Today I have traveled out of the office, and out of the county in fact up to my home town of Crawley, West Sussex. I have been giving talks on the entry process to university, the new fees structure and how to handle money while at university.
It's been a really interesting day, had some great conversations with both students and staff about the future members of our university communities. I started my talk with an introduction to what I believe us the best way to approach uni, in terms of looking at the wider range of courses, the different types of uni (campus or city based) and also visiting the different uni's to see how they feel.
I then moved on to talk about money at university, in terms of both applications, and the amount of money likely to be at students disposal. This was followed with many examples of how students can reduce their expenditure and increase their income.
I have given these talks before, and they have always been received well, but there was a new level to this years talks, the imminent introduction of the new fees structure. Now, I remember when I was applying to university and I was to be part of the first intake of students to pay 3000 and now I'm here talking to students who are in a similar position with fees having been trebled and I'm just surprised by the lack of information that students have been given, and is either available and in many cases even decided yet, by both individual institutions and government.
As I say it was rather a long time ago when I had to apply first time round, and was facing a similar, but not as daunting situation, but I do still remember there was a certainty about the process. Whereas some of the questions that came up today did show that there are still some quite problematic issues facing school teachers, providing information, and more importantly, the students wanting to go to uni next year.
I think this shows the main problem with the rapid introduction of the new scheme, this coupled with the fact that the government has still not considered all the implications and decided upon the ins and outs of the scheme. The AAB system has limitations in terms of what happens if more than 65000 students achieve these grade, also how the System will be implemented to ensure that student numbers end up where they need to.
Other issues are around the different types of bursary and fee waivers offered by each institution, and how this information makes it's way to the students within the school system.
On the plus side, had many good conversations on the wealth of University life, and on the other options covering many different areas including apprenticeships, qualifications from other education providers and moving from school straight into work and really made me think about my views on the new system.
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