On Tuition Fees

Before I begin - I haven't posted anything in some time. I can't entirely account for this curious fact, but I expect a sense of overwhelming apathy has been somewhat conducive to its precipitation. This said, I don't think I have been writing less, in fact I know I have written more than I usually might, but I have been either unwilling to post pieces or unwilling to finish them - but I suppose this can be considered the same thing. The previous five 'posts' on my 'dashboard' (blogging being so similar to driving) are all drafts, supporting the growing case for the argument that my soul is an indolent one. But I will also explain, in a bit, that it's also a besieged one.

I have returned - reluctantly - for my second year at university. I have written innumerable scathing pieces of my 'experience' (because it is an experience, isn't it? This is what everyone terms it), but have chosen not to publish them both for fear of offending others and for fear of the effort the pieces' completion would require. Let's be honest though, spending £27,000 and losing three years in order to complete academic work - free of charge - in something close to penury is hardly the best backdrop for fun. Indeed, I would have to experience some excessive joy following this acknowledgment in order for the thing to be even neutral on the fun scale. It's strange really - there is a kind of oppressive, profoundly deleterious insistence afoot that one must have great fun at university, and this necessarily jinxes the whole thing. There is nothing more inimical to the experiencing of fun than the forceful exhortation that one must have fun. No thanks, I'll be miserable and annoy you instead.

When I write 'you' in that last sentence, whom do I refer to? The students? The universities? The government? Well - all of them really. It is in all of these parties' interests to promote the idea of university as almost paralysingly enjoyable, and they do it fairly well. But do people really enjoy the whole ordeal? I've asked a lot of people and none has explicitly told me that they are having the time of their life. I'm aware this may be to shield me from the cold truth - that I am desperately alone in my disaffection, but I happen to believe my sources.

Part of the reason for this disaffection, I am certain, is the tripling of tuition fees - indeed, the very idea of tuition fees is terrifying enough. There is something incredibly retarding in the presence of this abstract, intangible debt, hanging like black spaghetti in the rafters of the soul. It is a constant reminder that one must be serious, because people want this money back. To someone who believes solemnity may be the last stage in the death of the human spirit, this is more worrying than all other emotional pangs. The idea that the personality can be curtailed and truncated in such a way as to produce a money-making machine is to me diabolical. There is, furthermore, the humiliation of irony to aid the misery; it is counterintuitive that something as earthly and temporal as money can seize and bring palsy to the soul, but it is extremely effective in doing so. This is partly by design - debt appeals to the sense of justice in humans, a sense which corrodes the conscience until remuneration is complete. This is how capitalism purges the individualism of its subjects, in the aid of unhalted production. But to me there is something perverse, unfair, and frankly sadistic in imposing this on teenagers who haven't a blind shit of an idea how this money is going to be found. The government would immediately retort with, 'But you needn't repay anything until you earn more than £21,000 per year!' - a gross statement which assumes guilt is bred entirely by a sense of personal economic burden, rather than a sense of the injustice in failing to repay a creditor. This assumes the presence of absolute avarice in all students. Whether they come to be in a stable financial position or not, the fact that most people will not be able to repay their university loans is a fact that will haunt the conscience. Every coin my indolence fails to collect is a coin that could have been spent in some other, more pressing need. This is the true horror of the tuition fee. Do not give credence to politicians' assertions that this is merely a matter of economics - the whole concept of the tuition fee relies on emotional blackmail, and this is far more insidious. It is underpinned by guilt, and guilt does not die. To heap debt on the student population is to heap distress and an unthinking acceptance of toil.