By Sarah Mulholland
It’s no secret that one of the most controversial decisions the Labour Government has made since coming to power nearly twelve years ago was the reform of higher education funding and the introduction of “top up fees”. The debate over top up fees was fierce, both within and outside the party, but despite the Government’s majority being reduced to five votes, the measures were introduced in 2006 with a promised review into how well the system was working in 2009-10.
So here we are, looking once again at this fundamental issue. The central questions we need to ask now are essentially the same as in 2004:
How can we build a world class university system, able to compete on an international level and produce the high calibre graduates that Britain needs to succeed in the future?
How do we support individual students in higher education, giving them real choice and the resources they need, ensuring they are able to make the most of their time at university?
And how do we do this while at the same time increasing the quality and quantity of higher education provision, so that more and more of our young people can share in the opportunities that were previously available just to a privileged few?
The Government’s answer in 2004 was top up fees. But has it worked? Has the introduction of a market, albeit a limited one, led to a healthy and happy higher education sector?
There have been many positive changes to higher education over the last three years - more people are at university than at any other time; including more people from non-traditional backgrounds; a significant increase in the number of students entitled to a non-repayable grant; fairer loan repayment systems; and the removal of up-front fees.
However, the question is whether the introduction of top up fees has in many ways increased, not decreased, levels of inequality within our education system, with students choosing their course based on what they can afford rather than what they want to study.
With the review of higher education funding we have a real opportunity not only to build an education system that is an effective vehicle for social mobility, but one that will create world class universities producing the graduates that Britain needs to compete on a global level.
However, there is also the possibility that we will lift the current cap on tuition fees, creating a full blown market in education. It is important that we examine exactly what the impact of this would be – for both the quality and ethos of our education system, but also what the political consequences would be for the Labour Party.
What would lifting the cap would mean for the quality of teaching, the distribution of resources and the type and quantity of graduates we produce? Clearly the ‘top’ universities will charge the highest fees and become richer, while smaller institutions, unable to compete at that level and recognising their relevant market value, will be forced to attract students through lower fees, meaning they become poorer and less able to invest in their staff, students and facilities. Do we really want to move towards such inequalities in the type of education we provide?
But we must also ask what it would mean for the ethos of our education system and the direction of the sector if we create a system that will entrench inequalities rather than erode them. I don’t believe that creating two tiers of graduates – one that had a real choice in their education and one that was forced to study at home or at an institution charging lower fees – fits with our values of fairness and our fight for social justice. However we fund higher education, we must ensure that access to all of our colleges and universities is decided by ability and talent, not by privilege.
There is also the political question. Despite everyone’s favourite moan about how apathetic young people are, the student vote still throws a heavy punch, and let’s not forget the National Union of Students currently has upwards of six million members. At the last General Election, candidate after candidate struggled to justify why students should support them following the introduction of top up fees, and that level of hostility will only intensify if the cap is lifted.
As the debate over higher education funding begins in earnest, it is vital that we in the Labour Party arrive at the right answers. After all, since when did we trust the Tories with education? In their 18 years in office they did little to widen participation or increase access, and allowed our universities to crumble though years of under funding. We certainly can’t trust the Lib Dems either after they enticed student voters with the promise of abolishing tuition fees only to drop this pledge when it no longer suited them, instead suggesting that students should simply go to the university closest to home!
So, it’s up to us to get it right, and develop a fair and efficient funding system based on our values and designed to provide equal opportunities. A system that is fair for students but that will also allow our universities to compete in an increasingly globalised world. We must recognise the positive impact of removing up-front fees, and how far we have come in terms of widening access. Now we must go further, building on our commitment to fairer repayment schedules and move towards a system in which graduate contributions are based on income rather than course cost.
This review was never going to be easy, and we have some difficult questions to answer. However, we have the opportunity to ensure future generations can exercise true choice in their education, while at the same time guaranteeing our universities the resources they need to become world class centres of learning.
I look forward to the debate.
N.B. NUS has recently launched a detailed report into higher education funding ahead of the review that provides a detailed critique of the current funding systems . It can be found at:
http://www.nus.org.uk/en/Campaigns/Broke-and-Broken/Broke-and-Broken-the-report/
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They show up at 10, leave at four, do six hours teaching a week and complain if they're given more classes because it will get in the way of their "research". Which, in many cases, is little more than academic masturbation.
I've no problem with funding research into a cure for cancer, or the next big thing in information technology, or in advances in our understanding of social care. But I've no truck with rubbish academics 'researching' issues that no-one else but they care about, and whose application to the advancement of society is either limited or non existant.
