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High cost of train travel apparently influencing peoples choice of university

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Tetchytyke

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It's the age old debate on here that trains are both "overcrowded" and also "too expensive".

The two things are linked, though. The perception of cost is influenced by the quality of the journey. And on XC you have sky-high fares and crappy trains.

Most journeys are necessary, so I'm less convinced by the argument that high fares act as a demand control. It's far more that XC charge so much simply because they can.

If I travel to the south west from here I fly, as the cost saving is huge. And I doubt Flybe and EasyJet fly the routes as a charity case, so...
 
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DarloRich

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The two things are linked, though. The perception of cost is influenced by the quality of the journey. And on XC you have sky-high fares and crappy trains.

Most journeys are necessary, so I'm less convinced by the argument that high fares act as a demand control. It's far more that XC charge so much simply because they can.

If I travel to the south west from here I fly, as the cost saving is huge. And I doubt Flybe and EasyJet fly the routes as a charity case, so...

My solution: take away student railcards and put them in the coach ;)
 

cactustwirly

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My solution: take away student railcards and put them in the coach ;)

They already do, most people I know at uni take the coach, it's just people like me that take the train when the coach isn't an option
 

Bromley boy

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And it isn't a few hundred pounds anymore. It's thousands, when you factor in parents tagging along, hotel costs, etc.

No reason for it to be that expensive - various options are outlined above to reduce accommodation costs to a negligible level.

If parents insist on going one would hope they are also providing transport and picking up the tab.

Slumming it on NatEx doesn't really cut it either.

Why ever not?

NatEx offers a perfectly adequate method of transport for those on a budget. If people turn their noses up at it presumably they are able to afford to pay for more expensive options.

Pay your money, take your choice.
 

notlob.divad

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Book a YHA dorm bed for the open day (about £20) and go by coach. At that age you don't have money but you do have time.

I do agree trains can be too expensive at times, but modern-day young people at that point in their lives have it quite easy compared to those many years ago. Fees are an issue, but at the point of choosing a university aren't particularly relevant as they all charge the same and you don't pay until much later anyway.

You only have time if you are allowed to take the time off from your IV form college. When I was there (admitedly a while ago now) we were allowed time off for Uni open days, but it was 1 day. I had to ask specially to get an extra half day in order to travel the day before a 10am interview on the otherside of the country.
 

PeterC

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SNIP
They certainly had open days back in the 70s, but I think they weren't as common then. As I said earlier, the consequences of getting it wrong weren't so dire.
I was asked to a couple of interviews, and in those cases the unis did offer to repay the train fare. Not sure if all do.


You can't just rock up to the Uni when you feel like it. You can only go on an open day, when there will be hundreds if not thousands of other prospective students coming too. The chances of you getting any cheap accommodation are minimal.

/SNIP
I am sure that I posted on a similar discussion not many months ago.

In my day (A levels 1969) universities certainly didn't have open days at an institutional level. There would usually be much smaller visits arranged at a departmental level but you had to have already made your initial selection on the UCCA form.

The striking thing is the words "and families" in the original article. Back then the invite was just for the prospective student and you were expected to be able to cope with getting across the country on your own. At the same age both my parents had been called up in the war and didn't expect to mollycoddle me.
 

Belperpete

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I am sure that I posted on a similar discussion not many months ago.

In my day (A levels 1969) universities certainly didn't have open days at an institutional level. There would usually be much smaller visits arranged at a departmental level but you had to have already made your initial selection on the UCCA form.

The striking thing is the words "and families" in the original article. Back then the invite was just for the prospective student and you were expected to be able to cope with getting across the country on your own. At the same age both my parents had been called up in the war and didn't expect to mollycoddle me.
Agreed, I can't recall a single open day or interview visit when either I or my peers had an accompanying parent. My parents certainly couldn't have afforded either the cost or time off.
 

Bletchleyite

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No it's not!
The nearest place that I can get a coach, is either Heathrow or Victoria coach station.
Both of which are expensive to get to, and a huge PiTA with luggage.

How much luggage do you need for an overnight stay at a university open day?

By the time you've done that you may as well get the train, as it saves 2 hours and it works out to be the same price or even cheaper.

This may be the case but I doubt it is. But without knowing where you are...

