Skip to content

Opinion | Class of “cozzie livs”: was your degree really worth the money?

With students confronting ever-increasing living expenses and tuition fees, can we genuinely claim that our degrees justify the financial strain?

Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash

By Alex Hill, Epigram Designer

Clunk! Your parents shut the door behind you and finally you’re on your own, standing awkwardly between your suitcase, your keycard, and the bareness of the room allocated to you in your new halls of residence. It’s Freshers Week, aptly named for promising exactly what you came for: freedom, change, and a fresh start from the turmoil of the Covid years. With three, four, five of the “best years of your life” ahead of you, a fluttering feeling of excitement starts to grow in your belly - it’s only up from here. But a few years later, you’re standing outside your tiny mould-infested flat, deep into your overdraft, accelerating through your final year as graduation looms over your shoulder. And you ask yourself, where did all the time go? Did I make the most of it? Was my degree really worth the price?

 If you feel like your period of post-Covid optimism has dissipated into a muddy puddle of “Cozzie Livs” (Cost of Living Crisis) self-despair, you’re not alone. While politics and economics have assuredly not been first choice conversation starters at your flat’s Christmas dinner, we all remember the horrors of the inflation rate peak in October 2022, soaring to a 40-year high of 11.1%. Radiators turned off and avocados were scrapped from the weekly shop as students faced a 17% increase in their cost of living, resulting in over a fifth of students admitting to entering their overdraft by the 2024/2025 academic year. And from 1st August 2025, tuition fees are set to rise by an additional 3.1% from £9,250 per year for full time students to £9,535. As Socrates once said, the math just ain’t mathing.

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

 From the moment I arrived at the University of Bristol in September 2021, I felt like 2025, the year of my graduation, was decades away. Behind me stood my entire academic career, the qualifications I had gained, the subjects I had dropped. In spite of being told I was taking a “soft subject” or a “rip-off degree” (divisive terms we’ve all heard tossed around in recent political rhetoric), I decided to follow my heart and take four years of English and French. Mounting debt and lack of post-grad career opportunities were a troubling combination, and I started to question whether I should’ve committed to three arduous years of Law or scrap university entirely in favour of something more vocational. But by the end of first year and several Sainsbury’s own-brand bottles of vodka later, I had fallen in love with the city and, more importantly, my degree. Excitement to start second year was immeasurable.

If you weren’t at the University in the 2022/2023 academic year, count yourself lucky. A wave of student frustration and dissatisfaction tsunami-ed its way up and down the country as universities faced strike action from the University and College Union (UCU) across the entire year. Whilst university staff rightly crossed the picket line over disputes of pay, pensions, and workload, many students, particularly within the Faculty of Arts, felt disproportionately affected. With my course losing approximately half of its teaching hours in the spring term, I asked myself, what am I really paying for?

Already halfway through my degree, I knew a break from Bristol (and my £40 weekly shop) was needed. Enter third year, the “magical” year abroad. From one city to another, I dove headfirst into the unknown, tackling a mountain of paperwork and the complex Visa process with limited support from the university. However, trading my uCard for a school keycard, I spent seven invaluable months teaching English in Paris, an experience worth every penny. With the degree beginning to pay off, I journeyed back to Bristol with my suitcase, a little money saved, and a pair of fresh eyes, ready to make the most of my final year.

Photo by Ross Sneddon on Unsplash

Now that the inflation rate has deflated to a manageable 2.6%, so has the chaos of the “cozzie livs”. But the dent in our back pockets remains deep, and debates over putting the heating on are still rampant in student rentals. So far, fourth year has treated me well, having remained financially afloat, found a solid group of friends, and discovered the academic “niche” that first-year me could only dream of. While, yes, part of me wishes I were more pragmatic on my UCAS application, opting against a prospect-less “soft subject” that would indebt me £50,000, I remind myself that no course would be a “rip-off degree” if students received adequate financial support from a government that constantly pushes the importance of tertiary education in the first place. And if, like me, you still feel university isn’t worth the price, remember how far you’ve come since standing alone in your halls and how much you’ve grown since you unpacked your suitcase for the first time.

Latest