In his autumn statement, albeit delivered in winter, George Osborne announced that loans of up to £10,000 would be made available by the Students Loans Company for postgraduate study. My reaction was mixed. I was pleased that funding was finally on offer to students who wanted to continue in higher education, but disappointed that it was the Tories, not Labour, being the first to make this proposal. As of yet, Labour’s frontbench have not even said they will match it. Friends have said to me that they are now considering continuing their studies at the master’s level because this announcement meant they were able to afford it.
However, while Ed Miliband’s announcement that Labour will cut tuition fees for undergraduates from £9,000 to £6,000 per year, we still have not touched postgraduate fees. These typically start around £10,000, and no loans are available from the government – students have to cough up these fees themselves. The Labour leadership has publically remained noncommittal on student loans for postgraduate study. Taking a master’s is not a luxury solely for rich kids – or at least it should not be.
Postgraduate education will be crucial to the future economy. Indeed, Ed Miliband has says he wants Britain to ‘win the race to the top’, while Chuka Umunna has outlined his vision of a ‘high skill, high wage economy’. Technology is rendering more and more unskilled jobs redundant. As supply of unskilled jobs goes down, so will wages for them. Greater depth in skills will increase wages, and continued higher education means higher skills. With self-scan checkouts replacing checkout assistants, the jobs of the future are in high skilled industries. Britain is leading the way in areas like aerospace, but we need to make sure our young people have the skills for these jobs. Apprenticeships are giving young people better vocational skills, postgraduate study should give young people greater academic and intellectual skills. Postgraduate courses are narrow, with greater depth; meaning depth of expertise for students coming out the other side and going into the labour market.
This is not a big spending commitment from Labour. It is not promising free education – this is about loans being offered. Loans which students, who are acquiring the skills they need to be successful, will pay back. Furthermore, students going on to take a master’s will enter the job market with more skills, and so should be more employable. This will mean the money the government loses from people who cannot pay back their loans will be well below that of undergraduates. Furthermore, young people can use the skills they pick up from their extra year of education and to become entrepreneurs, creating more jobs, more opportunities, and more money for our economy, and the taxman.
Limiting access to education is limiting social mobility, and that is not what the Labour party should be about. There are many intelligent undergraduates I know who would go on to postgraduate study but are put off because they can not pay the fees. It is wrong in a fair and meritocratic society that family wealth should still determine the opportunities available to young people. Those who aspire to learn new skills that they can take with them into the economy should be able to do so, regardless of the size of daddy’s pay cheque.
Loans of up to £10,000 will not pay for postgraduate courses at several of Britain’s leading higher education institutions, and this will not even touch the issue of postgraduate students’ cost of living; but it is a start in making postgraduate education more accessible. For the poorest students, it will at least cover what bursaries, where they exist, do not. This is why we need government-backed student loans for postgraduates. Let us put this issue on the agenda of a future Labour government.
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Edward Jones is a member of Progress. He tweets @EJCJones93
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