Fresher Fumes

It’s very easy to get into smoking at University. One minute you’re a fresh faced healthy hearted being and the next you’re a sallow skinned, coughing, subhuman creature.

I’ve always prided myself on being a non-smoker and the best smelling person I know as a result. I had a friend at sixth form who used to come to English lessons at 9AM bringing a stench with her that would suggest an ashtray had vomited all over her. In fact, I stated this once and I suppose you could say that we’re no longer friends.

At any rate, I digress.

The point is that smoking is smelly, likely to induce heart attacks and cancer and financially beyond the means of any normal student...yet somehow, like so many others, I have allowed myself to get addicted to cigarettes at university. ‘Why is this?’ I hear myself ask. Well, before the smoking ban kicked in, we smokers and non-smokers socialised together in utter harmony.

However, slowly but surely over the last couple of years, a very definite segregation has taken place and one day last year, I realised that I’d been left all on my lonesome in a pub. I searched high and low for my friends and eventually found them at a normal height, huddling outside in the cold and breathing in the sweet fumes of carbon monoxide. I certainly felt left out so I too lit up and became what many call a ‘social smoker’.

The only problem with that is that at the beginning of university, one is pretty much socialising all the time and smoking has the advantages of being both a conversation starter (‘Can I borrow a light?’) and a means of finding oneself in a situation where conversation is possible and uninterrupted by loud music. Imagine it: “hell-ella-o-ella-I’m-ella

-Tom-ay-what course-ay-are -under- you-my-on?-umbrella”. This is the common situation in any union bar.

So, you can see how the enticing trap that the social benefits of smoking might draw an undiscerning student like me into. Not only do I smoke cigarettes...but now I’ve started on cigars, which are far more decadent I think but no less unhealthy.

Last week, I felt all uppity and on-edge all day long and the reason why only occurred to me whilst I was browsing the spirits in Essentials and a green and white coloured box caught my eye. The realisation spread like mould over me - I needed a fag. My situation is now dire and I’ve got a spot on my nose. What would I say to others? It’s probably best not to smoke at university, but it might help you make friends - but then again, so might joining a society and that probably won’t give you a look of permanent grubbiness and a putrid smell.

The professor, his testicles and how to pay for them

You might not know it, but professors are beggars. Every academic at every university is constantly embroiled in a not very pretty scrap for a limited amount of funding. Applications for grants are an incessant, but horribly necessary, hurdle for academics to overcome.

So how do they decide who gets the dosh? It's not a case of names in a hat, but rather a very complicated system of 'peer-review'. A professor's proposal must be vetted by his or her colleagues as to its merit.

The problem is that this process has become a bit of a back-slapping fest and standards aren't as watertight as before. This means that, with everyone having such sparkling reviews, getting funding – a bit like getting into good universities – has become as much down to luck as anything else.

But Sheffield's Prof. Tim Birkhead has a solution. Writing in the THES, Prof. Birkhead suggested that rather than relying on the peer review and the individual merits of the proposal, funding should be based on previous performance.

Prof. Birkhead's logic seems sound. If a researcher has struck academic gold before, he's likely to do so again. However, the problem with this thinking is fundamental: it stifles the new and original.

Under such a system, academics such as Prof. Birkhead, who has had a long, distinguished career (including the quite fantastic 'Testes size in birds: quality vs quantity'), would waltz off with vast amounts of swag from research councils – but the twenty-something post-doc with a big idea would be left skint.

Just because a researcher has been successful, this doesn't necessarily make his or her research worthy of cash. Research councils must continue to give funding on the merit of the proposal, less they become 'old-boys' networks and blinkered to new ideas.

But, think about it, Professor. If you had not received a break when you were younger the world would know far less about birds' testes – and we would all be poorer for it.

Fees? Yes, please!

I love paying top-up fees. It’s the only way I can justify studying my completely useless degree. I’m doing History, you see. I spend my days reading about stuff that happened years ago and people who are very, very dead. Why am I doing this?

Simple. I enjoy it, and it will help me get a better job when I’m older. That’s it. I have no desire to help others in society. My motives to study this degree are completely selfish. Why, then, should others in society be forced to subsidise it?

Granted, many degrees do benefit everyone. Without the clever people who study them society would fall apart in a quite spectacular fashion. People like doctors, architects, engineers and chemists all play an important role.

History graduates do not. Nor do graduates of English, Philosophy, Politics, Sociology, Linguistics or Journalism. Sorry.

Politicians missed this point when arguing for top-up fees. Back in 2002, Margaret Hodge asked: "Should the dustman continue to subsidise the doctor or should the doctor contribute towards the cost of their own education?"

This logic fails to note that one day the said dustman may require said doctor’s skills, which he or she picked up at university. The chances of the dustman requiring anything I have learnt on my degree (outside of a pub quiz) are pretty slim. Why should the dustman have to cough up anything so a bunch of middle-class kids can spend three years discussing Nietzsche?

The £3,070 I pay in fees each year seems to be a fair amount. I pay a fraction of what students in North American universities pay. For the £3,070 I get brand-spanking new facilities, taught by world renowned faculty and get a superb student union thrown into the bargain.

Admittedly, students on the continent pay a lot less, but they get less. English fees are the highest in Europe. Germany, after massive arguments, introduced fees of up to £400 a semester last year. England has seventeen universities in the THES Top 100; Germany has the grand total of three. The French, meanwhile, pay up £550 a year and have just two universities in the Top 100.

But, then, I’m one of the lucky ones. I come from a middle-class background. Both my parents went to university, as did my brother and sister. To be frank, I can afford to pay top-up fees – but not everyone else can.

According to the Sutton Trust, top-up fees put off poorer students from attending university. The thought of nearly £10,000 tuition fees, on top of normal student debt, is simply too much for some. This is unacceptable and needs to change.

Top-up fees do need to be modified, but they should not be removed. The choice is simple: campaign to abolish all fees and drag down university standards, or apply fees sensibly and maintain the standards of the UK universities.

An introduction of a sliding scale for fees would be a start. Those with a household income less than £30,000 per year could go free. Less than £40,000 and you pay £1,000. Less than £50,000, pay £2,000 and so on. A knock down rate for poorer families would remove the disincentive that top-up fees can pose. Likewise, subjects crying out for students – such as chemistry and maths – could provide the incentive of lower fees than more popular courses.

Tinkering with the system in this way would cost far less than abolishing student fees outright. And this is the crux of the issue. No political party will ever be elected on a policy of giving university students even more money – especially at the public’s expense. Whether you like it or not, tuition fees are here to stay.