UK University Subsidy Cuts

I had a foretaste of the recent protests this week when I was a graduate student in the UK more than 10 years ago, when the British government wanted to enact a small increase in the fees to be paid by local students. The usual 'this will hurt the poor' chorus was sung out very loudly. At my school, the irony of course was that most of the local students were from well-to-do families, and were expected to join the country's elite given the pedigree of the qualifications that they were in the process of acquiring.

I'd say that I was in full support of the fee increases back then, and even more so now, given the dire state of the UK's fiscal health. Like it or not, British higher education is a waste of taxpayers' money. I would say that more than half of the universities are not more than what in Singapore we would consider as polytechnics, producing graduates that lack the level of skills and knowledge that would accrue from a proper university education.

As an illustrative example, I met one of my house-mate's university buddy. He got a 2nd lower honours degree from a university that was near the lower half of the 2nd tier of universities in the UK. He only managed to get a local council job that paid GBP 9000 per year at the time (That's like, after tax, making S$1 k a month as a graduate). My house-mate, a British PhD candidate in biochemistry, told me that in most cases, if one fails to get a 2nd upper honours degree, it was as good as not having a degree when it comes to assessing one's prospects in the job market. That to me was the key to the issue of quality - if employers are not willing to hire people below 2nd upper honours, it means that the pieces of paper held by most graduates didn't count for much.

UK under the Labour government has pursued extremely socialistic policies, and now the taxpayers are asked to pay for that overwhelming burden. Cutting university spending is a move in the right direction. The higher-education bubble should be popped sooner than later.