From yesterday's FT (page unavailable?):
But the 21 year-old's rise to the academic peak was far from pre-destined. Ms Chan says her background was "working class". Her father runs a Chinese takeaway and her mother works as a homecare assistant. Education was valued at home but Ms Chan's parents do not have the money to support her at university.
She says this made the bursary she received from PwC, the professional services firm crucial. It gives several thousand pounds to three new LSE undergraduates each year ... Ms Chan says that without it, "I would not have been able to go to university in London".
The halls of residence in her first year cost much more than friends at universities outside London have to pay. Incidentals also take their toll. "The cost of food around the LSE is high. most sandwich shops charge what professionals in the area would pay ."
... She thinks she would have earned "better A-levels" than her two As and a B if she had not had a job at weekends to help support herself while at grammar school in outer London.
Dude, WTF?
Why does she need to pay top whack for halls of residence if her family lives in outer London? If she and her family were that hard up, wouldn't she save herself the £5,000 a year (or whatever it costs), stay with Mum and Dad and just take the Tube into town?
She managed to get the LSE to accept her and PwC to sponsor her, yet she doesn't realise that even in central London you can reduce the cost of your sandwiches by 80% or something by, er, buying a loaf, some margarine and fillings and making yourself a packed lunch at home?
Her Dad runs a takeaway? Does she not know what his gross margins are?
Her Mum is a 'homecare assistant'? Who failed to pass on the secret-art-of-sandwich-making to her beloved daughter?
A grim document
5 hours ago
10 comments:
All students are winge-ers that want someone else to pay for their drinking habits.
I know I was.
Presumably she lives in halls because continuing to live with her parents in outer suburbia whilst all her new uni mates were having fun in central London would be a bit miserable (and also not much of a growing-up experience)...?
Fair point on the sandwiches.
JohnB, still does not compute. I lived at home in outer London when I first went to Uni and it didn't do me any harm.
Having said that, I was a mature student and I'd bought myself my own flat ...
"Presumably she lives in halls because continuing to live with her parents in outer suburbia whilst all her new uni mates were having fun in central London would be a bit miserable..."
Bless! It's obviously so unfair!
Someone else should pay for her to not ever, in any way, be made miserable ever again...
AC1 has the right of it.
@ Mark, quite, but going to uni as an adult solely for study is different from the rite-of-passage involved in going to uni at 18.
@ Julia, she's saying that PwC's bursary allowed her to have a jolly old time at uni, which was a good thing. She's not saying that you ought to pay for her. If PwC think it's in their interests to fund this kind of scheme, and the people on the schemes are made happy by getting the money from PwC, what the hell is your fucking problem beyond sour-faced loathing of the entire world?
She's whining when she's got no business whining. That's the problem with the subject of the article.
The university system is well and truly fucked. It's supposed to be about education, not a fucking right of passage.
When people went away to university 50 years ago, it was because they had no choice. What governments did then was to create polytechnics which would allow kids to study for degrees/HNDs without having the expense of living away.
But universities aren't really about study for most of the people there.
They're about:-
1) a certificate to show you're clever to get your foot in the door of an employer. After that, you'll never use what you learnt.
2) a social life.
Point 1) just creates grade inflation. Employers don't get brighter or more useful people. Instead a huge cost is incurred.
Cut the places and you get rid of the grade inflation. Reduce it to a point where people aren't going because it's the done middle class thing to do, but because they have a passion for learning a subject, or need the skills they learn to do a job.
"..what the hell is your fucking problem.."
What Nick said...
"Cut the places and you get rid of the grade inflation. Reduce it to a point where people aren't going because it's the done middle class thing to do..."
And chop out some of the useless 'non degrees' into the bargain.
Wonder if she can spell?
When faced with the choice of a long commute and homemade snadwiches a person chose to stay in Uni halls and buy lunch when there. Is this really so infuriating? Surely there are bigger and better things for you to throw a fit about in the world
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