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Paying for Learning

Scrubb is on a downward spiral

11:48 / 23.11.05

(NB. Not sure if this should be here or Head-Shop; mods, please feel free to move it). Ok, so this follows on from recent comments in the Headsick/Rage and "The Bad Student" threads about attitudes to formal education, mature students and tuition fees.

Paying for university-level education is a variant thing. Unless you're lucky enough to get a scholarship one is required to shell out huge amounts of money on fees to go to a US-college (although marginally less so if it's a state college). In Australia (I think), there's the graduate tax. And in past decade in the UK we've seen the abolition of grants and the introduction of loans and top-up fees.

What I'm interested in talking about is whether paying for your education changes your attitude towards it? Do you/the generic "student" feel more entitled to a passing degree from your college if you're paying huge amounts of money to attend it? Or are you more inclined to work harder to get your money's worth? Are these two attitudes mutually exclusive?

My own personal interest stems from two points. Firstly, I have never paid for my education. I attended a state school, had my fees paid the UK government for my undergrad degree, then received studentships for my Masters and (ongoing) Doctorate degrees. I do wonder whether my PhD peers who are paying out of their own pocket are working a damn site harder than I am at our postgrad studies; I suspect that they are.
Secondly, I now teach undergrads who are paying tuition fees (and get loans rather than grants). I do feel a - different resposibility to them (and my University) knowing that it's them/their parents who are paying for them to come to college rather than a generic Government agency. I do wonder if the ones who are slacking are doing so because of some sense of entitlement to a good degree; and if the hardworking ones are trying to get their money's worth (as mentioned above).

Thoughts?

15:29 / 23.11.05

Back when I had students, most of them treated the place like a bloody Club Med. I definitely was on the receiving end of a lot of "This is an intro class in theater, and it fulfills a core. It's supposed to be an automatic A." This was a state school, so a variety of tuitions came into play. Frustration across the board.

18:31 / 23.11.05

I went to expensive schools - my first one was $19,500 a year and the second was close to $30,000. I did get a lot of financial aid though.

At art school I got hefty need-based grants and a small amount of loans. I think my dad paid about $2000 a year, I took out $2000 a year in loans, the government gave me a small grant, and the school itself gave me a big one. I did notice that kids who were paying full tuition griped nonstop about "I'm paying twenty-thousand dollars to go here and can't they get better ________" (though, of course, their PARENTS were paying, not them). Stereotypically, scholarship students like me worked harder and bitched less - but I defied the stereotype just because I was so freaking miserable there.

When I transferred, it was a different story. My dad still only had to pay about $2000 a year, but the rest I borrowed. I didn't really see myself as having much of a choice... and being young & foolish I assumed the payments wouldn't matter to me once I got my Big Shiny Degree and Big Shiny Job. It didn't affect my attitude toward my education at the time....

But now, as I said in the Bad Student thread, I'm extremely bitter. I'm always a half-step away from defaulting on my loans, and even bankruptcy wouldn't get them off my back. My degree does not affect my career or salary in any way, and I feel like those thousands of dollars were quite poorly spent. I have a brother who never went to college and is jealous of me - but I'm jealous of him, because he's debt-free. IMO it sooooo wasn't worth it. I wish I'd just gone to trade school and taken some writing courses at community college.

*

19:08 / 23.11.05

I went to a good undergrad with a pretty obscure reputation which was pretty inexpensive; I think it cost me 7 grand a year including room and board (US$). My first two years I slacked, but I got better in my third, fourth, and fifth year.

In grad school now I'm attending a small university which is costing me an obscene amount, which I'm paying for with loans. I'm doing pretty much as I was doing in my third year of undergrad— okay, I don't do all the readings, but I'm blowing them away with my writing apparently. (I just had a paper I worked on with a partner, which was a financial analysis and strategic planning recommendation written from the perspective of a fictional consulting partnership, sent to the director of the museum we focused on. I hope this doesn't hurt my chances of getting a job in the field...)

I really don't think money has as much to do with it as my own internal environment. I feel like I got a great education at my undergrad, and I feel like I am getting a great education in my MA program. In my first two years of my undergrad, I felt like college didn't have much to do with what I wanted to do with my life. In my third-fifth years, I settled on what I wanted to do, based on my interests, and became really intellectually curious about the subject matter I was studying. In grad school I'm surprising myself by being curious about subject matter I thought I would find tedious, such as management strategies. Really I think the difference is humility. I'm much less of an arrogant bastard now than I was in my first two years of college.

19:30 / 23.11.05

I paid a lot of my own way via students loans and jobs. There weren't any real "scholarship kids" in my program, so if you weren't going the student loan route, odds were your parents were loaded and paying your way. Not to say that all the parent-paid students were slackers, but a disproportionate number were whiney, lazy pains in the ass, when compared to those who were going to graduate with debt. We busted our asses, because failing is expensive, and there wasn't going to be a top-up to your student loan to make up for the bonus tuition required to re-take a course. I came out with a respectable GPA (good enough to get into a masters program, if I can ever find the funding and the desire), but it cost me my social life, my health, and maybe my sanity on some level.
In my experience, a lot of people are less likely to really work at it if they're not paying for it themselves - either now or later, when the loan collectors show up. I guess a different sort of reality sets in when you realize you'll spend the next ten to fifteen years paying for your education.

22:13 / 23.11.05

I pay for it all myself, but that doesn't mean I work extra hard or appreciate it more. We'll see if I appreciate it when I enter the job market. I think paying for it by yourself is like saving up for that shiny bicycle when you were seven - it's just more satisfying when you've done it all by yourself.

lord henry strikes back

09:47 / 24.11.05

At uni my parents were nice enough (and, I admit, well off enough) to pay my rent. I paid for everything else through student loans (£3,500 a year) and the occasional part-time job. The student loan system in the UK means that it really does not feel like your money. For a start everyone takes it, and gets pretty much the same amount (only the last 20% or so is income related), and then you pay it back more as a tax than a loan. 9% of everything I earn over about £12,000 a year is taken out of my pay packet before it even gets to me.

The night classes that I am taking now I'm also paying for using loans, only these are normal bank loans so you really feel the payments coming out of the account each month. I am working a lot harder than I did at uni but I think that that is more to do with having had a full-time job for a few years. It has made me appreciate much more how nice it is to interact with people who read, and have opinions that they didn't pick up from Kilroy. I might be being a bit harsh to my work mates, but the difference between these two groups is very marked.

Also, the classes that I'm taking now are more vocational than my degree and I can see where they are leading me. This has made it a lot easier to focus. All in all, I think I'm working harder because I'm older and I know what I want to do, not so much because I'm paying for it.

On the flip side, if I weren't studying I could be putting this money towards a house... Bugger.