Degrees: Invaluable or Insignificant?

The following is a response to a comment left on my last post:

In my personal opinion education is definitely overvalued. Not in terms of personal growth, but in terms of the job market. I joined Rhodes Music Radio this year, and to be honest I have learned more about journalism by being on radio than I have all year sitting in lectures. Hands-on experience is invaluable in the work place today. Chances are I could apply to a popular radio station 2 years from now and would be more likely to get the job than someone with honours in journalism who does not have the experience I have.

To a degree education is unfair in this country, in part due to what the apartheid regime left behind, but also in part due to the structure of education in the country. In both the United States and Canada primary education is free, only once people start attending university do people have to concern themselves with paying for education. That is the gap between a developing country and a first world country. How can the playing fields ever be level when one person can go to St. Johns and pay R120 000 a year in fees and someone else goes to a school in the township that costs R2000 a year.

Like you said, emphasis is placed on degrees, but only those with some wealth (or those who work really hard to overcome their circumstances to win bursaries or scholarships) are able to get these degrees. Personally I have a problem with any system that limits personal growth simply because the financial backing is not there.

Rhodes: Education VS Exploitation?

We all go to university to get a degree and with the exception of the limited number of students on scholarships; we pay through the roof to be here. Tuition costs in the region of R21 400 and R27 600 depending on your degree. Residence will cost somewhere in the same region. Thus before one has even set foot in a lecture, parents/guardians/we have already spent somewhere in the region of R50 000 and that’s before we even take things such as stationary or textbooks into account. This is the price of education – or is it?

Rhodes may not differ drastically from other universities in terms of fees but in personal experience I can say that various departments and societies at Rhodes will do their most to make a buck off of you. At the University of Cape Town students pay their fees for residence and their rooms belong to them for the duration of the year. They can come and go as they please with no need to pack up, no need to worry about getting in and out of residence before certain dates. Rhodes however is not like this. At Rhodes it seems the university will take every opportunity whatsoever to make some money. This basically means you have to pack up your room almost every vacation so that your residence may be used as accommodation for people attending conferences such as Highway Africa. If one wished to remain in one’s room during such a vacation, one would still be required to pack up their belongings and they would then be forced to pay an exuberant fee per night. It is my understanding that all the money made goes back to the university and its students. However I fail to see this. I currently live in a residence located on the hill and as such it is quite a bit away from any computer labs on campus. At the beginning of the year residences were told by the university that residences would be receiving their own printers, these would be distributed starting with female residences and then based on how far away one’s residence is from campus. Strange thing though, my residence still has no printer and residences right next to or across from computer labs do.

While we are on the printing issue let me just say that as a journalism student it is a big mission to have to finish an assignment; go down campus to print; and come back up to submit when the Journalism Department is right across the road. It wastes a good thirty minutes of valuable time that we as students can’t afford to lose. And while I’m talking about the Africa Media Matrix the Journalism Department is yet another department who makes the most of fees paid by students. The department accepts roughly 270 students into first year, and then accepts only 130 or so into second year because competition is fierce and apparently they do not have the resources to accommodate more students. Ironic then that in 2008 they added electronic ticker tape to the outside of the AMM which probably cost hundreds of thousands to do. Also ironic then that there are 4 huge flat-screen televisions embedded in the wall in the foyer. For a department that has limited resources they have rather curious spending habits.

Moving away from the university and the academic departments, even your fellow students will try to exploit your wallet. I present to you: Societies Evening; mega money drain madness. A hundred different societies will “convince” (and by convince I mean pester/harass/persuade) you that you need to sign up and join for a small fee, usually in the region of R100 – R150. What they fail to tell you is that after signing your money away, you are not likely to participate, you are not likely to attend functions, and if you wish to cancel your membership you will only receive a certain portion of your money back.

So if I have some advice for you it is this: Buyer Beware. The degree trade is a cut-throat industry and one will need their wits to come out with wallet still in hand.

(The picture is a little something i came up with by using Zapiro's Zuma comic as inspiration and borrowing Zapiro's art)

Opinion Piece

Let’s Get Wasted?

There is one statement in life that one can make at any time and remain undisputed. Rhodents love to drink. It doesn’t matter what the weather’s like, what time of year it is, or if a tornado has just ripped through Grahamstown, the Rat and Parrot will be bursting with students out to get their hands on the cheapest draft they can find. The thing is, this is all very well until the reality of upcoming exams sets in. How are the loyal patrons of Grahamstown’s watering- holes supposed to go ‘cold turkey’ and give up there thrice- weekly debauchery? This is a question that many first year partygoers are asking themselves at this very moment. Finals are looming and the pressure to go out and drink themselves into oblivion remains.

