By Luke Sandford
Following the Browne Review in October, last week the government announced plans to raise the cap on tuition fees to £9,000, almost trebling the current fee level of £3,290 – An unpleasant number I’m sure current students are all too familiar with. This will mean students face a total debt in excess of £40,000, as well as more commercial rates of interest.
This is a regressive step for several reasons. Firstly, education is a social good – the whole of society will benefit from a better educated workforce, in terms of the economic wealth generated for everyone and the benefits of a more intelligent and progressive citizen. As such, the burden of cost should not lie solely with the student. Encouraging people to attend university is vital for future job and wealth creation in the UK economy, as well as making for a better society as a whole.
Secondly, a substantial increase in fees will disproportionately put off those from poorer backgrounds. The Government may claim these are progressive and fair reforms, but this does not stand up to scrutiny. The complex system of bursaries will not reassure prospective students faced with the excessive figure of £27,000, even before you pay for food and accommodation for 3 years.
Ultimately this headline figure of debt will be a massive disincentive for young people considering higher education. Lacklustre extra measures suggested by the Coalition to encourage poorer young people to attend university will clearly be ineffective. As if the proposed occasional summer school would ever have a chance of getting all the bright kids put off by debt into top universities.
Of course I fully accept that universities must be funded somehow, but the fee increases only ‘need’ to happen while there are severe cuts in government funding. However the cuts to funding will not be a way of reducing Government spending in the short to medium term – the state still foots the bill for providing the loan, so it will be some 4 years before any revenue at all comes back to the treasury. Supporters of cuts maintain that the deficit must be reduced, so future generations will not be saddled with debt. Under these proposals they will be saddled with a regressive and elitist system of higher education and still have a huge personal debt.
Well, now you’re all suitably convinced this is a terrible idea, what can you do about it? YUSU is part of a wider national campaign coordinated by the NUS and UCU (the Lecturers’ union), the current focus of which is a National demonstration in London tomorrow on 10.11.10. York will be sending hundreds of students to take part in the largest mass student demonstration of our generation,and at the time of writing we have a better turnout than much larger Universities such as Leeds, demonstrating what an important issue this is to York students. Now is the only chance we have as students and young people to stand up and have our say, and I urge you to do so.
Luke Sandford is YUSU Campaigns Officer.