Yes….
The student community is never going to be wholly receptive to paying a fair price for their university education, but raising the cap on tuition fees, ideally done with consultation and pragmatism, can only be a good thing.
Firstly, I comprehensively fail to understand the feeling of entitlement that comes with the privilege of free higher education. Yes, higher education is important and yes, the nation will benefit from the skills and experiences we pick up while at university, but the prime beneficiaries will remain ourselves. In light of this we have a duty to pay. On a more moral note how can we expect the poorest in society to pay higher taxes to fund the education of those who are set to earn a considerable premium over their lifetime?
Raising tuition fees will not just benefit wider society, but will have a positive effect on student and university life. Realistically speaking the only way to have world class higher education is for it to be part-funded by students. With a government deficit of £16.2bn and university funding cuts of £398m, to defend the quality of their own education students need to be prepared to make good this shortfall.
That is not to say that efficiency savings cannot be made or that the government should cease to provide funding altogether; merely that in order to retain the best academics, provide the finest facilities, and continue to meet with the demands of undergraduates, student money is needed.
With this new infusion of money students could begin to see themselves as consumers of higher education. An NUS policy that accepted the inevitability of tuition fee increases and adopted a sensible approach based around negotiation and moderation would achieve a considerably better result for students. Increases in tuition fees could be discussed and consensual, and students would have influence channeling some of the money towards what matters most to them. For example, for a £2000 increase students could ask for a minimum of 10 contact hours per week, 30% extra library books, or even more support for the poorest students. By this approach students would be empowered not exploited by an increase in tuition fees.
The wide range of benefits that raising tuition fees could bring is extensive. It is not something that should happen blindly, but with due dialogue a workable system can be put into place.
By Mark Pickard
No…
If the cap on tuition fees were to be lifted, the higher education system in this country would be irrevocably altered for the worse. Regardless of whether we are entitled to pay only a limited amount of money for a university education, the current system allows the conformity necessary to provide the best opportunity for all. Allowing universities to charge unlimited fees whilst also cutting their funding would benefit no one. The government would in fact spend more money to create an even greater division between rich and poor.
The extra money the universities would request would not initially come out of our pockets, but the Government’s. Whilst we are only required to pay a third of the true cost of our higher education, the current system of student loans covers this amount and is only repayable when the borrower is earning £15,000 a year. Therefore in the short term the taxpayer would foot even more of the bill, as students study rather than repay over the first three or more years of the loan period. To counter this, the Government could simply refuse to cover the full tuition fee amount, or could raise the level of interest to that of commercial loans. Whilst these options would relieve the pressure on the taxpayer, both would further add to the amount students would be required to pay.
With higher fees, and the resulting change in loans provision, it is not necessarily true that only the rich would be able to afford to go to university. But a dangerous division between expensive universities offering the best education and cheaper establishments offering less would develop. As academic achievement loses out to wallet size, a new inescapable cycle of low earnings would develop for those that could not afford to go to the best institutions.
Problems would arise in the shorter term as well. It is naive to assume that universities would allow students a greater say in where their money is spent just because they are spending more of it. More expensive universities would certainly have to justify their prices, but they would not need to become more open to student opinion to do so. Were higher prices to become the norm, the university would continue to do whatever is necessary to attract higher numbers of new students. This may be by promising more contact hours or books, or it may be building shiny new facilities. But the decisions would still be made by profiteering executives, buoyed up by ever increasing amounts of capital if the tuition fee floodgates are forced open.
By Chris Burgess