Browne’s proposals lift the cap on tuition fees from £3,290 today to £6,000 from 2012, with universities able to charge more if they pay a levy. He has broadly retained Labour’s repayment mechanism, where graduates repay the costs of tuition and living expenses once they start to earn. However, he has introduced a real rate of interest and a higher threshold for any payments, at £21,000 instead of £15,000 today. A graduate earning £30,000 a year pays back just £16 a week in his system. Importantly, part-timers would be included as eligible for proper loan support for the first time: a huge step forward in terms of equity.
The coalition was right to reject a graduate tax, as Labour did in government. As Browne points out, it would penalise low earners more (starting at £6,475, the point where people start paying tax), be harder to collect from European students, not give universities the money they need now and impose a lifetime of repayments on every graduate.
Our universities need extra income to compete, and this is particularly true of our leading research universities, who have welcomed these moves. However, we should not ignore the concerns of the newer teaching universities. Baroness Blackstone, a former higher education minister, argued on the Progress website recently that the new system could deprive them of sufficient teaching resources. That’s because the coalition is cutting 80 per cent from the government’s teaching grant as the new system is introduced.
So, Miliband should avoid the mistakes made by the Tories in opposition, when they voted against tuition fees despite having established the Dearing review in government (with Labour support) which they knew would recommend fees. Instead, he should recognise that Browne has many of the advantages of the graduate tax he supports, without the disadvantages – not least because it builds on the system Labour developed in government.
But Miliband should argue four things. First, the proposed cut in teaching funding for universities is too great and should be reduced, so that they see some added benefit from the new regime. Second, there should continue to be proper monitoring and publication of how universities distribute bursaries for poorer students, with much better publicity of what’s on offer. Third, students should be able to see clearly how much contact time their courses provide and they should have more access to academics. This will become a much bigger issue when the higher fees are introduced. And there should be an upper limit on the new fees, of £7,000 or £8,000, so that students do not feel completely priced out of our top universities.
And then Labour should either support the government, or, if Miliband feels the final package is lacking, abstain. He should not ally himself with Liberal Democrat rebels. To do so would exchange the short-term discomfort of the coalition for his longer-term credibility as a serious leader. The Tories did this to us in 2005, when top-up fees were introduced, and Michael Howard suffered for it. They admit they were wrong. Labour’s new leader should be bold enough to avoid the same mistake.
I had a grant for my degree – not a loan. Today’s students should be entitled to nothing less. My 15 year old son is worried that new proposals will mean that he can’t afford to go to university – my line to him is that whatever happens we will find a way to make sure that he can. To those who say that the country can’t afford to offer free access to higher education, I say – we must find a way to make sure that we can. We must make education a right, not a privilege.
Disingenuous rubbish, the fees system is basically a graduate tax except the debt is not on the government books, its on the student. Ed should oppose the fee increase and pay for it by not cutting corporation tax by 4%. Labour should propose abolishing tuition fees and establishing a graduate tax that starts at £20,000 and is paid for 30ish years, rather than messing about with interest rates just have higher rate bands like income tax.
As a supporter of the original principal of tuition fees, which shared the cost and benifit of a University Education between the state and the individual I find the article profoundly depressing. It suggests it is fair for students to pay for the entire costs of University and the state which benifits from the skills they add to the economy make little or no contribution. This attempt to ‘ape’ the US system which Blairites are so fond of will lead to a widening of the gap between rich and poor. As a serving secondary school teacher I know that the thought of having a debt of in excess of £30,000 before they enter the workforce will put off those from lower income backgrounds. When you couple this with the removal of EMA from these housholds then University Education will become the preserve of the informed middle classes and those with the up front cash and connections to make this investment in the future seem worthwhile. Labour should agree a cap to fees and pledge to replace the teaching grant removed by the current government. Anybody proposing differently should join the Tory Party.
