Helen Brown is a twenty five year old from Sheffield who is trying to raise £5,000 on Indiegogo to fund her Creative Writing MA, starting this September. Student loans are not available for postgraduate degrees, meaning that she has little scope to fund her own Masters. Therefore, it is vital that her campaign gets funded because her future rests upon it. It is also vital because if she fails then we are bowing down to a society that is not equal, wherein attaining higher education is bias towards those who are wealthy.
Young people with their own source of financing do not struggle to pay for their postgraduate education, which means the pool of young adults with a postgraduate degree is statistically swayed towards those who went to public schools. This suggests that those who have money enough to have funded their education are at an unfair advantage when it comes to the jobs market.
Helen is not living below the poverty line by any means, but she did go to the worst school in Sheffield where decent grades did not come so easily. Take this quote from The Guardian, in a review of the program ‘Police Under Pressure’, set in Sheffield (Aired June 2014, BBC 2):
There is still plenty of traditional old-school white-on-non-white racism in east Sheffield too. In Parson Cross, a predominantly white neighbourhood, Sango’s takeaway is regularly targeted by racist hoodies. “What happened in court today?”, PC Christine Fisher asks a couple of them. It looks like an attempt to build some kind of relationship, even more impressive when it emerges that while one of them will be in court (actually tomorrow, not today) for racially abusing the takeaways, the other is up for assaulting PC Fisher herself, spitting in her face, and carrying a knife.
The takeaway they speak of is situated directly outside the secondary school that Helen attended, and the thugs with knives were her classmates. In a school such as this, the attention of the teachers is constantly stretched at keeping the ‘thugs’ focused – not on the quiet hardworking pupils like Helen. And yet, she went on to attain a First Class Honours Degree in Art History at a Russell Group University.
She managed this because University levels the playing field – all students effectively have to start again. She may have had to study grammar in her own time; effectively learning it from scratch because it wasn’t taught correctly at her school. But nevertheless – all students can become equal. It is just sad that this is not yet the case for Postgraduate degrees as they are now incredibly necessary to achieve a successful career; yet due to the lack of funding currently available their availability is restricted to the wealthy, or the funded.
Nevertheless, the field can be equalised. It can be done. With your help – Helen can achieve her dreams.
To contribute to her campaign, or share it on social media, follow this link.
