Is my tuition worth the £9,000 a year?
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his week Warwick SU released an official statement against the recent decision by the government to cut maintenance grants which will affect “…students from families with annual incomes of £25,000 or less (who) get the full grant of £3,387 a year” (BBC News.) We don’t need to look very hard around campus to see students also protesting against tuition fees and cuts to student grants.
All of this raises the question of whether or not the money we (have to) pay for university is worth it, especially when so many of us will be in debt once we graduate.
Accepting that, despite the repeated protests against fees, tuition costs money, the next question is whether the education we receive reflects the price we pay. Looking at Warwick in particular, at first glance I would say yes. This university is consistently in the top 10 in the league tables in the UK and in the top 100 universities in the world. This doesn’t happen by chance.
We don’t need to look very hard around campus to see students protesting against tuition fees and cuts to student grants.
The teaching here is amongst the highest quality in the world. The professors at the forefront of their fields and we have lecturers here who wrote the textbooks on our reading lists. Granted in some cases this can be seen as shameless self-promotion on the lecturer’s behalf, but these books are internationally acclaimed; they are even referenced in our other textbooks.
Lectures in the majority of subjects are not compulsory but most of the ones I have attended have been captivating. Yes, you do get the odd lecturer who is not as engaging, but the content is still phenomenal. In my experience, seminars are generally well managed and interesting.
Now that the university website has been refurbished, it is much easier to access the materials necessary to contribute fully in seminars. If you’ve bothered to do the reading and prepare the questions, seminars are a fantastic way of being taught. They really do enhance your understanding of the issues. Also, seminars give the opportunity to get into the issues much more deeply than lectures. The majority of seminars in my experience have been fascinating and worth attending.
Outside of providing lectures and seminars, universities also use our tuition fees to supply us with personal tutors who, throughout the course of our degree, are meant to support and encourage us. However, given that most students only see their personal tutor once or twice a term, it just doesn’t seem like we are getting what we pay for.
90 minutes of personal tutor time in a degree is simply not acceptable.
You don’t get enough time with personal tutors. While some are lucky to have a good relationship with their personal tutor (I for example am rather fond of mine) many find their personal tutors to be strangers, who don’t know much about them. This probably comes from the fact that personal tutor meetings generally come in 10 minute slots. Honestly, 90 minutes of personal tutor time in a degree is simply not acceptable.
In summary, we are taught through lectures and seminars and for most students, they are generally worth it. We’ve all been in few lectures which you wouldn’t rave to your friends about, but in general the quality of the teaching is still of a high standard. The same goes for seminars. If you make the most of them they are great to enhance your knowledge of specific issues and help a lot with regards to the notes you can take and use later for essays and exams.
Personal tutors are a wasted asset as we hardly get to see them and the other services provided by the university are a mixed bag.
Overall, I would say that although the £9000 we pay is unnecessary and unjustified, our tuition at this university is well worth it.
Comments (2)
This university where we pay £9k for overcrowded study spaces, oversubscribed courses and overworked staff forced to work more and more for less and less whilst management pat themselves on the back and up their already substantial wages year on year. Meanwhile vital services such as university counselling are left underfunded despite the soaring rates of mental health problems at Warwick. Look beneath the Warwick Ltd gloss and see that all the money has been wasted on superficialities instead of key facilities that enable a healthy community where education is more important than profit.
Also if you’re unconvinced consider the mediocre yet extortionately priced food on campus. The high rent for those living on campus and instead of making more affordable accomodation they spend their money on halls set to be more expensive than Bluebell. Or what about Warwick Sport how much money does that suck out of students’ pockets?
Tuition fees are part of rebranding education as a product rather than a social good. In a competitive market it’s more important to sell yourself with glossy bullshit than it is to actually provide affordable, accessible and good quality higher education.
What an awful writing style.