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Economist Debates: The cost of higher education
higher education, their education choices will be more
reasoned and more reasonable. But I am slightly puzzled by
the example she gives of the two apprentices, who seem to
have made perfectly sensible decisions, and found
themselves something they enjoyed with excellent career
prospects. What does bother me is the way that higher
subsidies for university than for apprenticeship may distort
people’s choices, and the way in which some jobs are
becoming, quite unnecessarily, open to graduates only. That
means people can feel almost forced to go to university even
when they do not really want to, to their and the taxpayers’
cost.
Finally, I do, of course, agree strongly with those comments
that emphasise that we appreciate what we have to pay and
work for. I am horrified, at a personal level, by how little I
appreciated the real cost of my own “free” university
education when I was a student, and by how I took for
granted that I had some sort of right to it. It is also striking
that students who pay tend not only to be more engaged and
more demanding, but that differences persist after
graduation. The amounts that alumni give to their old
universities suggest that paying for our education makes us
more grateful, and more generous, too. So please vote in
favour of the motion, for the sake of universities
everywhere.
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