Feeling fresh?

So it seems congratulations are in order. Partly because, as you’ll no doubt have been told by parents/ teachers/ patronising elderly people, you’ve actually done very well. Sure, you’d probably been banking on a slightly thicker letter from Oxbridge, but – as you’ll read elsewhere in these pages – an organisation no one has heard of has ranked Warwick 58th in the world. Which can only be good.

There’s also cause for celebration in your decision to completely ignore every attempt made by successive governments to screw over tertiary education until it can only be afforded by people with a peerage. Such perseverance has already been rewarded with an apology from Nick Clegg no less. I imagine the debts feel less daunting already.

Seriously though, £9,000 a year is ridiculous. Based on this, and some admittedly rudimentary number crunching on my part, the contact hours for my final year English Literature degree would work out at roughly 71 pounds sterling a piece. That’s over a quid a minute.

Hopefully such a daunting hypothetical example is no more than that; with any luck proposals to increase the minimum number of contact hours will be passed within the first half of your degrees. And yet, whatever the outcome, the fact remains that you’re all confronted by an uphill challenge to squeeze value out of the degree system.

Some might argue that this is a silver lining to cling to. Whereas historically university has served as a bit of jolly, followed by the occasional curtailed period of honest hard work, it could now become a utopia of scholarship preparing the next generation for work.

But then again, is that really the point? Working for a degree through further education should be as much a means as the end. A means by which to develop into a well-rounded person, rather than merely educate a brain in subject-bound isolation.

With this in mind, it is perhaps wise to move away from the easily held perception of value as represented by money invested automatically equalling prospective progression. Ok, so you may be charged at a rate normally reserved for upmarket sexual transactions, but that shouldn’t stipulate how you enjoy the exchange (if you’ll ignore the crude vulgarity of such a metaphor).

All that matters is that you act with conviction (here endeth the analogy). If you grew up picturing university as a no-holds-barred sexual and alcoholic free-for-all, so be it. Go out, drink a million litres of alcohol and rut yourself red raw. No one, not your tutors or Mr Cameron, can make you do otherwise. Likewise, those among you who want to work hard, get a first and move on swiftly to the next stage will be met with equal – if not greater – provisions for the task.

These options, and everything in between, are on offer at Warwick. Whatever you do decide however, just remember not to take the next few years at half-cock.

Attempting to muddle through has always been the approach taken by some. There’s a vague nobility about it – a devil may care insouciance is undeniably louche. Yet there’s surely nothing worse in this economic climate than wasting both time and money.

In light of which, as clichéd as this cliché has fast become, it really makes sense to either ‘go hard or go home’. Or graduate and move abroad – they can’t charge you in that case.