It has been a rather shorter break than I hoped.
in my defence, I have a very good reason to have been roused from my blogging slumber. Universities UK decided to fire the opening shot in the debate about tuition fees in a manner that pre-empts the review of the system due to take place next year. In brief, they are calling for the cap on fees to be raised by around £2,000 more in order to provide better funding to universities.
Despite their protests to the contrary, it is rather likely that this is not an innocent issue of timing. The NUS will have its Annual Conference at the end of the month, and there are going to be debates on Higher Education funding. UUK know that we have a chance of shaping the public discourse on the matter, and are getting their opinions out first in order to counter the likely position taken by the Union.
Unlike some of my fellow candidates and colleagues in the NUS, I don’t believe that a campaign to return to “Free Education” is remotely winnable at the moment. First, there are no realistic sources for the massive cash injection that would be required to maintain quality. In the midst of a major recession there are very few chances of securing enough funds. “Free” tertiary education would come at the cost of either quality or places.
Put simply:
“Free Education” = Cuts
Fees were brought in because of the success of the Widening Participation agenda. Full state subsidy was only viable when universities were much smaller, more elite affairs. With a greater emphasis on the mass provision of education, alternative sources of funding have to be secured.
The problem with raising fees is that it will exacerbate the worst elements of the new funding model without sufficient remedy.
The worst problems have already been identified, but there has been insufficient political will to tackle them. In particular there are problems with the identification of those who genuinely need and deserve financial support, unintended discriminatory effects, and a failure to address the myriad problems of a vastly unsatisfactory student loan system that acts as either a middle-class bung or a graduate debt millstone. Additionally due consideration and attention has not been given to the development of alternative sources of funding for the deserving. Even the purported benefit of the student-as-consumer having a greater say in the running of his or her degree is tenuous, as witnessed in the debacle at King’s College London over restructuring its LLB teaching arrangements.
In short, we are getting much of the worst of a fees model with little of the supposed benefits.
Asking for more fees in such circumstances is, in effect, asking for a pay-rise when you haven’t done your job properly. There is little to suggest that hiking up fees will address the problems with the system: it is simply asking students to throw good money after bad. If we want to make education funding fair we have to make further money conditional on fixing the glaring problems in the existing funding system.
Opposing a lifting of the cap on fees is the best way of ensuring that the system is reformed
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