As for Teenagers/Students having plenty of free time haha I wish that was the case

You may be choosing to fill your time, but the majority of teenagers don't have commitments like children and full time work. They have school/college, but that's a much shorter day and homework could be done on the coach. If you choose to fill your time with other things, that's your choice, but don't expect any sympathy if that means you have to work or save to afford a costlier but faster method of transport. In life you make choices, and with those choices come consequences. Some are positive and some are negative.
 

Bletchleyite

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You only have time if you are allowed to take the time off from your IV form college. When I was there (admitedly a while ago now) we were allowed time off for Uni open days, but it was 1 day. I had to ask specially to get an extra half day in order to travel the day before a 10am interview on the otherside of the country.

No sensible college is going to turn that sort of thing down, it's a very sensible educational reason for a day off. But many of them are on weekends anyway - so get yourself on the Friday night overnight NatEx, then.

If they won't allow it and it's not exam time, you then have to make a choice - it may actually be a sensible choice, depending on the sanctions they might apply, to just go anyway.
 

Bletchleyite

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NatEx offers a perfectly adequate method of transport for those on a budget. If people turn their noses up at it presumably they are able to afford to pay for more expensive options.

TBH I'd say "really very nice mode of transport" these days. The coaches are new and well-appointed with seats far better than most trains. It's just slow, but young people don't have the time pressures of working adults with families.

While there is no longer a "jolly hostess serving crisps and tea", as the Divine Comedy would have it, it's nothing like the way it was "slumming it" years ago, nor are the other passengers anything like the horror stories you get from Greyhound in the States.
 

ac6000cw

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I don't think they had Open Days back in the 80s. I had to write off for prospectuses, draw up my shortlist of 5 for the UCCA form and then attend the 5 interviews before deciding where I wanted to go (all 5 gave me an offer). Incidentally, the council repaid my train fare for the 3 most expensive interview trips - I doubt that happens today!

I also received an offer from a Poly at the other end of the country without an interview - they thought it was a bit far for me to travel.

One of my interviews stretched over 2 days and included free overnight accommodation and meals. Newcastle, ironically.

I was doing much the same thing in the late 1970's - choosing four uni's from prospectuses, then going for interviews to three of them in the end.

But, to underline the importance of actually visiting the places & institutions, my preconceived notions about which ones I preferred at the start got blown out of the water after the interview visits. Although I got offers from all four in the end, I decided to put what was probably initially my least preferred as first choice on UCCA (and spent 3 happy years there studying - no regrets at all), mostly because it felt like the 'right place to be' when I visited it (and some of the others didn't).

(Bradford was my eventual choice, and due to the 'Peak' on the train from Birmingham failing at Sheffield, I arrived quite late so instead of a leisurely stroll around the city centre beforehand to see what it was like, I had to rush straight to the university instead. Over the course of the next few years, it wasn't the only time a Peak failed on me on the way to Bradford either...).

Agreed, I can't recall a single open day or interview visit when either I or my peers had an accompanying parent. My parents certainly couldn't have afforded either the cost or time off.

Same here - and when I started at uni, I just took a large suitcase on the train on my own and basically started my adult 'life training' along with all the other not-quite-sure-what-to-do-next freshers...the most useful first day info was probably where the nearest supermarket was, and which curry houses to avoid (this being Bradford :)).
 
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Typhoon

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His school only allow 2 days off for visiting Unis, so he couldn't do week-day visits that required overnight accommodation - as just one visit would take up his two days.
That is a stupid approach. I'm not saying you should be allowed to go to loads, but you are sending 18 year olds to spend 3 years in a place, they should at least get to see the campus and the town, get a feel for it. Not only are towns not the same but campuses are not the same. I once had a discussion who was intending to go to Portsmouth University, never having been there; now to me Portsmouth is an acquired taste and I can imagine some students getting pretty depressed by the environment. I spent a year there, no problem, I had gone for an interview, and had already visited the City so I knew what to expect. No wonder students drop out.
 

Bletchleyite

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That is a stupid approach. I'm not saying you should be allowed to go to loads, but you are sending 18 year olds to spend 3 years in a place, they should at least get to see the campus and the town, get a feel for it. Not only are towns not the same but campuses are not the same. I once had a discussion who was intending to go to Portsmouth University, never having been there; now to me Portsmouth is an acquired taste and I can imagine some students getting pretty depressed by the environment. I spent a year there, no problem, I had gone for an interview, and had already visited the City so I knew what to expect. No wonder students drop out.

