Dani Garavelli: University students will continue to thrive against crumbling world

I was just turned 17 and so unworldly when I first pitched up at the John McIntyre building wearing Chelsea Girl trousers with braces, an oversized sweatshirt and hair I’m not sure was acceptable even in the ‘80s. It was pre-internet, so we had to queue up for our matriculation cards and learn how to use the library index system.

I remember strolling round the clubs’ fayre and signing up for the debating society, little realising it would be full of  Westminster-bound boors, and not my kind of thing at all. And then dancing into the early hours every night of Freshers’ Week, so that, back home after it was over, I fell asleep at Sunday mass.

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We were so lucky — though, like most teenagers, we took it all for granted. Free tuition, healthy grants (albeit means-tested, and not every parent stumped up their top-up contribution as mine did). Even though I lived just 30 miles down the coast, I qualified for a place at Wolfson Hall, out by the vet school, so I could have the full student experience, meeting others and moving into a flat in my second year.

Glasgow was a great place to live — political, artsy and on the up — and I never really got over tutorials in the turrets on the quads, which seemed as dreamy as Oxford or Cambridge, but without all the “Yahs.” Virtually everyone I knew at university was from a working class or lower middle class background and had gone to state schools.

I didn’t have a term-time job, which meant ample space for reading and thinking as well as drinking. I worked most summers, but, if you didn’t, you could sign on and were eligible for housing benefit. My post-graduate journalism diploma at Cardiff was funded too, which explained the disproportionate number of Scots who went there. I walked straight into a job, which was low-paid, but steady. I had no student loan to pay off and my first house, which I bought jointly with my husband at the age of 27, cost £68,000.

The SNP has stuck to its free tuition pledge (having scrapped the one-off graduate endowment in 2008). Two of my three sons have benefitted from this, while the third has an Open University degree and paid his own way. But, despite their more financially secure upbringings, it is tougher for their generation than it was for ours.

Not only have those starting university last month suffered the grinding pandemic years, they are stuck in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis with the dark clouds of climate change looming overhead. Once they have graduated, they look set to face a precarious job market, restricted access to mortgages, prohibitive house prices, and the repayment of their student loans.

Scottish students studying in Scotland finish university with less debt than their RUK counterparts (£15,430 in 2022-3 compared with £44,940 in England) while the RUK and international students – who pay considerably more than the £7,610 in public funds paid out for every Scot last year — benefit the universities both financially and in terms of diversity. (It was all drearily monocultural in my day).

But tougher entry requirements mean the unrelenting pressure to perform starts at school, which takes a toll on children’s mental health. With the number of Scottish students at each university capped, the competition for places can be fierce, especially at Edinburgh and St Andrews, where it is not unheard of for straight A students to find themselves summarily rejected.

Though Scottish students whose family income is less than £34,000 are eligible for non repayable bursaries of between £500 and £2,000 a year, they are still worse off than their English counterparts when it comes to their expenses.

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, greater limits on what they can borrow mean those from the poorest households have been entitled to 10% less support with their day to day costs than an English student living independently (although a non means-tested “special support loan” introduced this year should even things up a bit).

The past imbalance may explain why so many Scottish students stay at home, a pragmatic choice, but one which — together with the availability of online lectures — tends to cut them off from “university life”. This loss is heightened by the fact that so many of them hold down part-time jobs in bars or supermarkets even when studying for the most demanding degrees such as law and medicine.

Critics argue that, far from making education more accessible, free tuition is pushing working class students out. They point to statistics that suggest 35% of students at Edinburgh University and 20% of students at Glasgow University were privately educated (although it’s much lower elsewhere — just 1.8% at Glasgow Caledonian).

(Image: Newsquest)

Yet, despite the cap, UCAS figures released in August showed admissions of Scottish students to Scottish universities had risen by 7% to a new high of 31,220. There had also been a 12% increase in acceptances from the 20% most deprived areas in Scotland to all UK universities, up 540 on last year to 5,080.

The worrying question for those of us who believe in free higher education — who see a commitment to it as a restatement of the value of education for education’s sake —  is how sustainable it will prove to be at a time when the Scottish government is under pressure and making cuts everywhere else.

With funding for teaching at Scottish universities down 19% in real terms from 2013–14,  and a potential shift in power at Holyrood in 2026, a fresh push for the introduction of fees feels unavoidable.

The students I saw on Kelvin Way had more pressing things on their minds: finding their way round the labyrinthine campus, making new friends, starting their lectures, writing their first essays, falling in and out of love. Most of them will thrive just as, I suppose, we thrived against a backdrop of Thatcher, the miners’ strikes and the spectre of deindustrialisation.

How thrilling it must be to stand on the threshold of a great adventure: one that will open their eyes to new ideas and help them work out who they want to be. Despite Brexit, they will be offered the chance to learn new languages, study abroad. With a bit of luck, they will solve the problems my generation has allowed to spiral. Until then, I hope they enjoy every second.  Let their lust for life lift them up, and prove a tonic for the rest of us.