Tag Archives: tuition fees

Applying to university or college next year? Read these top dos and don’ts

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Applying to university or college next year? Read these top dos and don’ts from UCAS.

 

Applying to university or college next year? Read these top dos and dont’s by Cathy Gilbert, Director of Customer Strategy at UCAS

Do – research your university and degree course choices carefully before applying. For me, that should include going to open days as well as looking at the online information. You’ll spend three or four years studying in higher education, so you should be really passionate about the course content and your chosen place of study.

Do – remember the UCAS application deadlines. The first date on the horizon this year is the 15 October deadline for applying to Oxford and Cambridge, and for courses anywhere in medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine and veterinary science. The key deadline for most other courses is 15 January next year. You’ll have to send your application to us by this time to be certain of consideration.

Do – make the most of the help available from UCAS on ucas.com. Working through our Six steps to applying will make the process much easier. You can also watch videos on UCAStv featuring students who have already started and been through big events like Freshers’ Week. If you have a burning question at any stage of the process why not ask our team of experts on Twitter (@ucas_online) and Facebook (/ucasonline)? You’ll get a clear answer back very quickly.

Don’t – forget that some universities and colleges will ask you to sit an admissions test in addition to the standard qualifications. The Admissions tests section of the UCAS website will help you understand some of these and the UCAS bookstore has guides dedicated to many of them.

Don’t – be tempted to submit a copied personal statement or one downloaded from a website. Thankfully, only one percent of applicants did this last year. UCAS is quite clear that personal statements should be an applicant’s own work, although we do advise that parents and teachers check them over. Our computer system has tens of thousands of personal statements on file and similarities will be flagged up to the universities.

Don’t – panic about tuition fees. There is a wealth of information out there to help you understand the costs of higher education – and remember you won’t have to pay anything upfront. You can visit the Student finance section of our website to find out more, or visit Moneysavingexpert’s Students section.

Are The Good Times Really Over For Good?

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For someone in their twenties it is hard to think of a time which has been harder economically than right now. But I do know that this is not true. There have been many booms and busts before, times much harder than this. Rationing, world wars, the great depression.

But what of the future? My generation seems to have gotten the muddy end of the stick. The OECD, a respected British think tank, said that Britain has slipped into a double dip recession and more pupils than ever are getting free school meals, the governments indicator of a child growing up in poverty. Tube drivers might be raking it in, getting paid £500 just to show up for work each day during the Olympics, but the rest of us are struggling.

Are the good times really over?We have become generation rent, unemployment is high, we not only have a harder time getting our dream job, but getting any job at all. I have friends that are moving out of West London where I live because they cannot afford it, struggling to find jobs and even if they have one, struggling to survive the squeeze.

Not getting to the nitty gritty. Tuition fees are up to a staggering amount, 9K a year for an education, transport costs go up above inflation every year; the Oyster caps at £10 per day in London. Then there is the fact that if you get an unpaid internship these days you are one of the lucky ones. It seems everyone is taking everything from the young. I am luckier than most. My education days are behind me and so are my internships: but if the children really are the future, then what of it? Are the good times really over for good? Everything from stamps and food is going up. Petrol is so expensive people cannot even get to work and the government is looking shifty after the cash-for-access scandal. Never mind the fact we don’t have any privacy anymore and they are trying to bring in web-monitoring.

Government debt is at a £988.7 billion. And who is going to have to pay that off? The decent, hard working people of Britain. Oh well. We can always print some more money.

What good will come from this? Lessons maybe. We lived in a society that saw the word ‘credit’ and did not take in the fact that actually means ‘debt’. Above all we will do what the British do: keep calm and carry on. You may want to cross your fingers too.

 

UK Youth Unemployment Hits a Million – A Fundamental Not A Short Term Problem

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UK youth unemployment rose above 1 million, its highest level since 1996 according to government figures. Employment Minister Chris Grayling blamed the Eurozone debt crisis for the rising number of jobless. Looking at the table below we can see that youth unemployment in this country has been rising for many years even before the recession.

May-July 2004 580,000 12.2
May-July 2005 600,000 12.6
May-July 2006 706,000 14.5
May-July 2007 711,000 14.6
May-July 2008 727,000 14.8
May-July 2009 944,000 19.8
May-July 2010 921,000 19.4
May-July 2011 973,000 20.8
July-September 2011 1,020,000 21.9

Source: Office of National Statistics

Typically and not unexpectedly the politicians have sought to push blame and responsibility elsewhere. The coalition blame everything on the Eurozone, Labour just want to capitalise on the situation and refuse to take any responsibility for a problem which they largely created. They still claim they did a brilliant job with the education system.

This isn’t a cyclical problem. It’s not about getting the economy to grow (as we keep hearing) it’s about the fundamental failure of our education system to prepare young people for work. The statistics above don’t lie. The problem is an obsession with grades and targets when we should be obsessed with skills. See my earlier article here. The previous Labour government became pushed as many students as it could into universities and it shunned apprenticeships. I myself have first-hand experience of the system I came out of school and university with top grades but totally unprepared for work.

