A Paid Uk Degree? Pourquoi Pas!

With the recent changes in the Government policies concerning University fees subsidies, British students may feel the need to study on the Continent, where tuition is cheaper or even free, compared to the £27,000 they have to forked out here only for tuition fees over three years. So why are 13,000 French students coming to the UK(Source: The Telegraph)



French Degree vs British Degree
Source: Google Images



I have a lot of french friends who study at UEA either as an exchange student (Erasmus) or doing a full degree here. Let us meet one of my friends from "The Eiffel Tower" city of Paris who tells us her experience of being a full time undergraduate student at UEA.

My friend's name is Flora Collardeau. She is a 22 years old student at UEA in Creative Writing and she claims: “Before attending a British university, I went to a French university for a year but disliked the teaching method. I was in a class or lecture hall of around 1,500 students, we listened and took notes."

She adds that “In the British system you learn how important it is to interact with one another through group assignments and how to present your ideas, these are crucial skills in the working world, employers like that.” Moreover Flora was very interested in learning and studying via the english medium and when asked why, she replied: “Employers value the English language and studying at a British university shows a high level of comprehension of English."

She further adds: “Leaving home was a key factor as it taught me how to be more responsible with every day activities such as cooking, bills and budgeting. In France you don’t usually learn this until a lot later on in life as most students live at home. Students in France aren't given much variety in course options. The arts, like media studies and PR, are difficult to find in French universities unless you take the subjects in a private fee paying business school."

The discussion about whether it is fair for the locals to pay such high fees for their university tuition fees will go on. However ignoring the last fact, we observe that UK universities are offering more and more highly valued, quality, multi-disciplinary, varied and attractive courses that are more and more apealing to students and that satisfy their chosen field of study interests. And this is a fact that is being well adopted by students from all over europe, as in the case of Flora.

Hussein Wahedally
UEA International Ambassadors