The first mention of increasing tuition fees and students are already preparing to protest. Every mild-mannered student suddenly turns into a budding revolutionary keen to respond to the call to arms and stand up against rich Tories ready to confine them to poverty.
But in every situation there must come a point where rhetoric is replaced by a realisation of the truth. Living in a state where the public finances are near breaking point and in light of policies encouraged by previous governments to send unsustainable levels of teenagers to university, higher education funding was always going to have to change, and rightly so.
Now that Lord Browne has published his long awaited report into the future of university funding, we as students, the people who are at the centre of this conundrum, must accept that however much we want to spend three or four years at university trying to get by doing as little as possible, this can only happen in our dreams.
We must wake up to the facts. Firstly, however much we dislike it, if we want to receive the highest standard of teaching, ever more contact hours, all on campuses with the newest buildings, we are going to have to pay higher tuition fees.
In any other situation people receiving a service or product would accept that they will have to pay for it. However, when it comes to education there is a bizzare assumption that we should be able to get it for free.
Although a more educated workforce is undeniably better for society, it is still the individual who benefits the most. Whether it be advancing one’s intellectual capacity, enjoying unrivalled social lives or the supposedly much higher salaries for graduates, it is us personally who will be best off. If we are benefitting so much then it doesn’t seem unfair to assume that students should have to pay at least some way towards that.
The answer to me seems clear. If we want to enjoy the benefits that university offers us then we should pay more. If we don’t like that then it’s simple – don’t go to university.
I can already hear loony lefties shouting that it will be the poor who will suffer. But if university really is going to offer us such a large amount of personal wealth then it is surely not going to take too long for people to pay off their £30,000 of student debt. Even if, as some believe, fees go up to £25,000 a year, then over a student’s lifetime their repayments will actually be relatively small. A graduate tax must be ruled out because of the impracticalities and loopholes. Privatisation would be the ideal solution but the public backlash makes that inconceivable.
The old refrain ‘you get what you pay for’ may be clichéd but time and time again it’s been proven right. By only paying £3000 a year in tuition fees universities will continue cutting corners. If we are prepared to pay a bit more then students will have a stronger case when pressing universities for better facilities and teaching. Only by becoming more elitist can universities continue to thrive.
Apologies for the length.
On the “bizarre assumption that university education should be free”…
Perhaps simply low-cost would be more representative of most people’s view.
Consider an alternative outcome possibility.
SupermarketValue University opens. It’s halls are like a 3rd world prison colony, it’s teaching staff are based in offshore Skype call centres, and it can get you a BA in just one year, because you’re expected to work every hour you’re not sleeping, and lie in’s are not encouraged.
If the government would provide free university education in ideal budgetary conditions, then would this cheap and not so cheerful place not be the most cost effective means of doing so?
It assumes of course that the only public good is the idea that a “more educated workforce is undeniably better for society”. That is, that university is all about the bit of paper at the end.
Clearly time for a social life is missing at Supermarket Uni, the voluntary work that students do, the political activism, and the skills that are developed through clubs and societies would all be gone too. No time for student press in this budget world.
University represents more than this though. It is a system for taking academically successful young people and providing them with opportunities to develop themselves in a wide number of ways, beyond simply gaining a degree. Many employers require you to have done more than simply gained a 2:1 in nothing studies with a distinction in passing out drunk 4 nights a week. This is of course with good reason.
Many students choose to do things other than become bankers and businessmen, indeed there are rather too many graduates in the country for them to all go and work in the same square mile.
Graduates working in areas such as teaching, civil service roles, government positions and the like are often whilst well paid compared to their non-degree counterparts, not necessarily in a position to pay back very high levels of debt.
Free university education as we have it at present is expensive for the government of course, but taken together with free schooling enables anyone with the capacity to achieve these things at university, to do so.
Whilst the current university model allows for some free-loading, that is students spending their free time over-socialising, and then trying to attain highly paid employment to cap it all off, it also allows for tremendous social mobility, given its relative accessibility to those that do want to make use of the opportunities, irrespective of family background.
The debt will never be mortgage sized, but to young people wanting to one day take on a mortgage, a car, and the like, the prospect of huge debt looming at the end, may be simply too discouraging.
When made best use of, the current model of university education can provide a public good as much as a private one, and some payment to offset the private good seems reasonable, providing it has some sensible restrictions to it.
Universities should not feel pressured to become like SupermarketUni, there are too many socially important benefits that students can get from the free time and facilities when used effectively. But neither should the government treat university education as a solely private good. Perhaps taxation should make up the difference, just as it does with schools.
Like doctors that choose to work in the NHS rather than the private sector, many students put the skills they’ve in part paid for at university to good use within society.
