Wake Up Britain!

Throughout filming 18 and 19 year olds who are all students, to show what the real concerns of young people are, we have gained some insight. We were heartened by them but also alarmed. Heartened because higher education is so important to them and they just want to achieve the things their parents could not. They have relatively modest and fair ambitions; to make a better life for themselves and their parents. Alarmed because they do not seem to realise that having that coveted piece of paper i.e. an over-hyped English degree means nothing in reality. Hows that for 'real' terms? Let's go geek for a second and talk about real terms. Graduates in 2010 who graduated with the average debt of 22k can now pay (if they have a wage of a whole £15,000 a year, if they even have a job) £30 a month towards their debt. Not a princely sum right? No it's not but that £30 does not dent their debt one bit. Paying £30 a month for the next 25 years will leave them with still £22k of student debt. At the age of 46!! That's not even taking into account the treble of tuition fees next year and the upping of the interest rates.

They have been somewhat brainwashed into thinking that £20k+ of debt at the sprightly age of 21/22 is perfectly manageable and the norm. Well, the latter is true, but how did we get to the stage that a plethora of young graduates will be in this amount of debt as standard. OK it's the cheapest loan you'll ever get but what about the exorbitant costs that we must think about in the future; housing, a family etc. We are not going to be able to afford the most basic needs. What are going to be the results of the cost of housing and life in general in London? Over crowded housing and mass homelessness?

A degree can inhibit you from getting a job for fear of being over-qualified. A degree from a non-red brick university is worthless to massive corporations who actually give out the coveted real graduate jobs. Even a degree from a top 5 university can mean nothing if your name is foreign or you are, shock horror, working -class.

The young need to know the world is not their oyster! Unless Britain actually wakes up, stands up and makes a change to the system we have in place now, designed to keep the poor, poor and the rich, rich.

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