Students These Days

My son, Danny, is in his second year at university studying computing. He’s not enjoying it. He tells me it’s boring and too hard. He says he has to go to too many lectures, and he doesn’t really have enough time to do the essays and projects he has to write. He wants to drop out and apply to do American studies at a different university, but I say he shouldn’t. Last night we had a big argument about it while we were having dinner. “You don’t understand. It was different when you went to university!” he shouted and then he left the house.

Actually, I really do understand and he is right to say things were different when I went to university. Twenty five years ago, being a student in Britain was really easy. We didn’t have to pay anything to study at university. It was completely free. In fact, when I went to university the government actually GAVE me money. And I mean, gave. I got a grant of over two thousand pounds (which was a lot of money in those days) and I was free to spend it, and I never had to pay any of it back at all. Nowadays, lots of students (or their parents!) have to pay two or three thousand pounds for their course. They also have to pay for food, somewhere to live, books, bills and everything else. The government gives you a loan, which you then have to pay back after you graduate. Most people have to get a part-time job while they are studying.

I used to work in the summer holidays, but I didn’t have to get a job during term-time, so I could just concentrate on studying. I say concentrate on studying, but actually a lot of the time we just sat around and chatted to each other, watched French films, read books, went on demonstrations or went to parties. I only had to go to ten hours of lectures each week, so I had lots of time to write my essays and do everything else I wanted to do. And of course, almost all students lived away from home. We had a lot of freedom – we didn’t have to worry about coming home late or bringing friends home, because our parents weren’t there. It was fun and easy.