Forums > Social Discussion > how do you pay for university where you live?

Posted: 4th Jun 2008

 Written by :Dr_Birgit


scrap the uni fees (500 Euro per term, i.e. 1000 per year).

1000 euro a year? thats only about $1615 australian! that doesnt even cover one semester of the cheapest uni courses here!

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Posted: 5th Jun 2008
$2544 is how much next semester will cost me when I have to start paying the government back. And I'm doing a course on the cheapest band (excluding the government subsidised ones)

i would have changed ***** to phallus, and claire to petey Petey

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Posted: 5th Jun 2008
Well you see, the difference is that most people for example in the UK will get a student loan covering their fees, whereas in Germany while I was still studying, one of my friends got a student loan of 18 Euros a month. It helped her pay part of the bus ticket... bearing in mind that a typical BSc takes about 3 years whereas my diploma (done half a year quicker than recommended time) took 5 1/2, so if you had the same fees people would be working them off twice as long.

Also the services universities provide are much more comprehensive (I won't say better because some I think is unnecessary) than in Germany. Student unions with subsidised drinks for example. Mothering students from when they join to when they finish, so that half of them when they leave still can't look after their diary. Other services of course are good and I wish we'd had them.

Also the student/teacher ratio in Germany is appalling. There was a lot of debate when the fees were introduced a few years ago as to what they should be used for, and technically they do have to be invested in improving the universities, but then that's hard to check because unis can simply pull some of the money they would've been spending on improvements off and use that for something else.

Anyway. We used to have the right for a free education (if you studied really really long without a medical excuse or did a second subject you'd have to pay), and I would like that back.

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Posted: 5th Jun 2008
THis semester, with 4 units, has just cost me $2000: as an external student. For that we received online access to some study notes (some OK, some seriously shoddy) and .pdf's of assorted literature. Some recycled 'lecture' notes that were high school level at best; they didn't even bother to change the dates from a few years ago. Access to brief phone conversations with our 'lecturers' if we hassle. Some lecturers showed no real interest in us at all, one gave a hoot and provided a tutorial on how to use the library and a couple of meetings; I could only attend one due to the timing and of course most external students don't live anywhere near the campus. No use of student guild as we aren't on campus but we did get a mass lecture on how to cite and structure essays.



I think really what we paid for is the library, including access to online academic databases: without which I would have learned very little. Yep, as adult students we sure do have to be self directed!! It's an adult education degree so I did one assignment on best practice in distance education just to see what I was missing!



Due to previous experience and quals I have been given credit for 20 of the 32 units in the degree, thank heavens! So it should be about the cheapest, fastest degree I can possibly get: 2 years, at a cost of about $6000. I certainly wouldn't want to be paying more than that for what we are getting.

.....Can't juggle balls but I sure as hell can juggle details....

Posted: 5th Jun 2008
Good News (olds) for future UK students

The cap coming off UK fees is now all but a certainty, so fee ammount will soon be at the University's discretion.

Tagline:
This is to cover the financial instability created by the increasingly 'consumer' mind set of students.

This consumer market was created by the introduction of fees and now it seems even higher fees are the answer!

I have a little grapevine information being a Uni admin ninja, which goes like this, the introduction of fees meant people suddenly wanted bang for their buck; "I'm now paying £3000 a year, why is the quality of course/facilities not improving", in short the answer to this would be because there's no more money, it's just coming from somewhere else.

However rather than admit financial weakness (as we all know, a University's reputation is everything), the problem was ignored, which means that while everything has been getting shinier on campus, in many cases the infrastucture has all but collapsed. The answer? As I said, more money. From where? You guys!! Vicious circle anyone? "I'm now paying £4000 where's my particle accelerator"

As a drop-out with no student loan left and a half interest in university I obviously don't have as strong an opinion as many of you will, but thought I'd fuel the fire a little.

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