That school are idiots, and TBH if I was a parent it's one where I'd tell my kid to take the day off anyway and I would pay any fine (though I would also, given that it's not a holiday, go to all of the local press about the idiocy of it and make the school look very stupid).
 

Mathew S

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I suspect the article is a nonsense clickbait one. She's in Plymouth. And it's easy to book advances when you're a student. And XC and GWR go to a lot of the country..... and where does she think she's going all the time when she's at university ? Who wants to go home to your parents every two minutes. Even the boyfriend will last one term.... then Dear John, life goes on.... it's not you, it's definitely not that good looking bloke that keeps whatsapping me and liking my stuff on Instagram....

Your posts really are quite negative about anything in the press aren't they. Just because it's not something you agree with doesn't automatically make it untrue.

I'm not so convinced. As someone who works in the sector, I don't really understand the need to do lots and lots of open days. Universities are more alike than we pretend.

In terms of lifestyle, there really are only six choices: Oxbridge; London; small town prestigious; campus; urban; small town 'local' post-92. Most people will probably have an intuitive sense of which of these would suit them, or at least can discount three or four styles. After visiting a couple of unis the value of extra visits really drops - if you've been to Leeds, you have a pretty good sense of life at Manchester, or Liverpool, or Newcastle; if you've been to Lancaster you don't really need to visit York, or Keele, or wherever. Add to this that course availability, grades and other personal preferences restrict choice in various ways and I think with a bit of research the vast majority of students needn't visit more than 4 unis and most need only visit a couple.

I can't help but think that students and their families are being somewhat conned slightly into making these trips by universities who are desperate to recruit, and a travel industry which is quite happy to facilitate the extra visits

I totally disagree. I visited Sheffield and Leeds, York and Lancaster when I was doing open days. Loved York, hated Lancaster; loved Leeds, wouldn't have gone to Sheffield if they'd paid me. Open days - done well, which many aren't - are a chance to experience life at the university concerned. At the end of the day, you wouldn't move house without going to look at the place first, university is no different.

Expecting young people to commit years of their lives, and tens of thousands of pounds, to a particular course and institution without doing all the research they can is plain unacceptable in my book. Perhaps - as others have hinted - the way forward is for the universities, UCAS, and RDG to engineer some sort of open days scheme where students attending open days at univsersities, with the permission of the college/school, can obtain something equivalent to a rail warrant that would give them a discount on the fare for that specific journey.

I am not sure it is. Even when I was at uni there were people I knew doing joke courses who couldnt even get to uni 3 times a week for lectures.

CLEARLY not all students are clueless and feckless. Sadly lots are. The real world will come as a shock to them.

I worked all through uni ( I had to - no bank of mum and dad) and in my holidays I worked in the area that was to be my furure career. I had amuch better grip of the real world than many.

I have interviewed lots of graduates for proper jobs ( not grad schemes) with a decent wage and many have been terrible, almost clueless. The best have experience away from uni and have thought about what that is teaching them. The worst think a degree and some smugness should be enough

I agree that many university graduates (I also see lots of freshly minted graduates trying to get new jobs) are totally clueless about the real world. However... I also see a lot of excellent graduates from what, I will admit, I myself once saw as 'joke courses' like media studies, film and TV, etc. The good ones, though, are generally the ones who have had nouse to seek opportunities outside their course such as, as you suggest, part time work.
 

Belperpete

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No reason for it to be that expensive - various options are outlined above to reduce accommodation costs to a negligible level.
NatEx offers a perfectly adequate method of transport for those on a budget.
If you are going from Plymouth to say Newcastle for an open day, you certainly aren't going to be doing it there and back in a day with NatEx, so overnight accommodation would be needed. Open days are very disruptive to the college/department hosting them (I know, I was a student host: the department effectively shut down each open day), so there are only a few of them, so consequently the numbers attending can be large. On an open day when there are going to be large numbers attending, the chances of you getting any cheap accommodation are highly unlikely.
 

underbank

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I was doing much the same thing in the late 1970's - choosing four uni's from prospectuses, then going for interviews to three of them in the end.

