Tucked away in the lower echelons of today’s news, and rather reluctantly presented, is the story of two pre-university age teenagers who have taken the government to court over its decision, courtesy of ‘Business Secretary’ Vince Cable, to allow unversities across England (but not Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, because those countries still value young, working-class people as human beings) to triple their course fees from £3,290 per year to a vomit-inducing £9,000 a year (approximately $16,000).

Katy Moore and Callum Hurley, both 17-year-old college students (in Britain, college is an intermediary form of education between high school and university, usually lasting for two years; it isn’t compulsory, but it’s virtually the only way to qualify to be accepted at British universities if you’re not a member of the 1%), charged the British government with violating its own human rights and equality laws because allowing tuition fees to be raised so high excludes an enormous swathe of the population from applying for uni since they don’t want to be saddled with £27,000 of debt, more than what the average Briton earns in a year (£21,000). This would seem like a fair argument, and certainly one to destroy the cloyingly patronising attitude this government has adopted in telling us that a level of debt that high for a 21-year-old to end up with is acceptable. But, naturally, with the judiciary system in this country as corrupt and immoral as it is, this case, the only prosecution of its kind and representing a worrying number of young people who are facing the horror of not being able to persue any kind of gratifying future job, was “rejected outright”, thus deeming the shackling hundreds of thousands of young people with a never-ending financial nightmare to be perfectly fine and dandy. Although, as the meagrest of consolations to please the hysterical press, the judges did say that “the government had failed to comply fully with its public service equality duties”, which is essentially the mildest telling-off imagineable, a vaguely negative-sounding non-descript murmur that will be totally ignored by everyone in power.

Now, the fees quoted might not seem very troubling to American readers, who are familiar with the idea of having to save to pay for a child’s education for 18 years, but to a society that likes to think of itsef as supportive and ‘world-leading’ when it comes to creativity, research and professionalism, it’s a concrete barricade for the majority of young people in this country, who already over-estimate their own ability and underestimate the severe shortage of any kind of employment in this country, skilled or otherwise.

Not that university education in this country is worth the price in the first place. Having studied for the last 3 years at two different universities, this author knows full well what actually happens in this apparent houses of learning. Think of any kind of frat boy movie, then sap all the colour to a dull grey, replace the campuses with cramped halls with all the space, amenities and cheerfulness of prison blocks, saturate everywhere with several thousand tons of empty wine bottles, moulding fast food and used joint butts, and you basically have £9,000 of the best education this country can offer. Children who have been sheltered their whole lives in pointless provincial towns suddenly mix excitedly with humans outside their own families and duly devote 87% of their time to pumping bodily fluids into as many different orifices as possible. Unless you go to a 1%-approved establishment, any city or town you’re living in has been transformed exclusively into a giant bazaar of filthy nightclubs and filthier take-away shops. There are year-long discounts for students to fritter away their precious money on; huge chunks of semester studies are missed because most of the class is too hungover to care or, more commonly and inexplicably, simply not even there at all. The teachers mimic this behaviour, electing not to do their job over worrying about being ‘streamlined’ (fired)/hating the students too much. The facilities are brilliant but no one knows how to use them. If you’re lucky enough to get any results back, there’s no time for anyone to explain why you failed the assignment.

Sounds like chaos, doesn’t it? It isn’t. This unbearably tense and hedonistic atmosphere is the norm. Whatever ‘education’ pretends to exist is long ignored by anyone involved. It’s a party, a celebration of the true nature of how rotten, desperate and hopeless life in this country is right now.

In the distant past, someone might have said something about using university education to train young people into an army of professionals who would run forth into their work and build and forge and experiment and create and elevate the country into a realm of well-deserved wealth that made everyone happy and the world a better, stronger, smarter place. Then that person was given a big sack of money and in their place was put a shiny, primary-coloured slot-machine with words on it like ‘University of Manchester’ and ‘University of Lincoln’. Soon everyone with a functioning liver and virginal lungs was draining their money away into this slot-machine, consuming vast quantities of depressants, stimulants and everything classified ‘A’ in order to at least carve some memories into their minds that for a few years, at least, their lives were bearable, and maybe even fun on the occasion.

This is what it is like to study at a university, and this has happened because your Xeroxed degree comes with a barcode. The depressing court case result is a statement of intent by this government to purge all learning establishments of any kind of knowledge or experience and instead give/force upon students ‘choice’, choice of the lowest bidding institutes and the quickest, easiest ways to get a severely compromised qualification, all dressed up expensively as having some kind of real value. ‘Choice’ over which relative to move back with, ‘choice’ over what humiliating, 16-hour a week, below-minimum-wage retail job you’ll end up in, ‘choice’ between carrying on with futile, airbrushed fantasies of hope that that official-looking document they gave you will finally get you somewhere, or signing on down at the dole office like the rest of your classmates.

Oh the choice.