It's also true that the standard of an E grade at A level is well below what a fail used to be. Many A levels are much easier to pass than they used to be.
Before anyone jumps down my throat about this assertion, it is backed up by evidence from Durham Uni :"One of the key pieces of research comes from academics at Durham University. Reseachers looked, over a period of twenty years at how A-level students scored in an aptitude test which remained unchanged each year, and compared this to the grades students went on to get at A-level.
The report found that over the course of the study, students went on to get A-level results on average two grades higher than those who got comparable test scores 20 years earlier."
Going to somewhere like that and having a debt of £40k at the end of it is just stupid in my opinion.
For example, Unistats' most recent figures show that someone who did Accounting at the University of West London (average entry 160 ucas points) will have a very low chance of getting a "graduate job"-only 10% managed this. Compare this with Warwick, where 80% got graduate jobs (average 470 ucas points.
I think most people who decide to go to a "university" whose degrees give job prospects like that are either deceiving themselves about what's likely to happen and being stupidly optimistic or are desperate to be able to say they are students at uni and can't face the truth that they have in fact failed.
The weaker places will have to close down when they don't get enough students prepared to pay £40k to go there.