Lots of universities don't do compulsory interviews these days (some don't interview at all), so if you don't go to open days, you don't get to see the Uni at all and would have to accept offers blind. Many have moved to the open day being "the" opportunity to see the university before accepting the offer. We went to an open day a couple of weeks ago, where we met a student starting this September, and it was her first sight of the Uni - as she'd not been to an open day prior to applying and got an offer without interview.

Over the past 50 years, there's also a lot more choice now - there were relatively few universities back then, so the choice was more limited. Lots of ex-poly's have become Unis, and lots of "lower" standard unis have risen through the rankings.

Things are very different now.
 

Bletchleyite

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I totally disagree. I visited Sheffield and Leeds, York and Lancaster when I was doing open days. Loved York, hated Lancaster; loved Leeds, wouldn't have gone to Sheffield if they'd paid me. Open days - done well, which many aren't - are a chance to experience life at the university concerned. At the end of the day, you wouldn't move house without going to look at the place first, university is no different.

I don't know any of the universities, but I'm very much neutral on Leeds as noted and I love Lancaster as a place (one of my favourite small cities, both because of the place itself but also its proximity to the beautiful Lakes and Cumbrian Coast), and quite like Sheffield and York (for very different reasons) too. I'd happily live in Lancaster, Sheffield or York but not really Leeds unless I had another strong motivation to do so like a job I really wanted. Like the "nice towns" and "nasty towns" threads, it shows that a lot of this is all down to individual impressions and views.
 

Tetchytyke

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you were expected to be able to cope with getting across the country on your own

Back in your day parents weren't expected to foot the bills. Now they are, there is a parental contribution to living costs for people who don't get the full loan. And in my day in the early 2000s parents were expected to pay the top-up tuition fee too.

No reason for it to be that expensive - various options are outlined above to reduce accommodation costs to a negligible level.

If parents insist on going one would hope they are also providing transport and picking up the tab.

Open days are massive events. Tens of thousands of people. I hated working open days.

You can imagine what that does to hotel and hostel prices, especially in smaller university cities, though.
 

Belperpete

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[restricting time off school] is a stupid approach.
I suspect that the schools are more concerned that the children should be concentrating on passing their exams, without which the choice of university may be severely restricted, or totally non-existent. I find the repeated assertions that pupils in the run-up to their final A level exams have time on their hands, totally divorced from reality.

I agree with underbank that there are far more universities, but that does not necessarily mean that you have more choice. Not every university offers every subject, and not all have good reputations for all the courses that they offer. You often have a very limited number of unis that have a good reputation for the course you want to take.
 

Brissle Girl

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To those that suggest slumming it in a dorm/YHA and travelling by coach, it might be relevant to consider that 11,500 people were expected for the second of Durham's open days last Saturday. I'd be interested to know the capacity of coaches arriving and departing into Durham at convenient times, and also the availability of cheap accommodation in the small city to cater for this number of people. Similarly, Bristol was expecting 30,000 on its open days.
 

JamesT

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I had a parent with me for all of the open days I went to, though I was only 16. Though I only went to visit the 'local' ones; St Andrews, Edinburgh, and Heriot-Watt. I think they drove me to all of them.
My dad also came down with me when I got an interview at Oxford. I think we flew and then he hired a car at Luton as the quickest and cheapest way. He then stayed with friends for the three days.
I guess for the last one I could have been packed off on the train by myself, but it wasn't the kind of trip I'd have done by myself before.
I remember being somewhat grumpy with my school that they took those interview days off my attendance record as it had been otherwise perfect. Not really encouraging aspiration is it?
 

Bletchleyite

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To those that suggest slumming it in a dorm/YHA and travelling by coach, it might be relevant to consider that 11,500 people were expected for the second of Durham's open days last Saturday. I'd be interested to know the capacity of coaches arriving and departing into Durham at convenient times, and also the availability of cheap accommodation in the small city to cater for this number of people. Similarly, Bristol was expecting 30,000 on its open days.

I don't know about Megabus, but National Express does hire in additional duplicates when it sees a particular service getting full. It's rare for a NatEx booked in advance to be completely full, and if it is if you look back in a day or two it often can reopen because they've got a supplier for a duplicate.
 

coppercapped

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I am sure that I posted on a similar discussion not many months ago.

In my day (A levels 1969) universities certainly didn't have open days at an institutional level. There would usually be much smaller visits arranged at a departmental level but you had to have already made your initial selection on the UCCA form.

