2+2 = -£20,000 that’s if 2=BA and 2=MA to the power of 4 years

It’s quite surreal having all this free time all of a sudden. For the best part of three months I’ve been working flat out, but for now it’s calm and I find myself waking up later and going to be in the wee hours of the morning.

It’s given me a lot of time to look to the future and to wonder what life will hold in store for me after Falmouth. I certainly think I’m done once and for all with eductation! I’ve spent seventeen years taking SATS, GCSE’s, A-Levels and doing a BA and an MA and  I think I’ve had my fill.

That’s not to say I haven’t enjoyed and appreciated all the time I’ve spent learning. The 18 months I spent out of the educational bubble has made me appreciate this one final year all the more. But all good things have to come to an end if only for the simple reason that my bank balance can’t take the strain any longer!

The greatest pain in my student life has been the knowledge that I’ve been digging a great big financial hole. By the time my year in Falmouth is over I’ll be roughly £21,000 in debt and that’s not including interest. Even so, I’m among the last generation of students who didn’t have to pay top of fees and Universities want to be able to charge even more in the next few years.

My sister, and others like her who started University in 2006, they will owe roughly £20,000 and that’s for an undergraduate degree. The Government has defended such levels of student debt, saying that graduates will earn more over their lifetimes and that the student loan repayments are staggered so that they will have little impact.

Perhaps two or three years ago this rang true, but in todays financial climate who knows what the value of a degree will be? Is a degree going to be worth £20,000? and will such huge sums of debt help cripple a generation or two. I don’t profess to know all about the conomy but it doesn’t make sense to me.

The pension crisis means we’re being told to prepare earlier and earlier for retirement and to start paying into our pensions. At the same time the mortgage market is at the point where people need to save more and more before they can get on the housing ladder. Couple this with the fact that there are more and more graduates and logic dictates that the net value of having a degree will decrease, and with it wages.

So is it right to charge young people and more often then not, their parents, so much for an education? Does the entire system need changing, or do people need to accept the fact they have to pay now to have the chance to earn later?

I don’t know if it will all implode or what the answer is, but from a personal standpoint I’m a little bit worried.

This fear is only magnified by the fact I’m trying to forge a career in the media where wages are notoriously low and right now jobs are harder and harder to come by.

Trying to forge a career in the media, especially on the journalism side of things, is a double edged sword. On the one hand the sense of well being and the joy of doing something you really love is amazing. But on the other hand you are told and quickly find out that the pay you’re going to get is going to be low, the hours long and room for error is slim. That’s if you get a job at all! If it all works out and I get to report on sport for a living, then I don’t care how much I make financially as long as I can afford a roof above my head and can pay my bills.

But what happens if you don’t make it?

We’ve been told by so many guests this year that to make it in this industry you sometimes have to make tough sacrifices. You may have to move to obscure parts of the country, work hours that mean you have no social life and give hours and days of your life to tv and radio stations for free, paying to get there.

It all means that wannabe journalists have to make very tough choices right from the word go. You work just as hard as those who can earn large sums of money but you realise you have to sacrifice years of your life and thousands of pounds for no guaranteed returns.

The only option to keep piece of mind is to back yourself all the way and do everything in your power to make it. Worrying about not making it does puts me through emotional strain, but it does inspire me to succeed and to make the most of any and every chance I get. For me the rewards of succeeding far outweigh the financial worries that go through my head. I realise that I might not be able to afford a holiday or a nice car for a decade or more but it will only make that eventual holiday all that bit more amazing. More to the point, if you didn’t have to make sacrifices and go through hardships then what you’re aiming for may not be worth it in the first place.

I guess the  credit card advert is right, cost of four years study, £20,000, satisfaction of getting your dream job. Priceless.

~ by wimbles on March 24, 2009.