Idiot Commenters, You Were Wrong: Thousands of Young People Are Reconsidering Uni Now Grants Are Gone

Important news: I was right, my detractors were wrong; I am the high lord and everything I deign is correct. All you doubters are the mess and the silt at the bottom of my river, do not step to me, never come for me, say it with handclaps to define every point: do. not. @. me.

But also: some deeply sad news.

To recap: last week was Day One on the inevitable toppling from the bottom up of the entire labyrinthine mess of higher education in this country, when grant cuts announced in July 2015 finally came into effect. In short: vital living expenses grants available to students from low-income families were stopped and, instead, offered up as loans, so now if you want to go to university in this country and your mum and dad are poor then you have to i. take out a loan for each year's study fees, which are rising to £9,250 in some unis next year and who knows what by Year 3; ii. take out a loan to cover your living costs, i.e. food and exorbitant student town landlord rents and fees; iii. really hope and pray this gamble was worth it, because the current economic climate seems to suggest graduates barely out-earn non-graduates over the course of a lifetime now, with any perceived salary advantage being more-or-less balanced out by loan repayment fees, and also the economy en masse being so fuck-a-doodle that getting a decent paid job for your expertise is next to impossible anyway. So we live in a hopeful time.

Reactions to the piece I wrote about this mess, "I Wouldn't Be Writing This If the University Grants System Never Existed", fit vaguely into three categories:

i. "Strong agree, sir!"

ii. "Why should I – a good and honest taxpayer, my only identity is being a taxpayer, the only thing I hold dear to me is the tax I pay into the realm, even though taxpaying is a legal requirement for literally every earning human in the country I somehow think the tax I specifically pay – me, Ron from Derby – the tax I and I alone pay is sacred, I count and weigh every pound of it, every lamppost and every hospital, me, I paid for that, me, with my tax – why should I, a taxpayer, pay for other people's education?" and;

iii. "This grants news won't stop poor kids going to university because I have coldly run the numbers and you stop paying your loans back after 30 years anyway, retract your piece because of mathematics"

Short story: lots of commenters and tweeters in reaction to both my piece and the general news said that, really, it shouldn't make any difference because working class kids can still get loans. But: as expected, I was actually entirely correct, because new and unbelievably-rapidly commissioned and collated data from giffgaff has found that over half of young people aged 16 to 21 are seriously reconsidering their university application following the grants news. Over half!

According to the study, in a poll of over 2,000 16-to-21-year-olds, 55.1 percent answered "yes" to the question: "Have the recent changes made you reconsider alternatives to university?" In addition, 90 percent thought the new changes had restricted opportunities for young people, and roughly a third (29 percent) thought the new changes actively favoured students from rich backgrounds.

Richard "Big Dicky" Apletree, giffgaff Money's CEO, said: "Young people are feeling their chances of a better future being pushed away, and the removal of university grants is just one element of that. It is disheartening to hear that aspirational, young people from lower financial backgrounds feel that certain experiences or life goals may be out of reach due to a lack of support."

Meanwhile, NUS VP Sorana Vieru said: "The NUS condemns the government's move to scrap maintenance grants, which will have a huge impact on 500,000 students. It's a disgraceful change that basically punishes poorer students simply for being poor, so they have to take a bigger loan than those students from privileged backgrounds. In just one year the government has scrapped maintenance grants, NHS bursaries, cut the Disabled Students' Allowance to the bone, changed loan repayment terms to make graduates pay back their loans faster and is now planning a further rise in tuition fees. We urgently need to review this unsustainable funding system which will force students into a lifetime of debt."

So yes: looks like, despite the fact that you could feasibly mop up all the grants mess with loans, a lot of young people suddenly do not think that £60k+ of debt paid in tiny increments over 30 years is quite worth a 2.1 in English Literature and the boring office job that qualifies you for afterwards. It's getting harder and harder to end these kind of pieces on a breezy "But university is still good, guys! Definitely you should go!" twist, but essentially: whether you think university is good, or worth it, is all irrelevant, because it straight up sucks that some 500,000 students are now very definitely (as backed up by data) having to reconsider whether they take up the opportunity to go and be smart at university just because of austerity.

@joelgolby

More stuff about universities, the doom implicit within:

A Third of Graduates Regret Going to University

My Life and Times at Britain's Worst University

Zero Hours Contracts Are Driving University Lecturers To Despair