Students Forever in Debt?

There are articles all over the papers about the Governments spending costs and the rise of tuition fees. As a student myself paying £3,290 a year to attend the university and be taught on the subject I wish to have as a career one day I am already in debt. The question is, "how much debt is too much debt?" £3000 or so is a lot of money to pay for an education, however it is nothing in contrast with how much the potential hike to £12,000 a year is. I am looking at paying back about £20,000 when I have finished university and I am in a full time job. If the rise happens students could be facing a pay back of £40,000 after they have finished their course.

I have always wanted to be a journalist, for as long as I can remember, attending university was just the next step in accomplishing the career I want. However I question if I would attend university if, at the end of it I had to pay back around £40,000. There are other ways of becoming a journalist. Courses sometimes run by newspapers, the British College of Journalism run a 12 or 24 week course on how to be a freelance journalist and even ''Guarantees Your Success'. From the site you can request a free 24 page booklet about the program and your preferred news you would like to write about. Alternatively it is also recommended for you to get work experience and build on it until you become hired. With all these different ways of becoming a journalist, could university's become irrelevant when the debt is so high and it is possible to work in the industry without a BA in that subject.

I read in the Daily Echo an article, written by the editor, Ian Murray, about tuition fees and university life. After not attending university himself and still working in the top post of a newspaper, this shows for itself that the university degree may not be as important as actual experience; or maybe just sheer luck. In the article he writes how it is understandable that the university's need more money and that the Government have to make changes for the economy but he also adds a solution.

Murray's solution is to turn three year courses in to two years of study. I currently spend about five and a half months in University, not counting the month off for Christmas or the month for Easter. I also have roughly have about four months off for summer. This would then mean that if we halved the summer break and had two weeks for Christmas and Easter we could spend only two years at university; leaving with a debt of £30,000 instead of the proposed £40,000. Of course this would work for a majority of courses but not the extra long ones like Architecture and Medicine.

As a student that is desperate to start my chosen career with as little debt as possible I would be very happy to do an immense two year course. However if the only change is the rise of tuition fees I can't help but ask, "could this lessen the amount of people that attend university in the long run?"

www.britishcollegeofjournalism.com