Cheers mate, remember that next time someone defames you!
How are students not coming out with more debt now?
I was fortunate to be in the last year before the new system came in. My fees were £1200 and because of my background, my LEA paid for that. I then had a maintenence loan that my rent, food, drink, etc came out of. Over the course of 3 years that left me with around £9,000 worth of debt to the student loan company and another £1,500 in the form of an overdraft. Before the change I was left with just over 10K - personally I think that is bad enough.
However, my brother who is two years younger recieves extra support but the vast majority comes in the forms of more loans. He has more ready access to cash than I ever did but he will end up with far more debt. He pays a £3K a year in tuition. That is nearly the same as my debt without any living costs!
You ask where do we go next? and I say abolish top-up fees. Truly as a representative of the NUS can you say that even considering forcing students to pay more that it is in their best interests? Will you allow Britain to follow the US yet again and have education so highly priced that parents will have to start saving for their child's university fees practically from the day they are born?
And uncapped fees? Sarah you are intelligent I have no doubt and passionate about the cause but if the only voice I have is not banging down Gordon Brown's door and demanding that this ludicrous suggestion be completely withdrawn from the table then what is the point in having a voice at all?
I was one of the lucky ones, I am currently at the end of my University stretch and I missed the Top-up fee saga but I have a younger brother and sister both who are in the midst of secondary school and I think what of them? When they come to the end of college and decide they want to be doctors or historians or astrophysicists and they are turned away because they can't afford to pay. When they are forced to go to Universities that don't offer degrees that are of the same caliber or have to attend a government ran 'academy' University, as no doubt Labour will introduce them where the degree won't be worth much more than a sheet of paper and screams 'I was to poor to get a good degree' what will happen to their career/happiness?
You ask how can we build a world-class higher education system but look around you, we already do! And students aren't going to get a better education from paying more therefore working more and studying less. The institutions need to take stock of their degrees and alter content if the students they churn out (and churn they do) are not up to standard but that isn't money that is the problem, they should be doing this anyway to ensure that their courses are up to standard.
At my current institution, the top media school no less, students are paying more and having less contact time, not for 'independent study (which, had we wanted, surely Open University was the way forward?)but so lecturers can spend more time on research to earn the University more money - on top of top-up fees. And the only alteration to the degree which I have seen is not in the form of higher wages for staff, increased course content or even better facilities but in more sculptures around campus and I believe they are painting the library red, and so the students continue to suffer for nothing.
Has the introduction of top-up fees made for a healthy, happy education system? Yes, of course! The fat cats at the University will say, who are raking it in from the students every which way but for us students and for those who will be joining in the future, absolutely not.
The introduction of uncapped fees will further alienate those who Labour traditionally try to defend. The call for education for all will still ring true but only those who are in a position to pay for it and it is my belief that this is Tory thinking and definitely not Labour - New or old.
Labour should stop seeing education as a market driven business and get back to some old fashioned values - we need to help those who can't help themselves and provide equality not increase inequality as this will no doubt do.
Surely during the tidal wave of this recession Labour should take stock and realise that those whom they should be looking out for they have forgotten and sidelined and that this individualistic market driven culture has hurt more than helped. Now Labour should look back at our society and see those people that they should help and to strive to make sure they do their best for. In order to do this surely education for everyone should be the true way forward.
I would like to hear Labours position on this if they were so kind enough as to provide a speaker. Also NUS, I think it's time that you played hard-ball in lobbying the government to try to change these fees if Labour do not see sense enough to do it themselves.
Education should be for everyone, not just those who can afford it.
One of the reasons why students from poorer backgrounds were afraid to go to university was because people like the Liberal Democrats, the loony left, but most disgracefully, the NUS screaming from wall to wall that students would be buried under debt. I have never know a union scare potential members off by saying that joining their profession would leave them worse off. You know the latest "report" from the NUS is going to be biased claptrap when it is titled "broke and broken". This is the worst type of report where the conclusion is written first then the evidence is found to back it up.
If you want to improve the system, what should happen t=is that the cap system should change to fit the need of the economy so that the cap for scientists and mathematicians and accountants should be low, but the cap for subjects like politics or law- generally useless degrees, should be higher. Also, I think anyone who enrolls at university should automatically have thier fees paid, and they should automatically recieve thier grants, and oif they wish to pay thier debts off immediately they can. This removes the need for the input of local councils, which in my experience are incompetent.
This is an important debate, but it's a shame the NUS has nothing to offer apart from cliquery, backscratching and the usual small minded selfishness.
