University: is it worth it?

Beyond Today

BBC

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 August 2019

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The average student debt after a three year degree course in England is £50,000. It’s a large sum that can be off-putting when you hear tales of jobless graduates and self-made entrepreneurs. Student debt is lower in Wales and Northern Ireland and less still in Scotland where you don’t pay fees, but even here student debt has doubled in the last decade. In this episode we speak to Natalie Olah. She’s written a book - based on her experience at university and after - called ‘Steal As Much As You Can’. It’s a sort of self-help guide aimed at people from less well-off backgrounds navigating higher education and professional life. We also speak to Chris Havergal, news editor at the Times Higher Education Supplement, about the options young people have as students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland get their A Level results this week, as do those studying level 3 BTEC qualifications. Producer: Duncan Barber Mixed by Weidong Lin Editor: John Shields

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:06.6	Hello, I'm Matthew Price.
0:08.2	This is Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4.
0:11.0	Every day we ask a question about a story.
0:14.0	Today is university work.
0:17.0	Today is university worth it.
0:27.0	I was on a rooftop balcony in New York a few years ago talking to a friend of mine, an American,
0:37.0	and we were talking about how much money she owed the bank.
0:41.0	Tens of thousands of dollars, and she shrugged and she said well that's just how it is.
0:46.6	We pay for our education.
0:48.4	When we start our first job we're in debt and some of us never really get out of it. I couldn't believe it and nor could her
0:54.8	Australian fiance who was there with us. That back then just didn't happen in
1:00.1	either of our countries. Well, it does now, here, the average student debt after a three-year
1:07.8	degree course in England is now 50,000 pounds. It is less in Wales and Northern Ireland where the fees system is different.
1:15.9	It's even less in Scotland where you don't actually pay fees, but even so in Scotland
1:21.6	student debt has doubled in the last decade.
1:24.0	We'll go through some more of the facts about student debt in a moment.
1:28.0	One of the experts is going to tell us whether university is actually worth it.
1:32.0	But first back to the 50-gates whether university is actually worth it.
1:33.0	But first back to the 50K, it's a big number, the sort of number that can put you off going
1:38.6	to university in the first place, especially if you've not got much money in the family.
1:42.8	It was something we talked a bit about a couple of weeks ago in an episode on the class
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