Tuesday 24th April: The Day I realised why I am here.

This morning I was lucky enough to receive a talk from Nick Booth. I was previously unaware of his work but have since found that he has done some amazing things around Journalism and Social Media.

He asked us why we were here and to begin with I just couldn't answer. The only thing that came to mind was 'errr....I like to write,' but when I really started to think about it I really remembered why I had bothered to begin my degree at all.

From the beginning of my academic career I have been pushed towards academia. I was very skilled and very hardworking and would push myself to the end of the earth for an A but until later I realised this was simply my desire to succeed. I didn't enjoy these subjects, far from it but I couldn't fail. My heart and mind simply wouldn't let me.

I have always been an avid observer of the news in all its forms. From a very young age I have concerned myself with the inner workings of far flung countries and governments and truly felt my brain was a sponge. I simply can't take the feeling of not knowing what someone is discussing. I'm nosy and I like to talk to people, lack of knowledge gets in the way of that love and thats always been something that I haven't been able to handle.

I made it my business to become a sort of oracle at school. From a very young age within my family I have been known as the family encyclopaedia, always ready to explain and add to interesting conversation.

I also loved to write, I have folders full of poems, stories and reports. I am dyslexic so I have always struggled with maintaining concentration long enough to read a book. I need the information at such a rate that only an article would do. It wasn't until I left secondary school, and entered what at the time felt like 'the big bad world,' (how naive I was) that I actually realised I could do this as a job.

It hadn't dawned on me before but as though I was having some kind of spiritual enlightenment I suddenly realised, What if I were to make this into a job? My two biggest interests, writing and knowing everything about what is happening all over the place, or as it is commonly known Journalism.

Over the next year at college I found a course at Birmingham City University that I loved. I knew if I had any hope of making this fantasy career an actual reality I had to know the industry inside out and this was the first obvious way of doing that. I worked hard for 2 years with this course in mind, and in May 2010 I gained my place.

At 21 I'm obviously not mature, I'm in no way a seasoned professional but I would like to think I've grown over the last 2 years (since beginning my degree) and I now know how to answer Nick Booth's question.

Why is Emma Allen here?

I want to make people care about the news.
I want to make people who don't pick up the paper or watch the news care about what is happening in the world.
News has become rather unaccessible for a large portion of the community, all the jargon and gibberish is intimidating and if it wasn't there then maybe people would take the time to understand whats happening in the America Elections? or who President Sarkozy is? or whats happening in our own government?

A scary amount of people don't even know who our Prime Minister is and this needs to change.

The 'disillusioned youth' of last summers riots might have been a little less eager to destroy this country if they understood the reasons we're in a recession, why unemployment is so high and if they took the time to know whats happening in there community.

I'd like to think so anyway.

So...I've decided what my final year project will be and realised it was years in the making all in one day and all because of one discussion.

Student Loan Black Hole : Who's to blame?

I've been working with the team at @InvestigateEdu, www.investigateonline.co.uk looking at student loans, and the amount of public money that is being wasted on loans that probably won't ever be paid back. This is one of the articles that I wrote for the project.

Katie Allen is a 23 year old student from Wolverhampton, she is in her 3rd and final year reading Building surveying and has, to date amassed over £30,000 worth of debt. She originates from a working class family, she grew up in an ex-council house with a single mother and 3 siblings. She was the first of her family to attend university and insists she never gave it a second thought. “I always did well at school and I wanted to do well in life so going to university seemed like the natural thing to do.”

When discussing her loan she is particularly nonchalant, she doesn’t seem to regard these thousands of pounds as real debt. The average yearly wage of a Building Surveyor is currently £37,500, which means Katie is set to become one of the growing number of graduates who will never pay back their student loans. A recent study led by Dr. Leunig of the London School of economics found here suggests “a graduate would have to earn £42,750 a year for 30 years to pay off their debts.”

The number of students currently in UK Universities is around 1.9 million and of those 1 in 4 will never pay back their loans meaning millions of pounds of public money will simply be written off in 30 years time. At the moment this number is simply a prediction but over the next few years the true number will unfold and who’s to know how much public money is being wasted on university educations.

Furthermore, the office for Budget Responsibility estimates that the Government will have to borrow £10.7bn to pay out student loans in 2015-16, compared with £4.1bn at the moment. It has also emerged that the Government is assuming that the bulk of public investment in the new system “will be repaid by high-earning graduates.”

With new plans in place for the price of a degree to rise even higher for 2012′s undergraduates, it is likely that even less money will be paid back. The Government has allowed Universities to increase tuition fees to up to £9,000 a year but in turn has raised the threshold of repayment.

But how will this repayment fiasco ever be solved? Is it the fault of the students themselves? The Universities? or the Government?

The University

Kerry Gough, Lecturer and Student Welfare Officer for Birmingham City University’s School of Media suggests that it is the universities responsibility to ensure that their graduates are able to pursue the best and most fruitful career path. She details the lengths that BCU are currently going to to ensure that their students have the best chance to succeed, measures like ‘Job book’. Job Book is a scheme created with the hope of collaring all the job opportunities in the area and making them available for current and past students. .

The Students themselves

After interviewing several current and past students, attitudes towards loans have been very varied. Katie Allen described it as not seeming real, “too much to think about.” Reza-Ul Miah, a recent graduate of business described the debt as “a necessary evil,” something that he needed to take out to attend university.

There is a growing number of students however that are choosing to pay off their debts earlier, before they even embark on the working world. Taking part time jobs or borrow money from parents to ensure that they begin their work life without the burden of a student loan. A recent study, however has described this act as a “gift to the government.” After plans to levy hefty charges on graduates who chose to pay off their debts early were binned, it might be the case that repaying part of your debt early will in reality not bring down your repayments at all.

For example, a graduate who earns £30,000 a year who had previously paid off 10% of their debt would not reduce their repayment at all on a £38,250 loan.

Dr Leunig suggests “Few people have £40,000 sitting around, and extra repayments are likely to be a small percentage of the total owed.”

The Government

There has been a lot of debate over past years about student loans within the government, demonstrations and riots have taken place on an almost weekly basis. From this year universities will be allowed to charge undergraduates upto £9,000 a year for their places on degree courses, a stark contrast to pre-1998, the era that most of these politicians went to university, when there were no tuition fees at all.

Coupled with the fact that Scottish students get their tuition paid and Welsh student get their tuition subsidised, it’s no wonder this is a contenious subject at the moment. A recent government inquiry into higher education has suggested that tuition fees could rise even further in the coming years.

There have been calls for the UK government to adopt a funding system, similar to the one used in Australia. Don Nutbeam, vice-chancellor of Southampton University suggests that

“In the UK, a single “capped” loan scheme could be introduced for domestic students covering both undergraduate and postgraduate learning and available whenever students take up their studies. Such a system would improve access to postgraduate education for all and help strengthen one of the key elements of our knowledge economy.“

This might reduce the number of students that don’t ever complete their repayments and reduce further the amount of public money that is going to be lost when these loans get written off.

Katie is set to begin an MA in Architecture and will amass another £10,000 of debt in the next year. She is unsure whether she is ever pay these thousands back but only the next 30 years will tell whether she will add or take away from the seemingly endless pot of public money being spent on Student Loans.