joeheatley
Aug 27, 2017 · 2 min read

I am a member of a previous generation, a baby boomer in fact, and I agree with every single word you have said in this article. I had a grant which felt generous at the time and furthermore I could claim benefits and get my rent paid in the holidays. There were jobs waiting and opportunities for further training often free. I’m not saying this to rub young people’s noses in comparison to the awful treatment not to say mugging they receive today. I would say the current system is not only unfair, it is shortsighted and wrong headed. I was lucky enough to live at a time when the government thought it was worthwhile investing in their people and in their young in particular.

What I see now is a perverse wish to drive home to the young that they are failures and surplus to requirements. This is disgusting both morally and practically in a little island that has nothing really but it’s people and their skills to market itself in a very competitive world.

I note that Vice Chancellors are very secretive about their remuneration and where it has leaked out it can be in the region of half a million pounds per year. The government gave them a licence to print money as it were at the expense of students from modest to poor backgrounds. I wonder whose pockets got lined? It certainly wasn’t lecturers or other staff but bureaucrats. Watch out for the vanity projects that happen when the money piles up so high it blocks out the sunlight.

I frankly don’t know why so many of my generation are happy to pull up the ladder on their own children and grandchildren. I suspect that it involves rancour that their time has passed and denial that they must hand the reins to younger people. It’s time for us to hand over and lets make sure the people we hand over to are well qualified, confident and not burdened with unnecessary debt.

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