universities for acting in this way. After all, the sooner the university gets the fees from the students the better – they are running a business through education, sadly. Imagine you’re a business owner. Two customers wish to purchase the same item – let’s say it’s a Steinway Piano (my dream purchase). One person is capable of playing the piano and greatly desires the item, however they have to take some time to gather the money to pay. The other can pay you immediately and can even pay a little over the asking price, but they only want the piano because it’s a Steinway – they can’t actually play. Who are you going to give the piano to? Morals aside, most people would go for the second person because it’s simply good business. This is how universities operate.

So, if this is already going on then why am I so annoyed that a proposal has been set to allow people to do this openly? Well, my main reason is that these “extra” places won’t actually work in this way, and they seem like a guise for allowing the unable elite to gain degrees. Because the universities are allowed to recruit wealthy, but not necessarily academically gifted, students openly, then in all likelihood they will fill most of their places with such students as opposed to students who rely on a loan. When this happens, then university doesn’t become an educational establishment, but rather a place for the rich to spend their time and we return to the days of university for the elite only.

My other argument against this practice is that if the wealthy university students are meant to be at the establishment (by ‘meant’ I mean that they have the necessary grades and they are capable of getting a degree) why do they need places set aside? Surely they would get into university normally, i.e., without getting Daddy to pay?

In my personal experience, I never felt that university was for me precisely because of my background. I am not rich, I can’t afford to go to university without the provision of student finance and I live in a ‘bad’ area, however I am academically gifted. It was only my tutors and family convincing me that university wasn’t a playground for the elite that made me realise I was able to attend. Under these proposals of extra places for the wealthy we go back to my old view of university – fabulously wealthy people obtaining their degrees through the ‘Old Boy’s Network’ whilst the able working class are trapped. Social mobility would stop.

This story has made me question university practices further. If places for poorer students need to be subsidised by the wealthy buying places then surely there is a fundamental issue with tuition fees anyway. When the £9,000 fees were proposed, supposedly the government anticipated a small minority of universities charging such a high amount. In reality this hasn’t happened – why charge £6,000 when you can charge £9,000? It’s not as if students have a choice. If a student really wants to go to a certain university and complete a certain degree the putting up with the fees is tough. An authority figure of my university was recently in my local paper defending the rise to £9,000 fees. She stated that it cost £10-12,000 to educate a student at university, and so £9,000 fees were a reasonable amount. Now, I spotted a flaw in her argument whereby she never stated that it cost £10-12,000 per year to educate a student – in all likelihood it costs this amount over three years. In that case, a £27,000 degree is paying way over the odds. If it genuinely cost at least £10,000 per year to educate one student, then this begs the question of why most of the universities have managed to stay open by charging around £3,000 per year. Surely they would have all closed down by now as they would have theoretically made nearly a £7,000 loss per year? The fact that the universities are still open seems to me to be a sign that it does not cost £10,000 per year, but rather for a whole degree. So, universities are making profits and the rise in tuition fees means that these profits have now been vastly increased.

If you add this argument to allowing the wealthy to pay higher prices to buy places, then it seems that the entire education system is now moving back to elitism. Nobody from my educational background would stand much of a chance if all of these proposals are put in place – returning to my earlier analogy, I am the pianist who has to take time to gather the funds to purchase the Steinway, rather than the one who can pay up front. It seems that we are going back to a case of ‘not what you know, but who you know’ again, whereby talent counts for nothing if you can’t pay. I am honestly thinking of starting a foundation for talented students from poor backgrounds to enable them to stand a good chance of getting into university in the future. If the proposals come into place then these students will need all the help they can get, and I’m not prepared to let people like me (with unconventional backgrounds) lose an amazing opportunity to maximise their potential.