Expletives to David Cameron

Don't read this if you're my mum.

David Cameron has made my life a bit harder. Probably I'm not the only one who could say that. But this is how he's made life harder for me.

Unless I'm wrong (and this is very possible, as I don't keep up with the detail of British life any more), if you want to go to university in England, you now have to pay 9,000 pounds a year. Or borrow it. Now this is where it's a bummer for me. We have three children hurtling downhill towards college age. Without wanting to assume that they will all want to go to college, but thinking it's likely, that means that either they will have to each take on a debt of 27,000 before launching into adult life, or we will have to find 81,000. Neither of those is a very attractive prospect.

Here's the crunch. University education in the US is fearsomely expensive, but because it has always been that way, a whole system of support has grown up. There are academic scholarships, sports scholarships, loan schemes, and - most importantly for us - tuition remission for family of university employees. The university that Husband teaches at is very egalitarian, so that if you are the janitor and have ten children, they all receive tuition remission (worth about $15,000 a year, for four years). I like that. It's a huge perk. The university has some very loyal janitors, who in real terms are extremely well paid. In our case, that means that I am doing my MA degree pretty much for free (though there are tax implications, which puts it at a few hundred dollars - but in the context of saving $15,000, I'm not complaining). Which is all a preamble to saying that if we decided to stay here long-term - and Mum, since I know you will be reading this in spite of the opening instruction, we aren't - but if we did decide to stay here, we would instantly be looking at saving the family 81,000 pounds. That is not to be sneezed at.

So expletives to you, David Cameron, because you've made it really very attractive in financial terms to stay here. Expletives to you.

Am I up to date with the reality of the situation? Are universities all charging 9,000 pounds as from next year? Is Scotland doing the same, of is this just England (we've always fancied going back to Scotland, and this would be one big incentive). Are universities focusing any efforts on introducing more scholarships? Are any of them thinking about tuition remission for their employees?

For those of you wanting the challenge of a harder question, is it worth 81,000 pounds to us to be living in England, near family, near places we love, near old friends, in a culture we feel more at home with, where you can get a decent cup of tea at will, where John Humphries is on the radio every morning, where you are but a few hours away from mainland Europe, on an island you share with the Lake District, the Scottish Highlands and a whole lot of fabulous coastline, where we can vote, where we feel most who we are, and in whose soil we ultimately want our children to have their roots? Or used to.

How much is that worth? Answer THAT one, David Cameron.

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