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Glen Owen, "Students flock to American universities to beat new fees," Times
[London], February 07, 2003
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-569335,00.html

THE prospect of higher tuition fees in England has led to a surge in the
number of pupils thinking about studying in America and fears of an
undergraduate “brain drain”.
Figures showing a fivefold increase in the number of inquiries about courses
in the US will confirm fears voiced privately by Gordon Brown — and
dismissed by Tony Blair — that higher fees could destabilise British
universities.
The Fulbright Commission, which advises Britons on access to American
education, said that it received more than 340,000 hits on its information
website last month, compared with a normal monthly tally of 66,000.
The rise coincided with publication of the higher education White Paper,
which paves the way for fees of up to £3,000 [4,884 USD] a year from 2006.
The commission suggests that those pupils who will form the first cohort of
students to pay the fees — now starting their GCSE courses — are already
researching the possibility of studying abroad.
Recruitment officers for American universities said that the demand was also
being stimulated by independent school teachers who fear that some British
universities are discriminating against their pupils to meet targets for
working-class recruits.
Some schools have appointed careers advisers who specialise in applications
to the Ivy League.
More than 8,400 British students are now studying in America, about half of
them undergraduates.
Numbers were boosted by the case of Laura Spence, the Tyneside comprehensive
pupil who went to Harvard in 2000 after having been rejected by Oxford.
Paul Kelly, her former head teacher, said yesterday that she was
flourishing.
“She is doing very well academically, even by Harvard standards. She is the
first woman to row for the university, and her crew is the best in the
country.”

The referenced article does not support the bulk of my own experience.
I have three points to make based upon my own trans-atlantic educational
experience. I have two British degrees - a BA (Hons) in Philosophy,
Communication Studies and English Literature from University of
Liverpool and and an LLB (Hons)Law degree from University of Sheffield.
I'm also about to complete my MBA in the US at a regional school
in New York state.

1) I can tell you for a fact that my educational debt level is far
greater as a result of doing an American MBA than my debt level from
both two UK degrees combined, even allowing for my full tuition scholarship
and graduate assistant's stipend & attractive health insurance policy
at my MBA school. My Stafford Loan burden for my MBA will be circa
$40,000 when I graduate this May, whereas my total educational debt
burden from both my BA and LLB degrees in the UK is closer to the
equivalent of $15,000. In fact, I actively *chose* to take a law
degree in the UK and then qualify subsequently at the New York bar
*because* my legal education was significantly cheaper in the UK,
despite Thatcherite changes to the educational grants system and
the introduction of US-style educational loans - changes which occurred
during my undergraduate and Law degree years in the UK (thus I have
seen the full life-cycle of this issue percolate and then explode).
University tuition fees may be on the rise in the UK, but UK universities
are still likely to be cheaper than studying *anywhere* in the USA.
Living expenses will often be less also - outside of London and
the Home Counties, at least. I include Oxbridge in this statement
- even *with* the additional expense levied by both Oxford & Cambridge's
collegiate structure - I *still* say Oxford is cheaper than Harvard.
Partly because Honours Bachelors degrees in the UK are typically
earned in three intensive academic years that do not include the
ludicrous "general ed" bandwidth prevalent in US undergrad degree
programs, which presumably necessitates the four-year structure of
the typical US bachelor's degree program.

2) Universities in the UK do not discriminate against the "middle
classes" anymore than affirmative action (vis a vis Bakke and the
current University of Michigan cases) discriminates against white
people. Equality-of-opportunity is an honourable goal. Encouraging
the predominately "working class" attendees of UK state/comprehensive
schools ("public schools" in US parlance) to apply to Oxbridge (Oxford
& Cambridge)and to other "redbrick" universities in the UK (such
as Liverpool, Sheffield, Exeter, Warwick, Manchester, ULondon etc)-
and the government encouragement of admissions committees to admit
deserving students from these poorer or less prestigious schools
is a step towards academic & professional diversity - not de facto
"discrimination against middle classes". I'm certain my perspective
will be challenged, and I welcome the debate as a pre-Doctoral student
interested in researching Affirmative Action and the implementation
of diversity programs as part of an organizational behavior/human
resources concentration.

3)I will concede that at the DOCTORAL level, programs in Management
are partly more attractive in the US because of the guarantee and
level of funding available (research & teaching assistantships &
fellowships etc) for at least the first four years in business &
management programs in the US. In the UK, funding is rather more
scraped together from various sources and very hard to get in one
chunk from any of the research councils or business schools. This
is just one of the many reasons that I have applied to four US doctoral
programs and only one in the UK, despite the fact that I could obtain
my DPhil or PhD in the UK in closer to three years than the usual
"four to five" years required for completion by US programs (due
to the first two years being spent largely on structured coursework
rather than predominately on research).

In conclusion, let us not forget that Thatcher decimated the historically
"free education" ethos in the UK, leaving education policy in a shambles
for New Labour to sort out. If I had my druthers, the UK government
would encourage the establishment of more private universities in
the UK (a la University of Buckingham where my brother received his
BA in Politics & History from Lady Thatcher herself;-)), while keeping
public universities free or cheap for students and well-funded by
government, and that Her Majesty's government would further ensure
that no deserving individual be denied the experience of attending
*any* UK university including Oxford or Cambridge for want of money.
On that last point, I'd like to see that access-to-education ideal
upheld in the US as well.

Vik Gill

PS: Not wishing to detract from Laura Spence's academic and athletic
achievements at Harvard, it is just possible that she simply "fit"
better with Harvard than she did with Oxford and its colleges. As
you all are aware, admissions decisions are based on a mix of criteria
- not all of which are easily (nor preferably) quantifiable.


At Friday, 7 February 2003, Charles Wankel <wankelc@optonline.net>
wrote:

>Glen Owen, "Students flock to American universities to beat new fees,"