To create barriers against social mobility for the poorest, and to steer many graduates toward the highest salary sectors by necessity, would be to impoverish the country from the valuable contribution that graduates free from large debts are able to provide to society at large.
I think the assumption about free education stems from the fact that people in England who work (us soon, hopefully) pay a huge amount of tax throughout their lives. As such your ‘get what you pay for’ logic is flawed.
Our education system is being paid for, to some degree or another, by our future or past tax contributions and those contributions made by others.
If we want a system of getting what you pay for then peoples incomes should be left unmolested by HMRC to allow people to spend their money however they see fit. Unfortunately this system would be deeply unfair, non progressive and wouldn’t provide this country with the infrastructure it needs.
Perhaps your article would sound more reasonable if you had noticed that part of the Browne report suggests raising fees to cover the withdraw of public money from higher education. Rather than to offer a better service.
And perhaps less people would be suggesting the Tories had a hand in this, if they weren’t in Government agreeing with this report?
“A graduate tax must be ruled out because of the impracticalities and loopholes.”
Elaborate on this please. At present we do have a system of graduate tax which charges 7p in the pound to everyone earning over £15k who is a graduate until their debt is repaid. It is done through HMRC and is for all intensive purposes a graduate tax. The ‘Graduate tax’ as proposed by the NUS is a tax charged for a set timeframe of 20 years after graduation for those earning £20k plus to be charged at progressive rates of 0.4-2.5% of income and much like the existing student loan system is charged via the the treasury.
Please indicate the practialites or loopholes that are any different to the student loan. The CURRENT system has the issue of people running off to another country and not telling the government (although you’d have to go to like Brazil for this to work) I don’t see why you can claim graduate tax is any easier to evade. The only different is one is fair and progressive and one is really not.
“Privatisation would be the ideal solution but the public backlash makes that inconceivable.”
I think you’ll find that all UK Universities are infact already completely autonomous and only rely on the Government for funding. Also thanks for adding absolutely jack to the discussion of the Browne report.
Angus:”loony lefties”
I really must ask what you thought including this phrase would achieve or add to your piece, other than demonstrating your lack of creativity for insults ?
NOLSY:
“Please indicate the practialites or loopholes that are any different to the student loan.”
I’ll simply quote Malcom Grant, provost of UCL:
“A graduate tax therefore would make it possible for students from other EU countries – who must be admitted to UK universities on exactly the same basis as UK students – to return to their own countries and not be liable for UK tax on their earnings. EU students could not under a graduate tax be compelled to contribute to the cost of their UK university education. The same would be true of UK undergraduates working abroad.”
NOLSY:”At present we do have a system of graduate tax which charges 7p in the pound to everyone earning over £15k who is a graduate until their debt is repaid. It is done through HMRC and is for all intensive purposes a graduate tax”
Ok, I should probably reply to this bit too. Also from Malcolm Grant:
“The present system already looks a bit like a graduate tax. Undergraduates from the UK and other EU countries are not required to pay a tuition fee upfront – for them, access to a university education remains free at the point of entry. This is secured through an interest-free (in real terms) loan, repayable by instalments once a graduate earns over £15,000 a year. Like a progressive tax, the level of payment rises as income rises, and it stops if income falls below the £15,000 threshold. Unlike a tax, however, liability is tied to the amount of the debt, and it ceases once the loan is repaid. A loan debt is enforceable through the courts of other countries if a graduate is working abroad, but a tax is not.”
p.s “intensive purposes” should really be “intents and purposes”.
You’re already paying higher fees if you shop at CostAdder. “All our profits are returned to the University.” So, treat yourself to a warm fuzzy feeling next time you buy your rip off sandwiches there.
It really makes me furious when people dismiss concerns about the poorest being hit hardest with unimaginative and unproductive slurs. I’d respond with something a little more blunt but think that it might be censored.
“Only by becoming more elitist can universities continue to thrive.”
The trouble with this is that when you say elitist you don’t mean intellectual elitism, you mean in financial elitism. You are also suggesting that a university degree will open the door for highly paid jobs therefore offsetting the huge amount of debt when in fact it’s not the case.
The dramatic rise in the number of people going to university has meant that people need a university degree to get the same job as they would have done with A levels 20 years ago. This means that for people without a caviar budget, deciding whether or not to go to university becomes a difficult financial decision with no certain outcome.
I’m not saying by any stretch of the imagination that this is an easy problem to fix. Added incentives towards apprenticeships might be an option, I’d like people to take a run at ironing out the kinks in a graduate tax before dismissing it entirely. I’m not an economist nor am I political scientist so I won’t make sweeping statements about what I reckon as if it were fact.
The only thing I will say is that I believe wholeheartedly that availability of education should not be based on financial circumstance, and if you believe that raising tuition fees to this degree will not lead to financial elitism in education then to me you seem very naive.