I agree with Conor Ryan’s analysis – although as the parent of a teenager, it’s not comfortable. The grants system (from which I benefitted) might have been affordable when only a small percentage of school leavers went into HE – but we now have a mass system within which 40% study part-time (and currently pay unregulated fees, in advance, and with less access to support). It’s inequitable that part-time students in work have to pay not only for themselves but also (through taxation) for full-time students. And let’s not forget either that HE support has always been far more generous than arrangements in FE – although the boundary between them is increasingly blurred. To argue for a return to a pre-2003 system of grants is not a serious proposition given the size of the budget deficit facing the country. What is most worrying though is the real likelihood that that removing teaching funding for the arts, humanities and social sciences will narrow the the curriculum for all but an elite.
“The coalition was right to reject a graduate tax, as Labour did in government. As Browne points out, it would penalise low earners more (starting at £6,475, the point where people start paying tax), be harder to collect from European students, not give universities the money they need now and impose a lifetime of repayments on every graduate.” So why is higher education being singled out? As far as I can see, the very same arguments could be put forward to support a system in which NHS patients, or sixth formers, or users of any public service whatsoever were required to repay the cost of the services they receive out of their wages. We don’t do things that way, though, because we recognise that it’s fairer to fund public services through taxation – sometimes general taxation, sometimes taxation targeted at particular groups like road users or smokers – than by asking users to pay for them directly. The point about “imposing a lifetime of repayments on every graduate” is absurd. Does everyone who receives a free education from the ages of five to eighteen resent the “lifetime of repayments” they then face in the form of their tax bill? Of course not. Far better to pay 20p in the pound for forty five years than to pay, say, 30p for the first 15 years and 15p thereafter.
I have read the Browne report but not all the annexes. The report is deeply disappointing, as is the debate on it. Aside from a ‘by the way’ quote from Dearing about the importance of HE to a democratic society, the ‘value’ of HE is judged only in terms of an international market and economic development (not sure what a ‘healthy’ society is intended to convey). This is a travesty of educational values. The report also provides no vivid picture of the state of universities either what they do or of the resources they deploy. What is striking is the absence of any call for universities to ‘modernise’ their structures to make them more permeable. It repeats an outmoded distinction between full-time and part-time education as if that is sufficient to address the needs for widening participation and greater flexibility. For over 40 years a credit accumulation and transfer system – such as is basic in the US and Australian systems – has been left to one side in the reforms of university structures. There is no provision for non-matriculating students (except on some Birkbeck and OU courses) whereas in the USA, even at the very best universities and for the top courses at post-graduate level, this mode of engagement is possible. All UK universities now have modular structures; they all give a ‘value’ to their modules but very very few actually allow students to receive ‘credits’ for work they have successfully undertaken: credits that they can keep if they need to interrupt or slow down or transfer their studies. This is known to be one of the best ways to widen access. I was surprised to see the details of credit and advanced placement for LSE summer school students. Thinking, hooray, they are now offering a flexible approach, I looked again and realised that it was all done as a calculation for US students and inapplicable to the UK system. If these calculations and certificates can be offered for an alien system, why not for home students? Universities could and should address how impermeable they remain at undergraduate level and even more emphatically at post-graduate level. There used to be a debate about a ‘learning society’ and how barriers should be broken down. The structural barriers have remained even in the good years and the financial barriers will be
Education at primary and secondary level which equips people with the skills and abilities they need to participate in society is a right. Higher education, however, is a privilege. It is not a privilege in that it is due to those who are already socio-economically privileged; it is a privilege in that it is available only to those who have the demonstrable abilities to undertake it. In my experience, the students who see HE as a right, as that thing they walk into after school and get a nice middle class job at the end of, are pretty much unteachable because they see themselves as doing just ‘what you do’, and adjust effort accordingly. We need to accept that the days of free HE are gone and they’re not coming back. And we need to instead focus on having great teaching and research universities (without playing silly job-focussed subject hierarchy games) and helping our talented people benefit from them. That is a very different thing from sausage factories for middle class kids.
Thats new labour for you, difficult to seperate them from the Tories sadly….