The Catch 22 of Paying Off your Tuition Fees- Student Stories May be Enough to be Headline News; They’re Not Valued Enough to Promote Change
It’s not everyday that you get interviewed by the BBC in your Hyde Park house, and it’s certainly a surprise if they also somehow plug your music video on national breakfast TV. But, here they were: 3 dexterous journalists with protruding camera gear, bustling around our leafy university campus. (Disclaimer: they were actually friendly). Frantically pursuing the hot topic of the future of UK universities, they were also attempting to paint a picture of me- a working class English and Music student who broke the glass ceiling to a Russell Group university. Hooray. More like a distressed deer in camera lights with an overdraft. While feeling more self-conscious than ‘main character’ about what the surrounding lunchtime regulars outside the union thought of me, seeing as I had a huge camera in my face, what struck me the most was not misfortune by any means; it was my privilege.
Despite receiving a hefty maintenance loan compared to other students for being low-income, I felt embarrassed that I couldn’t find a way to make it work, while my peers get lower than me. When interviewed about how I was budgeting, I simply responded “with what?”. My first loan was used to pay off an accumulating overdraft, and has now run down to a very minuscule figure. All summer I had been looking for work, next to unreliable agency bar jobs, and feeling the impending doom of not being able to pay my rent, as well as internal shame over going for a few drinks or on a post-exam holiday (that my boyfriend covered mostly). I knew that I was hitting the minuses and digging my own grave deeper and deeper but that somehow, others had it worse. I just got lucky that I was in a single-parent household and a low-income background when I signed up. That’s the only difference between my friends and I. Luck. We are all making our circumstantial sacrifices, with it feeling like being a gamble for simply meeting at our favourite pubs or working late shifts instead of doing our reading. Putting all of this together and digesting it with the fact that you will still be £40k out of pocket by the age of 21, my acceptance of that UCAS university offer when I was 18 now feels like a debt sentence.
The government’s decision on raising maintenance loans could be a comfort for younger students, but as tuition fees go up by 3.1%, it begs many more questions; will the average student who takes out loans ever pay off their loan and if not, who makes a loss from this? I’m no economics student, and it shouldn’t take choosing a degree that clearly hasn’t produced much success in parliament to know these things, but I’ll let my armour down and put this decision down to the transition of a new government. If education has now become a business, using supply/demand models and morally-controversial stakeholders, shouldn’t we as customers have a right to know where our pennies are thrown instead of the magic wishing well for graduate jobs, also known as LinkedIn? It’s a Catch 22, for my fellow literary folk.
Student loans were once a long-term investment into celestial careers; in a precarious, post-pandemic Britain, it’s a reminder of the country’s subconscious obsession with class and exploitation of working people. Student stories may be enough to be headline news, but they’re not valued enough to promote real change. I can see the Facebook comments now; a cesspit of middle-aged keyboard warriors who hate Mickey Mouse degree pursuers (and themselves more probably), or politicians pushing an agenda with no solutions for job seekers. As the reporters leave my music producers’ house, our set for filming that day, I sink into the couch. I am left plagued by just two thoughts: 1. how that was the best discreet marketing for any up-and-coming musician to ever score, and 2. the reminder that student stories like mine are only worth reporting for a day of pity, never truly empathising with or fixing.
Words by Eszter Vida
Cover Image Credit: Institute of Fiscal Studies
