The biggest drop in university applications in decades is yet another example of an ill-thought-out coalition policy reaching its natural conclusion while Labourites stand at the sidelines Cassandra-like watching while the mess we warned would happen unfolds.
But this isn’t just the time for ‘I told you so’s because every dropped percentage point in the UCAS statistics is a lot more than that – it’s thousands of opportunities that have been lost.
What is shocking is that ministers are still insisting this broken system is the best one, as they have done since its introduction, and are going to great pains to explain that, despite the price tag, that’s not how the system works. They have insisted the complexities will become clear with the aid of a few flyers and ignored the spiralling cost of the loan book. The irony of a government that lectures us about the evils of debt, while tripling the debt burden on a generation of students, is lost on them.
What makes this drop in applicants even more jarring is the lack of alternatives for those who in previous years would have entered higher education. With unemployment soon to reach levels last seen in the 1990s and the economy still showing no sign of recovery, the coalition’s fondness for the past seems to extend beyond Michael Gove’s love of Latin to a determination to create a jubilee year where a generation of young people believe they have no future.
There are those that argue the £9,000 policy is a natural continuation of Labour’s introduction of fees but while the Labour government used the money from fees to invest in the higher education sector and massively increase the numbers who got the chance to benefit from a university education, the introduction of £9,000 fees was designed to plug a gap left by a huge funding cut.
Funding of higher education is a complex issue but the coalition’s insistence of seeing it through the narrow lens of a sticker price fee is perpetuating a system that freezes out some of the worst-off in society.
Applications are down across the UK but we can see the impact that a Labour government has in Wales where applications numbers are down at a much smaller percentage than England, but this has required bold action by Welsh Labour and it is bold action that’s needed.
The system is broken and needs more than the tinkering around the edges that has defined the debate around higher education funding for too long. Labour has a real chance to create a system that doesn’t deny anyone the opportunity to enter higher education, and we should take it because we are now seeing the damage not doing so can do.
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Emma O’Dwyer is chair of Labour Students. She tweets @emma_odwyer
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