University Shouldn't Be Free, At Least Not Until It Benefits More People

So I haven't been on here for a while. My last exam of second year at uni coincided with the election result, and celebrations were had for both. I've also lived at three different addresses over the last two months as I manoeuvred around housing contracts. My summer job(s) have kept me busy, and I've been working on other projects for next year.

But a lot has happened since my last article: terror attacks, the election, Grenfell Tower, Brexit struggles, a Conservative plot to overthrow Theresa May, and Donald Trump and his son conducting secret meetings with Russia. These are all topics on which I could talk about for hours (I've been trying to make another Trump article yet have far too much to say) but I fear that I'd just be another voice to the choir. If fifty other people are saying what I will then it would be pointless for me to comment. When an event like the Manchester Attack or Grenfell Tower happen, whilst nuanced discussion is badly needed, you also don't want to shout your beliefs when victims from such events still grieve. Maybe I'll tackle them at New Year in an annual review of the year, similar to Charlie Brooker's Yearly Wipe (if you haven't seen that, definitely check it out).

More comical, but somehow just as slightly depressing, as his Black Mirror.

You do need to distance yourself from an event before you can critically comment on it. It has to be less personal and your beliefs justified in more conclusive evidence before you can truly make a judgement, and that is why future historians will have a more definite viewpoint on how we lived than we do now. And an issue which gained a lot of headway in the election, but has now died down which gives us time to reflect, is the issue of tuition fees. This seems to be an issue, in my political circles at least, where you either want free tuition, or you're an elitist. My lord and saviour Jeremy Corbyn announced ahead of the election that he would scrap fees for current students and contemplate how he could wipe out past student debt. So you'd imagine I'd be fully behind him, right?

Me and bae, circa 2016 (colourised)

Somewhat, although my support for Corbyn mainly rests on him pumping money into other areas of the public sector, most importantly the struggling NHS. That's the political issue I care about most, because sickness can strike anyone, and people shouldn't be force to pay for their health due to mere luck. I think when you have the NHS in the state which it is in, with multiple closures, that's what Corbyn needs to highlight. And when he campaigns for free tuition fees along with greater public sector funding, well, that kinda reinforces the idea to political opponents that he throws money at everything, whether its important or not.

Now, where am I going with this? Am I saying that as one of the working class I don't want people like me being encouraged to go to university? Am I denying that our economy would benefit from a better educated population, allowing our engineering and science sector to prosper?

Me, circa before the 2017 election

Of course not, I am forever grateful for the university experience I have been afforded. I will have to pay back the debt, and it is a lot of debt, but at least I don't until I earn over 21 grand. And neither am I denying that the debt won't put people like me off university.  Only because I have such a passion for my subject and wanted a new experience in life was I willing to put myself in debt. I have had an incredible experience, and would want as many people as possible to also share a similar one. However, the value of university is not just about benefiting the individual - if it was then it should rightly only be paid by that individual. It is about benefiting society. When it does that, then of course it is a worthwhile investment for society to pay. But I don't think everyday people believe universities benefit their society, or at least themselves, and so they shouldn't be expected to pay for free tuition out of their own taxes until the benefit is clear to them. Let me explain. 

An article titled "Academics can change the world – if they stop talking only to their peers" makes the rounds every now and then, and rightly so. The article states:

Biswas and Kirchherr estimate that an average journal article is “read completely by no more than ten people”. They write up to 1.5 million peer-reviewed articles are published annually. However, many are ignored even within scientific communities – 82% of articles published in humanities [journals] are not even cited once.

Universities are meant to be for the public good. Of course they have become more recently geared towards making profit, but ultimately and historically their goal is to benefit society. Each university wants to distinguish themselves to state why they are the best institution for students to visit in order for them to become an engineer, scientist, historian or so on. They thus cannot make all their research public. But society invests in university for society's benefit. For example, in 2004 the University of Manchester created a material called Graphene. 200 times stronger than steel but flexible, the material could shape the future of biomedical science, engineering, architecture and electronics. It is a wonder material. And yet the University has not trademarked the compound for their own immense profit (which private companies do). They have instead allowed the material to be used by the public domain in order to ensure the material can reach its fullest potential and is now researched by universities and companies worldwide for its many possible applications. This is an example of university or education benefiting not just our own society, but possibly the entire world.