I just want to make it clear that I am not preaching here, I happened to be one of the guilty parties myself, but I like to think I have it in me to curb my habit during exam fever. Exam- time is all about moderation, a moderate amount of studying, a moderate amount of procrastination and a moderate amount of letting loose at Friars on a Friday night. The problem arises when students begin to use revelry as a form of procrastination, as this is when the situation gets out of hand, and you end up with a panicking, hung-over undergraduate, cramming for an accounting exam which is due to take place in a mere 12 hours. This is, of course, the said undergraduate’s own fault and he or she should therefore deal with the consequences. However, I do believe the “pressure to party” at Rhodes does have a large role to play. One might argue that students should not give in to peer- pressure and make the conscious decision to stay in and study, but the pressure is not only from peers, it is also from the ethos of Rhodes University as a whole. One of the first things I heard about Rhodes before my arrival at this splendid institution, was that I would drink more than I ever have in my life and that there was a 1 in 5 chance I would get my stomach pumped in first year. I am proud to announce that the latter event has not taken place, but I have felt the pressure from the reputation that Rhodents have, to party harder than any other students in the country (and possibly even the world).

I guess the crux of this argument is that if you are an outgoing, adventurous, party loving student, the chances are that the drinking culture at Rhodes will take advantage of these brilliant traits and turn you into a hard-core “joller” in every sense of the word. The fact is that it is difficult to break this cycle when it comes to exams and other important academic issues. Rhodents need to exercise caution during the term so that their partying habits do not get out of hand. In this way, they will be able to cut down on their visits to the Rat during Swot Week and exams and manage to live up to the reputation of a true Rhodent, which is someone who can handle the intensity of the social scene at Rhodes but also work hard when it counts.

In support of Blog Action Day

Do we all honestly believe that somehow, by being a student here at Rhodes University, we are exempt from worrying about the national crisis that is poverty in South Africa? Every day passes and another dining hall meal is taken for granted as the food is wasted. Money is needlessly spent on pointless items and alcohol as 2 meters outside the door of the Rat a young, hungry child waits for his next 5 rand to put towards bread.

The assumption is that most middle income teenagers will move on to a tertiary education and the lucky few will make it to Rhodes, yet when the acceptance letter arrives there seems to set in an attitude of keeping our eyes closed. Is the point of going to university not that we are supposed to open our eyes? First year is treated as a baptism of fire into the culture of university; however this culture is being confused with a constant mood of ignorance, arrogance and lack of responsibility. When the topic of most conversations at the Kaif is about what’s going on that night and “who was so drunk” the night before while we eat copious amounts of junk food and throw it in the bin, while not a kilometer away families are not sure when the next meal will come.

However who can be to blame for the lack of caring on the students’ part about the poverty around us and in the country? The students themselves might have taken a oblivious attitude towards the situation and palmed off and feeling of responsibility to someone else with the phrase “oh, someone else will do it.” Commonly thrown around without any thought or conscientiousness, the blame must lie with students; we can no longer live by the idea that somebody else will tell us what to do or where to go. If we are old enough to consume alcohol and deeming ourselves responsible enough to live our own way, then surely it is on us as the “future leaders” to take a stand and actually pay attention to the world around us. No parent, teacher, lecturer or any person for that matter can truly take any responsibility for us as young adults not fulfilling a service we owe to the poverty stricken of our country. An example of the lack of responsibility felt by students is the lack of response by JMS 1 students to the blog action day. This action towards showing solidarity did not take any special effort and in fact can be labeled as an easy task; yet uninterested 1st years palmed it off and didn’t think twice about contributing towards the action. This points out in general the lack of acute awareness we as students are personifying and allowing to creep into out demographic description.

It is never too late for us to finally make our mark on the problem of poverty, we are a powerful demographic and know that in numbers we can change the world, so we’ve changed it for ourselves; it’s about time we change it for someone else.

Our comic strip...

So for our JMS 1 course, we were required to create a comic strip....So here is the saga of a poor misguided princess, waking up where she shouldn't, so heed the warning young future first years... This is an example of what people call... Seal Clubbing...