NUS currently has a membership of 7 million – so I underestimated rather than overestimated. This is a combination of higher and further education students, as well as long distance and part time students.
In terms of Scotland, I think we need to be really clear. Yes Scottish students do not pay tuition fees. However, their institutions are paying the price of a lack of investment and that is clearly not in the best interests of students. Moreover, Scottish students will be hit hard by the new local income tax introduced by the SNP leadership in Scotland.
My reasons for not trusting the Tories with education are clear. Yes, the Tories did increase the number of students at University, but what about increasing participation amongst those from low income backgrounds? Its not just about getting more people to University, its about giving everyone an equal chance to get there. If the Tories had cared about this then why are my classmates the first generation from my school for whom University was seen as the next step rather than the reserve of those at the private school down the road? The Tories have consistently opposed Labour’s target of getting 50% of young people to university, despite the fact that over 50% of young people from every social background want to attend University. Added to that is the terrible state in which Universities were allowed to degenerate, through chronic under funding and lack of investment, acknowledged by Chris Patten: “What is true is we expanded higher education hugely by reducing the investment in each student. In just over a decade we doubled the number of students and halved the investment in each…poorer pay, degraded facilities, less money to support the teaching of each student.”(Chris Patten, 14th October 2008, The Guardian). I certainly don’t want to see a return to this logic, so I will never trust the Tories with education.
Which leads on to my final point, in response to Elby the Beserk – who helpfully recommended that I should hang my head in shame for suggesting that a 3 tier education system is unfair. While I appreciate that you are offended by the very thought of including the children of ‘ignorant and abusive parents’ in higher education, I will certainly not hang my head in shame for daring to suggest that equality and fairness have a place within our system.
Apologies again for late responses!
Sarah Mullholland writing for the newest addition to the blogosphere, Labour List, initiated a debate on the future of our higher education sector. Due in 2009 is the government's review of the controversial variable fees that were introduced in the last Higher Education Act that passed by a mere five votes.
While I still have huge reservations about fees - NUS have set out an excellent analysis of the current situation in their report "Broke and Broken" - I have never had a problem about a student contribution while free at the point of use. I think many other opponents of fees have been pleasantly surprised that still more students and fractionally more poorer students go to university. What I really wonder is how many more might have gone if the fear of massive debt had not been a prohibitive barrier?
Read the rest here: http://www.progressonline.org.uk/columns/column.asp?c=173
but seriously, shortly is all fine well and good, but a WEEK after comments have been posted? Is this really the kinda interaction you want on this site? (cos if it is i aint coming back!)
there are 46 comments, that havent been deleted.
This site is supposed to be about debate.
As someone whos first real political memory was seeing the boy blair going into number 10 in 1997. and FEELING the optimism that was floating about at the time, why in the name of everything holy has the poster not responded to ANY of the comments been made here so far?
The whole underlying philosophical claim that education should be commodified will inevitably lead, and is leading, to a market for education - central taxation is the best and fairest way to allocate funds to universities, based on a set fee per student, with seperate, generous funds for development grants and research allocations. This central taxation should be funded by a graduate tax, charged relative to the income gained BY the degree you have chosen. It's obscene, arbitrary and unfair for, say, an actuarial student to pay the same for a 3 year course as a prospective teacher or civil servant.
Funding is needed, and people should pay something towards education if they have gained where others haven't - this, however, should reflect the money earned as a result of the degree, and if taxed as part of income, would not provide the enormous spectre of debt I and those around me are gathering and fearing.
Surely an economy and society where crippling debt, put off to a future date has created such bloody mayhem, it shouldn't still be reflected in the way we provide higher education.
Does that satisfy any definition of 'fairness' you hold? It certainly doesn't to me. If not, I'm surprised you trust the same Government to do better in future.
You what? Access to universities and polytechnics was drastically expanded under successive Tory governments. That's just a fact.
If this is a blog, we can expect some kind of interactivity / accountability, surely? Something like, "OK, so participation and access *did* widen under the Tories, but they were bad in other ways, my basic point still stands, etc. etc."
I look forward to it...
I suppose, after a fashion, we've got back to that now with the current fees situation. Of course, it again caused us problems because we stated in a manifesto that we opposed top-up fees and had legislated to prevent them.
University funding policy really has been a mess. The current situation is not AS bad as it could be, because many of the concessions needed to get top-up fees through parliament have actually improved the access compared with both the up-front fees system and the pre-97 system. However, we still can't escape the fact that debt deters working-class students; it empirically does.