The striking thing is the words "and families" in the original article. Back then the invite was just for the prospective student and you were expected to be able to cope with getting across the country on your own. At the same age both my parents had been called up in the war and didn't expect to mollycoddle me.
I did my A levels in 1962 and neither Open Days nor UCCA existed. The Headmaster would sign a maximum of four applications and one had to make a choice based on the university Year Books that the school happened to have and any suggestions that the Careers Master made. It really was a poke in the dark.
I may have been interviewed at the department level (I can't remember - it's too long ago) but having been accepted one was expected to arrive at the place and time designated. Parents were no part in getting there - at eighteen you were expected to be able to make your own way in the world. After all, as PeterC alluded, only 17 years earlier eighteen year olds were flying Lancasters over Berlin.
 

Bletchleyite

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To those that suggest slumming it in a dorm/YHA and travelling by coach, it might be relevant to consider that 11,500 people were expected for the second of Durham's open days last Saturday. I'd be interested to know the capacity of coaches arriving and departing into Durham at convenient times, and also the availability of cheap accommodation in the small city to cater for this number of people. Similarly, Bristol was expecting 30,000 on its open days.

So stay in Newcastle and travel down from there. Tons of coaches go to Newcastle, as well as budget flights, and there's tons of accommodation, and the train down is cheap.

Find solutions. Don't find problems and whine about them.
 

notlob.divad

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That is a stupid approach. I'm not saying you should be allowed to go to loads, but you are sending 18 year olds to spend 3 years in a place, they should at least get to see the campus and the town, get a feel for it. Not only are towns not the same but campuses are not the same. I once had a discussion who was intending to go to Portsmouth University, never having been there; now to me Portsmouth is an acquired taste and I can imagine some students getting pretty depressed by the environment. I spent a year there, no problem, I had gone for an interview, and had already visited the City so I knew what to expect. No wonder students drop out.

That school are idiots, and TBH if I was a parent it's one where I'd tell my kid to take the day off anyway and I would pay any fine (though I would also, given that it's not a holiday, go to all of the local press about the idiocy of it and make the school look very stupid).

However stupid the approach might be, it is pretty widespread if not standard and has been for a while. When I was at Uni I used to be a student representative on the open days and often would chat to people about where else they had/were going to see. This was 12 years ago now, yet even then many were saying they were visting here (Sheffield) and then their local University because they were not allowed the time off their A level courses to attend any more.

I have heard similar stories from the older members of the youth group I was running for 8 years, with many just settling on the closest university so they could get home and keep their Saturday job.

People saying it is just entitlement or there are otherways of doing it really seem to be living in a very different world and as others have said, at 16/17 years old, it is the biggest decision of these young people's lives up to that point.
 

Bletchleyite

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I remember being somewhat grumpy with my school that they took those interview days off my attendance record as it had been otherwise perfect. Not really encouraging aspiration is it?

No, and I think the schools not allowing for university visits are being self-centred fools.
 

Bletchleyite

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as others have said, at 16/17 years old, it is the biggest decision of these young people's lives up to that point.

Which is all the more reason to find ways to make that decision as informed as possible, rather than whine about it being a bit hard or a bit expensive.

Can you go by coach? Travel overnight and save needing any at all? Yeah, you'll be tired and a bit achey from a night in a seat, but you'll cope, you're young.
Are your mates going? Do any drive? Can you car share?
How about Blablacar?
How about budget TOC specific Advances like LNR?
Budget accommodation?
Any family friends you can stay with?
Are the uni offering accommodation themselves? I seem to recall when I visited Manchester they did (as it wasn't in uni term time).

One big upside of the situation in 2019 is that it's dead easy to research all those things online. I sorted out a complex bus and train itinerary for a friend in Cornwall this morning. In 1999 that'd have required going to the bus enquiry office in the nearest town to have even a hope.
 

Mag_seven

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In Scotland students have traditionally gone to Universities in their home town - attending a university miles away from your home town appears to be a particularly English thing?
 

PeterC

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Back in your day parents weren't expected to foot the bills. Now they are, there is a parental contribution to living costs for people who don't get the full loan. And in my day in the early 2000s parents were expected to pay the top-up tuition fee too.
.
Travelling to open days and interviews was NOT funded in my day. If you want to talk about grants and loans I suggest starting a new thread in the General Discussion section.
 
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