h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

tuesday
i've been protesting ever since i got to uni, going on marches and stuff, and i was up stupidly early on tuesday lobbying my mp (who turned out to be out of the country until 5 mins before the vote, and therefore not able to speak to any students about their views, sorry for any inconvenience) and demo-ing (but the demo was a bit of a wash out, was hijcked my socialist worker people and lots of arrests etc, which was exactly the publicity we didn't need)
and it was all for nothing. in 2006, everyone who wants an education will be paying £9k for a standard degree. and in 2010, when the government say the cap is coming off, the same degree will cost you £45k at places like oxbridge, imperial, lse.
how is this fair? how can people who had a completely free education, with grants, decide that we have to pay exorbiant amounts for ours? and its mostly to do with this stupid percentage that the government have seemingly picked out of thin air-50% of people will be in higher education. except they won't, because they won't be able to afford it. its a stupid idea anyway. a much better thing would be to say; anyone that wants to will be able to get a university degree. and we need far much more emphasis on apprenticeships and GNVQs for people who don't want a degree, and would rather learn a trade.
wednesday
the hutton report. or rather, selected bits of the report in the sun, hours before it officialy came out. lord hutton is of course livid, but having realised that it was almost certainly leaked by labour, who saw it at noon on tuesday, is persuing legal action against the newspaper, not the leak. and the report itself was a total wash out anyway. he said that dr kelly killed himself because his name was leaked, but then refused to even address the issue of who leaked it, and just slated the bbc, leaving labour smelling of roses. look out for the shortlist for new director general. its going to be interestingly labour orientated.
but wednesday turned out not to be so bad after all, at about 5pm, when we got 45mins of blizzard, leaving us 3 inches of snow which settled, and froze, and stayed there till friday, meaning that although getting into uni was hell, we could go sledging and build snowmen and stuff, all of which i did with great enthusiasm!
enough about me, how was everyone elses week?

i feel for you. most people were worried about a decade ago when our country declared that it would be semi-corporatising its oldest university (which is incidentally where i am); however, after doing a great deal of asking around and quite a great deal of calculating, i've discovered that the university's fees is still *very* heavily subsidised by the government (about 85%). currently the students here are being charged based on the number of credit hours they're taking. it's approximately US$10 for each credit hour for arts courses, and US$12 for science/medicine courses per semester (two a year, unless you go for what i believe you call 'summer school'). add the library fees and college rent, and a typical student pays roughly US$526 per semester, or US$1,000+ a year. my parents estimated that we spent about US$5000+ on my entire bachelor's degree education, which is about 1/4 to 1/3 of your 9,000 pounds . and now that i'm on full scholarship for my masters (and getting a monthly allowance from the university people!)...

you'd have thought that they'd charge foreign students the earth, but my friend (who's from morocco) is paying something like US$1,600 a semester for her doctorate (by research) course.

oh, and by the way, i'd advise you not to have too much faith in student councils. i have yet to come across a student body that's capable of more than just empty promises. well, *here* anyway.

yeah, i'm not having too good a time of it at the mo. thought this week would be better, but one of my friends had a really bad car smash on monday, and now is bed ridden with 3 limbs in plaster and 7 broken bones. he'll probably be out of action for too long to finish this year now, which is awful