“Oh wow you work? Where?” That is the response I usually receive when I tell people that I will not be able to make an event as I have work Often, their enthusiasm towards my job is more than mine as they see it a great thing. Now, while there are certainly advantages to working whilst studying in college in the UK, it can get tiring at times.
I work because I need to. If I had the freedom to choose whether to focus completely on studying then I would and I am guessing that is a choice every student would make. However, my position as mentioned before in previous posts about university fees, means rather than my employment funding my day-to-day living at the moment, I have to save up for university. This can be quite exhausting as you have to wait to see the fruit of your labour. On top of this, working to pay for my university fees can sometimes feel like I’ve been cheated out of my money simply because I was born two years late. £27,000 is a lot of money, you can use it to buy a car, to fund a business, to invest somewhere but no, I have to put it into my tuition fees with no guarantee that the so-called investment will be worth it. The only alternative is to take a student loan out but as mentioned before, dealing in interest is forbidden in Islam due to its extortion on the poor. The idea of loaning people money without charging them for it is considered absurd in today’s world. “What would they even get out of it? No one would do that,” a friend told me yesterday. Why? Society has become so focussed on making money that the thought of helping someone purely because they are a fellow human being simply does not occur in our minds.
Society has become selfish.
What makes it more difficult is the fact no one, either from the Muslim community or the government is willing to work out a solution. Neither is there any help for students like myself who are starting university next year. Trawling through the internet looking for scholarships results in nothing. It seems people just do not really care about what happens to Muslim students and we are left on our own little island surrounded by the sharks of the system. I hope that when I grow up, things will have changed and if they haven’t then I will certainly try my best to help students out there. Of course, this problem can easily vanish simply if the tuition fees were to decrease. This is unlikely to happen even if Labour win the next election as previously, they were calling for a rise to £6,000 per year and so even that would be quite a large amount, although it would be a welcome move.
In the meantime, I have the next three years of my life at University to fund.
A WORRIED STUDENT 
It’s worth taking a look at ‘bursaries’ which is money universities (and government) give to students and doesn’t have to be repaid. It depends on personal circumstances and family income, but that might be of good help in your circumstances. Hopefully some scholarships will apply to you too, depending on the subject you’d like to study and some other criteria.
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Thanks for stopping by.
Yes thats a good idea. I am extremely grateful for the bursary the government gives out without with I most definitely would have to spend one year working to save up for university. My chosen university appears to have a bursary system but it is only for the first year. I hope to receive the national scholarship bursary which should help to some extent pay for my second year but annoyingly, there are no other options. I have applied for a £1,000 bursary/scholarship which I should get the results for at the end of this month but weirdly, my university’s funding scheme has appeared to decrease this year. Another problem is that many of the other scholarships available are for either international students or science/maths/law degrees. It seems that the humanities aren’t worth funding sadly.
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I was at university in the early 1990’s and did not have to pay for my studies. My BA being funded by a grant and my MA by The Guide Dogs For The Blind Association (I qualified due to being registered blind and a guide dog owner). Good luck with your studies. I am sure you will find a way of balancing work and studies. Kind regards, Kevin
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Thank you 😀
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