So here we are, nearly a year on. Fees are set at £9,000 for the 2012/13 intake at almost every university worth its salt, education cuts are at their height and we’re repeatedly being told we’re in the midst of the biggest financial crisis the world has ever seen. Universities need to up their fees to make up for their costs, students have to up their debts to make up their education.
It’s not the best time to be a poor student, counting the pennies and eating Tesco Value ‘cuisine’ to make it through the term, before rushing home with a pile of dirty laundry and a hunger for mother’s cooking. While we’ve all escaped the brunt of the cuts and fee rises, many students didn’t go down quietly, apparently defending the right for future students to an accesible education.
Last year, a group of students at the University of York held a sit-in in the Physics building from the middle of November until the end of term. They followed a trend that had begun across the country – first University College London, later on Exeter – and pledged solidarity. They listed their demands, the University heard them and responded, but nothing really seemed to change.
Christmas came and went and the students came back, renewed, but action became a lot less noisy. After the House of Commons passed through the reforms in December, many gave up hope, others decided to keep campaigning. However it went, it was clear that this thirst for direct, empassioned action had been lost, and as many students came back to York, they tried to live with the changes, becoming otherwise occupied.
This wasn’t confined to York. Occupations all over the country ceased, and then in March students joined the national demonstration in London against all the wider reforms planned by the coalition government. And here we are now, starting the 2011/12 year, and we have little change.
In September, St Andrews and Edinburgh Universities announced that, in line with reforms by the Scottish Parliament, they would be upping their fees for ‘Rest of UK’ (non-Scottish) students from £1,820 to £9,000 per year. As Scottish courses run for four years, this means a total cost of £36,000, before living expenses for RUKs. Scottish students gathered in Edinburgh and staged a 36-hour sit-in in the George Square Lecture Theatre. After initial fights with the University, they stuck around and cleared up and left, pledging that they’d continue to do the same in different institutions until there was change.
Glasgow, in fact, had kept their occupation up over the year and summer – the only university to commit fully to doing so. All have demanded that Holyrood oppose Westminster reforms, cuts are reversed and the Scottish principle of free education for all is restored.
I’m not going to argue that Edinburgh are in the right, or that these Scottish students are fighting for a good cause, but their commitment is admirable. York and other universities just didn’t give it that level of dedication – perhaps numbers of people interested were too low, perhaps it wasn’t feasible but ultimately the fact that nearly a year on, Scottish students are still fighting for what they said they believed in back in November is to be praised. If English students really are so incensed by the moves, then they need to get up and shout about it – it’s no good blogging or singing songs, as great as they can be. I’m not calling for sit-ins, I’m not calling for violence, but if students want change then they need to go about creating it. Arguing in a Politics seminar or discussing over coffee may be the catalyst for movements, but if that’s all the movement is, then it’s died before it’s begun.