My camera & I did not amuse him. Also, have you heard about the new student tuition fees? I am not amused, but I am actually going to say a few things which I believe are mostly rational, rather than join any of these vitriolic discussions I've found under BBC articles. Firstly, a lot of the people commenting on these articles have completely lumped all students into rampant sex addicts and alcoholics, which makes me wonder why they expect anyone to take them seriously. What's worrying though is that they are actually being engaged in conversation, and applauded for their views. I realise I could be seen as unusual, due to the fact that I haven't consumed any alcohol since I arrived at university - I come from an area where this is extremely unusual, and indeed this country has such a reputation that judging by the media I would be considered unusual by most of the population. In fact, I have found just as many people here who don't drink as those who like going out getting smashed. Unfortunately, the drinkers draw more attention to themselves. Now of course there's a nice middle section who drink and don't do it to extremes, but if you were to search a student's facebook page & see an alcohol bottle in the background then I betting a lot of the people on those forums would assume they'd had an all-night drinking session. What is often glossed over is the fact that many people not in university, who are at 9-5 jobs and therefore considered mostly 'respectable' by society go out on binges and pub crawls. Again, it's not something I choose to do, but of course I know adults who go out with the sole purpose of damaging their liver as much as possible. Perhaps this is because I'm at a Russel Group University, but I've also found that, okay, yes, there are a few people who put partying above work (I've genuinely only met one extreme case like this), but a lot of people have worked extremely hard in all their free time, & then gone out to enjoy themselves with their friends. Would they be criticised by these viperous forum snipers if instead they'd gone out to the cinema with their friends? Or for a long dinner? Perhaps you would argue that they are on tax payers money, & therefore should focus solely on their work. In that case you would have to apply the same logic to A-level students at your local state, or maybe even to the GCSE kids, because they definitely go out & party too. I'm digressing away from the fees issue, it's just those forum snipers really irritated me. I'm one of the first people to judge someone for drinking too much (at least I'm honest about it!) but I will not condemn students for it, & say it shows they're not taking their degree seriously. I've not mentioned any of the "lower" universities, writing this purely from the POV of someone who attends a RG Uni, but I've never hidden my disdain for some of the degrees out there. I feel awkward naming them, because I know a ridiculous amount of people who take them, but some of them should definitely not be three year courses if they absolutely must be taught at university, & there are a number of courses which shouldn't be university degrees at all. I don't believe university should be an equal-opportunity institution. As far as I'm concerned university should be academically elitist. There is no shame in not going to university if your interests lie elsewhere. I object to this target that 50% of 18 year olds should be funnelled into HE, with a large majority of them studying courses which could have been taught at a college, or through actually going out there & getting a job. Some of these spiteful commenters said that any degree that is useful (maths, science, engineering) should be free, whereas everyone else should pay. Now, as someone taking English Literature, of course I'm expected to object. & I do. I understand that the aforementioned subjects are very important for our society, but then I ask you to imagine what the world we lived in now would be like if no one had ben taught English, or History, or Theatre, even Geography (which I saw being dismissed). I've never found Geography very interesting, but without geographers are you really sure that we'd understand our world as much as we currently do? Geography & the sciences do cross over, and when it comes to monitoring earthquakes and volcanoes, etc. you couldn't do it without those technical subjects either, but there is a co-dependency in some area. Then moving onto English, or Theatre, I have to ask what degrees you think the writers of BBC drama documentaries studied. The world has changed, and entertainment is of much more significance than in the past, & you genuinely won't find many Biologists producing your favourite comedy. I think I'd actually be quiet happy if all students had to pay the worth of their degree. Now you could point out that as an English Literature student it's very easy for me to say that, as my de

Vonnegut's address to Rice University in '98: Hello. For those of you getting your first university degrees, I like your generation a lot, and I expect good things from you, and wish you well. This is a long-delayed puberty ceremony. You are at last officially full-grown men and women -- what you were biologically by the age of fifteen or so. I am sorry as I can be that it took so long and cost so much for you to at last receive licenses as grownups. I have not calculated how much your diplomas cost in time and money. Whatever those ballpark figures are, they surely deserve this reaction from me today: Wow. Wow. Wow. Thank you, and God bless you and those who made it possible for you to study at this great American university. By becoming informed and reasonable and capable adults, you have made this a better world than it was before you got here. Have we met before? No. But I have thought a lot about people like you. You men here are Adam. You women are Eve. Who hasn't thought a lot about Adam and Eve? This is Eden, and you're about to be kicked out. Why? You ate the knowledge apple. It's in your tummies now. And who am I? I used to be Adam. But now I am Methuselah. And who is a serpent among us? Anyone who would strike a child. So what does this Methuselah have to say to you, since he has lived so long? I'll pass on to you what another Methuselah said to me. He's Joe Heller, author, as you know, of Catch 22. We were at a party thrown by a multi-billionaire out on Long Island, and I said, ''Joe, how does it make you feel to realize that only yesterday our host probably made more money than Catch 22, one of the most popular books of all time, has grossed world-wide over the past forty years?'' Joe said to me, ''I have something he can never have.'' I said, ''What's that, Joe?'' And he said, ''The knowledge that I've got enough.'' His example may be of comfort to many of you Adams and Eves, who in later years will have to admit that something has gone terribly wrong -- and that, despite the education you received here, you have somehow failed to become billionaires. This can happen to people who are interested in something other than money, other than the bottom line. We call such people saints -- or I do. Well-dressed people ask me sometimes, with their teeth bared, as though they were about to bite me, if I believe in a redistribution of wealth. I can only reply that it doesn't matter what I think, that wealth is already being redistributed every hour, often in ways which are absolutely fantastic. Nobel Prizes are peanuts when compared with what a linebacker for the Cowboys makes in a single season nowadays. For about a hundred years now, the most lucrative prize for a person who made a really meaningful contribution to the culture of the world as a physicist, a chemist, a physiologist, a physician, a writer, or a maker of peace, has been the Nobel Prize. It is about a million dollars now. Those dollars come, incidentally, from a fortune made by a Swede who mixed clay with nitroglycerin and gave us dynamite. KABOOM! Alfred Nobel intended that his prizes make the planet's most valuable inhabitants independently wealthy, so that their work could not be inhibited or bent this way or that way by powerful politicians or patrons. But one million dollars is only a white chip now -- in the worlds of sports and entertainment, on Wall Street, in many lawsuits, as compensation for executives of our larger corporations. One million dollars in the tabloids and on the evening news is "chump change" in 1998. I am reminded of a scene in a W. C. Fields movie, in which he is watching a poker game in a saloon in a gold-rush town. Fields announces his presence by putting a one-hundred-dollar bill on the table. The players barely look up from the game. One of them finally says, "Give him a white chip." But the cost of a college education, a minor fraction of a million dollars, is anything but chump change to most Americans. Have academic degrees in the past been passports to international glory, to wealth grotesquely out of scale with the needs of ordinary families? In a few cases. Rice can no doubt name a handful of celebrities who came from here. Larry McMurtry I know about. But most graduates from Rice, or from Harvard, or Oxford, or the Sorbonne, or anyplace else you care to name, have been of use locally rather than nationally. They have commonly been rewarded with modest but adequate amounts of money -- and even less fame. In place of fame, they may have had to be content with someone's seemingly heartfelt thanks for something well done from time to time. In time, this will prove to have been the destiny of most, but not all, of the Adams and Eves in this, the Class of 1998 at Rice, and the graduate students as well. They will find themselves building or strengthening their communities. Please love such a destiny, if it turns out to be yours -- for communities are all that is