York Socialist Students, part of a national organisation, protested on Campus West to demand “free high quality education for everyone” this afternoon.
Socialist Students are a national collective who aim to “build the socialist opposition” among university students.
Today’s protest came as a result of Labour’s decision to raise tuition fees to £9535.
In the past, they have spoken out on issues such as sexism on campus, supporting striking workers and taking on student landlords in legal cases.
Vision spoke with protestor Mansfield about the purpose of the protest. Mansfield said: “we’re protesting against the government’s plan to increase tuition fees. We think it’s unfair to take out the crisis in higher education on students.
“The tuition fee module is completely unsustainable, it has led to universities being treated like profit centres, operating in a marketplace like any other business.”
“If you took the excess wealth, accrued by just a handful of the most wealthiest at the top of society, it could completely wipe out the cost of making University free.”
There have been similar demonstrations across over 20 UK universities such as Leeds and Liverpool, with many of them taking place last week to coincide with Budget Day.
When asked why students here should care about the cause, Mansfield answered: “it’s their debt that they’re going to be facing…particularly for the people that are a bit younger and looking ahead towards university, it’s gonna put a lot of people off.’’
Fellow demonstrator Nardini, a first year PPE student at York, came in with some recent statistics supported by The Guardian.
He said: ‘’There’s been a decrease in social mobility […] of those eligible for free school meals at 15, those who decide to go on to higher education has decreased from 29.2% to 29%.”
On the flyers being handed out at the protest, the group make a clear statement about what should come next: ‘‘If Starmer goes ahead with increasing tuition fees, or any other attack on universities, then there will need to be mass student meetings held on every campus to discuss and democratically agree on a concrete plan.’’