I have been thinking about your tale of going to university and the question you ask. I must say that my memory of events, circumstances and above all my thought processes at the time is not as clear as yours but for what it's worth here is my story.
I made that transition from school to university in 1964. It was a bigger issue perhaps than for you and Alasdair as I was the first person in my family to go to university, so I had not much direct contact with the world of universities and no one in my family who could talk through the options. That said teachers (or at least some teachers) did take an interest and were encouraging and in retrospect my mother was fiercely determined that I shouldn't end up in the shipyards or similar - but I was so self absorbed that I am not sure I noticed any of that at the time. Continuing education beyond school was not so novel however. My friends from school who had left at 16 or 18 and gone into the professions as apprentice solicitors, accountants, surveyors, civil and mechanical engineers, scientific and executive class civil servants etc were doing professional examinations/HNDs on day release. They were all being paid to be trained - not least because their families needed the money they brought in -and as far as I was concerned that was the main cost of going to university: I did not get paid for 6 years - which left me a long way behind many of my contemporaries in social and economic terms.
Anyway back to the narrative: it is was a much more graduated change than you faced getting on the Loch Seaforth at midnight and disappearing to a completely new life. On the appointed day (which I think must have been a Thursday since I remember it as the day of the 1964 General election and we were not sure if Wilson had got across the line until the Friday afternoon) I made my way to Gourock station, bought the Manchester Guardian and got on the (steam) train at around 7.30am (see above for the Gourock-Glasgow train of the mid-6os). Fifty minutes later I got off at Glasgow Central went to the 59 bus stop (with the graffito on it "I died waiting for a 59", the truth of which I learned bitterly) and headed out to Gilmorehill.
I lived at home and commuted to University daily like most students at Glasgow (and probably in Scotland) at that time and continued to do so until my third year. My friends were the friends from school who commuted with me to Glasgow and Strathclyde and the school friends now in work whom I saw in the evenings or weekends. To that degree the main direct cost of me going to university was covered by my mother feeding and housing me - a real sacrifice for her and one which I was very conscious of. Certainly my annual maintenance grant was around £100 plus fees & transport costs (I think) and working at Christmas and for all of the summer was a necessity (I seem to remember when I moved to Glasgow in 1966 (and after my mother divorced) my maintenance grant was of the order of £3-400 a year and I felt reasonably comfortable though the flats I stayed in were pretty grotty and not very warm - Margo may remember the horrible place I shared with John Galloway at the park end of Sauchiehall street in early 1967. For comparison, when I started work in in London in 1968 I was paid £1040 pa and was permanently in overdraft (costs in london were, judging by the beer standard, 25% higher than Glasgow - a pint was two bob in Glasgow and half a dollar in London). Fees were not as I remember it that high and paid direct by the Scottish Education Department to the University and so generally below my radar. The main purpose of matriculation as I remember it was for the university to collect the fee authorisations and to pay the maintenance grant.
So to answer your big question : I am pretty sure that it would not have changed my mind about going to university to know that I would have to pay back the fees and the maintenance over 30 years. Despite living in a council house I understood at 16 the concept of borrowing money/making sacrifices to buy an asset that delivers services over a life time. I was carrying costs of my own anyway - not working and earning from 16 to 22, a point made clear to me by all the former schoolmates in employment who offered (sometimes kindly, sometimes not) to buy me a drink when I was stony. So I already felt I was investing in my own future. Above all I wanted out of Gourock, and university was a socially acceptable way of doing that. My family and friends did not feel rejected (the proud poppy syndrome was not unknown in working class culture) by the thougtht that to realise my own potential I had to go universiy : rather it was seen a matter of pride for the family, and to a degree for the community. I was pretty clear however that I was doing it for me.
A final aside as I reflect on the career paths of my schoolmates is the way the private sector stopped on-the-job professional training combined with professional exams from the 1960s, increasingly outsourced professional training to the universities and thus pushed the cost onto government and/or the students and their families. Labour markets may function in such a way as to make sure firms pay the students' extra costs through higher life time earnings for their workers: or they may not. Certainly it is not clear to me that the tax burden on the corporate sector has reflected the increased costs of university education borne by the taxpayer in general but which benefits companies. So that is another reason for pushing the costs of university education onto the students because in the longer term it will need to be reflected in wages if it is to be sustainable.
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