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1. I am an American and, if I may, I’d like to add my two cents to the conversation as a word of warning as to what we call “tuition” and your government obliquely defines as top-up fees has done to the state of higher education here in the US. In order to allow you to understand my position, a history lesson is in order. Up until World War II the American education system was much like Britain’s in that the most well-heeled were admitted and university studies were strictly for the purpose of creating scholars and, most importantly, well-rounded citizens with strong critical thinking skills. After the war, our government passed the GI Bill giving many returning GIs the ability to go to university, making most the first member of their entire family to ever go to what we call college. The entry of mass numbers, often from the working class, entering the pseudo-socialist confines of American higher education frightened a great number of conservative including the likes of Joe McCarthy. Something needed to be done to halt the potential indoctrination of impressionable young men not only at universities but also in union-affiliated manufacturing jobs and from exposure to the leftist ideas being pumped out by the biggest Satan of all, Hollywood. It was feared that by over exposure to philosophies peddled in these bastions of Reds (uni, unions and the arts) to the post WWII generation in the ’50’s could do damage to potential capitalistic successes of the heightened consumerism that was to follow and undermine the imperialist direction of America’s foreign policy. So blowhards like Joe McCarthy did all they could to drive socialism and all other liberal ideology from these institutions. It wasn’t wholly successful but it did soften the espousals of leftist thinking on American college campuses (with the occasional flair ups during the Vietnam War).

   Concurrent with this ideological struggle in the US, is the growing phenomenon of corporations and government agencies using the talent pool in American universities as a sort of research and development laboratory strictly built for their own purposes. These captains of industry and directors of government policies (who had grown accustomed to the generosity of the hand outs given to them during World War II as a means developing products and technology that had long been placed on the back burner) began using this untapped resource of energetic yet less-than-savvy “workers/students” to do the grunt work for much of the new technological research necessary to keep America industry and it’s military competitive. The effect of these policies have turned the university from a center of learning to a center of amphetamine-fueled lab rats posing as students running in circles in a clear plastic ball for the shear pleasure of corporate America and the Defense Department; meaning the American university student body, for the most part (with the occasional bone thrown to pet projects that only have purely cultural ramifications) have become instruments of indentured servitude for economic and security needs that tend to benefit the few.

   Why is any of this important to the average British university student? Well, because Britain (and much of the rest of Europe as well as significant numbers of Asians and, well, damn near the rest of the world) is, for better or worse, competing with American university model and losing it’s edge. There has been a huge brain drain from the rest of the world into the American system because on a purely economic level other university systems cannot compete with the huge endowments of most of America’s universities, not to mention the large amounts of money collected by hook or crook by the students (mostly undergraduates) themselves in the form of tuition. An British graduate student, for example, f they should decide to study in the US (depending on their area of study) can expect to work with some of the best instructors, use some of the most expensive materials, and have access to some of the latest technology in the world. A British university, with their comparatively smaller budgets can hardly begin to compete. Unless, of course, they start charging students more and start allowing private interest to impose it’s will on the academic curriculum. Sure you’ll be able to compete for the best students. But these students will work as underpaid grunts in highly specialized projects and be forced to lose focus on the rest that higher learning has to offer (other than pub crawls).

   So now the British education system, as is the British way of life, is at a threshold. Follow suit with the Americans or continue to hold on to tradition. You each need to ask yourself, is the purpose of higher education to produce learned, broad-minded, well-rounded, critical-thinking citizens or is it to create an educated yet narrowly-aware, overly-specialized, financially-indebted, easily-led drone for the machine? It’s up to you. Make the choice now before the choice is made for you.

   Comment by Kim — 8 Oct 2007 on 11:10 am | Link

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