But that's just one example of research. Of course, its doubtful that universities are sitting on hundreds of wonder materials waiting to be used (although I'm sure various militaries and governments would be interested in keeping such materials and technology for themselves), but it just goes to show you how much environments of lifelong research can create incredible results. Yet if the average piece of research is read by no more than ten people, then society is obviously not benefiting from that research.

Universities also make abominations like these which the military are interested in

Now, the average joe, including myself, doesn't have a clue about specific groundbreaking research into polymers or cells, and likely still wouldn't if you explained it to me because you probably need a lot of knowledge in that subject to fully comprehend it. But I'm sure most people would be interested in knowing how it changes our knowledge of say the human body or what implications it has for the future of technology. Universities shouldn't give away all their research because they don't need to, not everyone understands the brain cells of ducks. But people would be interested in learning that ducks are a distinct relative of dolphins, and could be trained to do their shopping for them.

Here's a picture of a duck I took. Can anybody tell me what kind of duck it is?

I thus think universities should do something like publish the highlights of their research monthly on public platforms. You may argue most people wouldn't be interested, but a lot of their taxes are still invested in universities, especially if tuition were to be made free, and so the information should be available. At the very least having the information there will only foster some kind of further interest in research.

For example, I study history. My university, Sheffield, is great in that I can use thousands of online resources - articles or e-books - in incredibly diverse topics like poverty in the Roman World, all the way to ones about Hitler's drug use. They also have two massive libraries. You may argue it is the fact that I pay tuition fees to a good university that I have all these resources available to me, and that non-university students can easily go to a library or the internet themselves to learn about such topics.

Hitler partying hard.

But before I came to university, I wouldn't even know there was a wealth of research and information about Hitler's drug use. I didn't know there was a difference between the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. I didn't know people studied Early Modern Europe as a degree, and that various convents of nuns in the 1600s were said to be possessed by the devil requiring exorcism (which was also a common thing). Before university I wouldn't think to study it because I didn't know these things existed. And thus universities, graduates or education generally needs to make this kind of knowledge more known to the public to enrich their knowledge of the past as part of its purpose, and also possibly to encourage further study of such things.

But maybe the problem is more systemic. Every now and then I encounter someone who doesn't even know who the current Prime Minister is, or doesn't know the dates of when the World Wars started or finished. These are ordinary everyday people and don't deserve judgement for being stupid. Rather, you do wonder what kind of society people grow up in when they don't know, or don't think to consider, who is actually their leader, or when the events which shaped the society they live in happened. You wonder if schools or parenting needs to change, if people are so focused on money, television, going out on the piss, that they don't even consider the wider picture surrounding their lives. Maybe they struggle to understand politics or subjects at school and that is fine. But the fact they don't see an importance in understanding these things is the issue.

And you have these people working most of their week away in a job they might not like in order to unwind at home or enjoy their times with family or friends. And they then find that some of their taxes go towards paying students who for 3 years have a large part of their lifestyle funded. And if they struggle to see why they have to work to keep their homes and lifestyle yet students don't need a similar amount of physical work to do so, they get jealous. They wonder what exactly it is that students do other than party if their research largely belongs to the universities and not the public. If they are learning about things the public didn't even know existed yet the public are still kept in the dark, then the public aren't benefiting from university. Universities then, hell the education system at large, needs to better reveal the research it has in order to keep the public interested. Only then would it be worth making university free.

Michael Gove said with Brexit that the people were "sick of experts". I think this is largely due to these experts being so inaccessible. In days of old, public intellectuals like Socrates would be consulted on societal issues. I think we need a similar class of people today. In order to remedy this problem of unshared knowledge, I'm possibly making some kind of history radio show to talk about stories and issues of history from things I've learnt at university and elsewhere. Keep your eyes peeled.