Almost 28% of UK graduates who left university in 2007 were still not in full-time work three and a half years later, figures have suggested.

But if you think it’s bad here and can’t get any worse think again. Youth unemployment in Spain is at an astonishing 46.2% and youth unemployment across Europe has soared. This has been going on for much longer than the Eurozone crisis.

The exception to the rule is Germany. Please politicians look at the German system. The German system is defined by flexibility. It is designed to suit the individual Germany has five different types of secondary school. The German education system is geared to getting people into work. It has an incredibly successful apprenticeship system which allows young people to gain valuable experience and skills. (p.s. It has little or no tuition fees as well) The coalition government has made some progress in regard to apprenticeships but it is not nearly enough. Our entire curriculum, system and culture needs to be completely revised.

I am writing this article not to complain or blame the government but to make people aware of this serious fundamental problem. Make no mistake if we don’t fix this we are heading for a crisis. It will not be fixed overnight. We need a radical overhaul of our education system, if we continue down this path we are heading for disaster. The coalition government thinks it has done enough, it has not.

 

Young People In Politics: Ben Mallet Interview.

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It takes a lot for me to be impressed by people, Ben Mallet scores on this point. He is smart, passionate and obscenely young ( Still in his teens!). Ben is one of life’s doers, and, I am almost certain, will one day be Prime Minister. Keep an eye on him.

Why did you go into politics and why conservative?

I got involved with the Conservative party from quite a young age, not because I was a political anorak (I would hope), but because I’ve always thought its really important for young people to take an interest in decisions being made by governments, that are going to affect people of my age, later on.

How do you think we get more people involved in politics?

I think the key to involving young people in politics, is acknowledging that the majority of young people are already interested in politics, just not the politics that we see on BBC Parliament.

If you were to ask one of my friends, “What do you think of the Coalition government?” then I would happily bet that they’re eyes would glaze over and they would have lost interest before you’d even finished the question. Where as, if you were to ask “What do you think of the Coalition government’s policy to increase tuition fees?” then you would get a completely different reaction- probably one involving a pretty lively response.

To give another example, I was at a Kingston council meeting last week and the Lib Dems decided that they were going to launch a motion stating their opposition to the rise in Tuition fees. The audience was mostly made up of local teenagers coming to hear the debate and three even got up to speak!

It’s all about making politics RELEVANT to young people.

Tell me about setting up the Richmond park CF
Richmond Park Conservative Future is a real success story, although not just my own. So many people worked to make RPCF what it is today- not least Zac Goldsmith.

Our underlying principle, as I’ve just stated, is making politics relevant to young people. As a result, we held Summer & Christmas parties, inviting loads of local teenagers to come and quiz Zac on what he stands for, as well as enjoying themselves. Combined, over 350 people came to these events. We’ve also held discussions with local politicians and events at the local universities.

We also teamed up with a local autism charity to hold a sponsored Fun-Run in Richmond Park, raising hundred’s of pounds for a really great local organisation.

How did you get involved with Zac Goldsmith

I first met Zac when I volunteered to work in the local association office- he had just been selected as the parliamentary candidate and was looking to really launch his campaign locally.
I got involved because Zac wanted lots of young people to get involved- and so the ball began to roll.

You got new 180 members at The Kingston Fresher’s Fayre. How does that feel?

I feel very humbled by it. It was a total team effort and there was a lot of effort involved. The explosion of young people’s engagement in local politics we witnessed wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for the energy displayed by Zac or the campaign team. I am honoured, however, to have acted as a catalyst.

Why do you think there is a stigma to being a Tory?

This is a question that a lot of people ask me- the truth is that the Conservative party has always had some “Marmite” tendencies- you either love them or you hate them. As a result there are some areas of the country and some groups of people who will always hate the Tories- for what they did decades ago that haven’t yet been forgiven.

The flip side of the coin is that there are some areas of the country and some groups of people who love the Tories.
The Conservative party is one of the oldest political parties in the world and so it’s history ultimately plays a big part in the party’s perception today.

Why are you a Tory?
I think its all about trust. When you strip off all the political party slogans, logos, PR machines and spin doctors, it all comes down to how each party treats people.

The Labour party doesn’t trust anyone. It doesn’t trust me to not be a racist or a nutter, so it imposes ridiculous political-correctness and health and safety laws. It doesn’t trust doctors, teachers or even the police to do their job, so it imposes layers of bureaucracy, targets and by-laws. It doesn’t trust my community to make decisions themselves so leaves the power with bureaucrats in Whitehall and doesn’t trust businesses to work effectively, so imposes heavy regulations and red-tape. And to fund all this centralization, they have to ask for huge amounts of tax on everything from Income to Bingo.

I believe that the Conservative party does trust people. Michael Gove’s plan to allow parents, communities or organisations to set up their own schools is one example of this. Another example is Andrew Lansley’s plans to give more power to doctors, or Eric Pickle’s policy to radically decentralize power to local councils. The Prime Minister’s Big Society is all about trust.

Thank you Ben.