With the review of student funding due early next year the government faces an extremely difficult balancing act. On the one hand, we are committed to widening access to higher education to half of all eighteen to 30 year-olds by 2010. And on the other, there is a clear need to fund this expansion, support students through their studies and ensure that our universities provide high-quality teaching and research.
It’s a difficult circle to square, but one thing is clear. Top-up fees – whereby universities could effectively charge students whatever they like – are not the answer. When equality of opportunity and aspiration are at the centre of the government’s agenda, top-up fees would send out the wrong message.
Top-up fees would dramatically increase the up-front financial cost to students and families of a university education. Students from the poorest backgrounds, those very students we want and need to encourage into higher education, would be hit the hardest. Access would become based around a student’s bank balance, not brains or ability.
A two-tier system would be created, where the Oxbridge colleges and the other elite universities really do become the preserve of the privileged. There is already a gap between the ‘new’ and ‘old’ universities. Differential fees would simply allow the richest to buy the best degrees and make the higher education sector even more divided.
Even if scholarships or exemptions for those from the poorest backgrounds were introduced, middle-income families would find that they, too, would have to make a financial decision about whether they can afford to send their children to university. And even when parents are assessed to be able to contribute, research has shown that it is often the student who shoulders the financial burden.
Under the current system of up-front fees capped at £1,100, half of students pay nothing. But the fear of debt has still acted as a deterrent for some: figures from UCAS show that between 1996 and 2001 the number of applications from poorer students increased by only 3.8 percent, whereas the overall number of applications rose by 8.7 percent. And applications to read medicine from those from the poorest backgrounds actually halved over the same period. So whilst the number of students has increased by ten percent over the last five years, higher education remains disproportionately in the hands of the richest.
There is another way. As well as society as a whole paying a share, it’s right that the individuals who benefit from going to university make a contribution to the cost of their education. After all, over their lifetimes graduates earn an average of £400,000 more than non-graduates. But this contribution should be made after university, when graduates are earning a decent income, not before, when fees and fear of debt act as barriers to learning.
A graduate tax, or a graduate endowment system similar to the ‘Cubie’ model now operating in Scotland, would mean that education is once again free at the point of delivery. The income threshold on any graduate tax would have to be set at an appropriate level so that only those who have truly benefited from their education and are financially able to pay do so. Those graduates who take on lower-paid jobs in the public and voluntary sector should not be unfairly penalised.
Although these systems are not without their practical problems and drawbacks, they could raise enough revenue to fund the expansion of higher education and introduce a much-needed system of targeted support for those students who need it most. Education Maintenance Allowances, which have encouraged staying-on rates in further education, should be extended to higher education.
This second review into student funding will be a key moment for the government. If we’re to meet the 50 percent target we have to get it right. Expanding education is an ambitious aim; but only a system that encourages, not threatens, opportunity and access for all will achieve our goal.