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Students have always been dishevelled, but in recent years they have been revolting. In campuses across the country undergraduates have been engaging in demonstrations, marches and sit-ins to protest everything from facility closures to tuition fees and rent increases. Although many students have supported staff in their strikes over pay, 120,000 graduates have signed up to a single legal claim to sue universities for compensation for teaching hours lost due to industrial action (575,000 in 2018 alone) and pandemic restrictions.
Is University Really Worth It?, an hour-long BBC documentary, questions whether the ivory towers of English academia have lost their lustre. The titular question isn’t rhetorical, but one engagingly grappled with by the comedian Geoff Norcott, who can’t decide whether to open a college fund for his son or to invest in a new car instead. The country’s most (or only) renowned rightwing stand-up, Norcott was an unlikely champion of New Labour’s efforts to increase university admissions when he worked as a secondary school teacher in the early 2000s. But with 69 per cent of graduates in 2022 claiming that their courses are “bad value for money”, he wonders if young people might now be better off pursuing alternatives to higher education.
While he can’t resist making facetious remarks about latte-swilling students, Norcott treats the central debate with the seriousness it demands and listens to the frustrations of interviewees with due interest and sympathy. A meeting with an undergrad trying to live on £10 a week evidently moves him and serves as an affecting reminder that being a student is today less about having the time of your life and more about weathering the cost of living.
If the show gives a clear sense of the malaise hanging over the nation’s campuses, it lacks rigour in its examination of the universities themselves. Besides one interview with an anonymous whistleblower — who alleges grade inflation and wealth-based admissions are common practice at unnamed art schools — and a conversation with an evasive vice-chancellor, there are few insights from those at the top of the institutions. A couple of tame quips at the expense of Nick Clegg meanwhile are about as close as we get to an analysis of the government’s role in making university a less-than-first-class experience for many.
★★★☆☆
On BBC2 on March 11 at 9pm and streaming on iPlayer
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