Government plans to charge more for university would be “criminal and desperately unfair,” according to a statement today from YUSU.
Charlie Leyland, who recently stood as a candidate for NUS Vice President, slammed Conservative minister David Willetts for his comments about students. He told the BBC yesterday that students were a “burden on the taxpayer.”
But Leyland said: “it’s time that the government started to think seriously about how to help us rather than to burden us with even more debt.”
“We all know that it’s a tough financial climate, but we simply cannot allow those advocating for us on a local and national level to forget their duty to equal access to education, making it clear that we do not want potential students to be priced out of prestigious universities such as our own.”
Willetts said he wanted students to consider tuition fees “more as an obligation to pay higher income tax,” than a debt.
But Leyland wrote: “The students that we have here at York now will in fact pay more taxes because of their degrees over a lifetime. In essence, they are and will be the taxpayers.”
“I for one will be e-mailing Julian Sturdy, our conservative local MP, to remind him of his verbal commitment to oppose any increase in fees for students at the debate he attended only a couple of months ago hosted by our students on campus.”