Essentially you didn’t crack it. Yes you threw money at it, paid teachers more and built new schools, but that is not what education is about. You lost it on discipline, inspiration and a goal.
If only you had massively increased apprenticeship schemes and training for real trade and not simply tried to get everyone into university to do daft degrees like therapeutic bodywork (Greenwich), lifestyle management (Leeds Metropolitan), visitor attractions (Blackpool College) and science-fiction and culture (Glamorgan).
You should have set about training these youngsters to be plumbers, electricians, mechanics, construction workers, boat builders etc, etc. And you should have done it through apprentiships so youngsters can work and earn at the same time and not saddle themselves with a whole load of debt, only to find that they may not really find a decent job at the end of it. Plus you avoid headlines like 1 in 3 graduates earn less than £15,000 a year.
Of all the parties that I would have hoped would have given trade prominence and respectability it should have been Labour. Sadly all you did was push the importance of going to university. So kids are either in or out.
I cant say I know the Tories model, but Labour has failed in this respect.
I put it down to having too many lawyers in government and not enough business people, but hey ho
The current system leads to debts being stacked up when people can't afford it, and forcing them to repay them when they are still young and in relatively low paid jobs. Now I am 40, settled, with a wife, house and car, I am much better able to pay for my higher education. That is why top-up fees should form part of general taxation. That way, the people who can afford it pay more than those who can't.
If we enable institutions to increasingly differentiate their fees either on institution or based on course, we will increase inequality. The rich will increasingly dominate the top universities and the courses that lead to better jobs. As it is, how many barristers come from working class backgrounds? There are enough barriers now - let's not have more.
I have heard the argument that unless people pay for their education, they won't appreciate it. This is nonsense. Does anyone seriously believe that I didn't appreciate my school education because I didn't pay for it? Or my last visit to the doctors?
I also hear the argument that students should pay fees because they benefit from it. They undoubtedly do benefit from education. But doesn't the country benefit from having a highly educated workforce too? And businesses massively benefit too - especially in areas such as law the state has done most of their training for them! They are always keen to criticise when they can't get skilled people - maybe they should put their hands in their pockets!
Bursaries will never be able to constitute for a fair grant as they rely on students having perfect knowledge of whats available everywhere.
There is alot of talk about the need to have elite universities. Frankly, I think Oxford and Cambridge can look after themselves. I am more worried about the institutions that go out of their way to attract working class kids such as Bedfordshire Uni. These are the institutions we need to look after, because there'll always be a Microsoft or ex-alumni to help out the famous colleges.
It is easy to criticise the Labour Party for the mess we are in as some below have, but if we are honest, the Tories were planning to do something similar if not the same. The problem is - whoever's fault it is - the current system does not work and we need to get back to funding students properly through education.
1) People often quote that the average graduate earns more than the average non-graduate. This is nice but irrelevant. What ought to concern us the marginal graduate (ie the last one in). It's very unlikely they earn more than they would as a non-graduate, in fact over the lifetime they may earn less as they've spent 3 years out of the labour market which they can't get back.
2) If we're concerned about access of poorer kids to HE, we need to think about why they're currently not accessing it. Given that over 90% of those with A-levels now go to HE, is the problem with HE or is it more to do with the qualifications that poorer are and aren't able to obtain at GCSE and A-level.
3) Economists suggest that a key role of Higher Education, outside of the vocational qualifications like medical or engineering degrees, is to act as a signal to employers - ie it doesn't give you any particular desirable skills, but rather signals that you are one of the top skilled people in your generation. As we continually expand HE, that signalling is increasingly diluted, so now we see increasing numbers taking Masters (with very little government help) to take on that signalling role.
4) There has always been a market in education - driven by qualifications and aptitude rather than cash. Hence you require say an AAB to read History at Manchester but only BB at Bolton.
5) That said, there's been a problem with HE funding for years - namely that government funding and actual spending need are completely out of kilter. Universities now cross-subsidise, taking teaching money from the Humanities to pay for maintaining the science labs. Reforms to research funding mean that there is now no pretence that the teaching fund covers the cost of teaching. Instead departments need to demonstrate outstanding research in order to receive enough grant to function and teach students. Fees freedom would relieve this pressure by allowing Departments to fund themselves.
6) It's far from clear why the state ought to subsidise all degrees, as if they were all as valuable to society and the taxpayer. They're not. If we want more doctors, mathematicians, and engineers, then perhaps we ought to sponsor them through University. But if at the same time we're sponsoring students of english, history, law, economics, politics, geology etc. our initial incentives will be worthless.
When I was there, during the 97 elections, I have it firmly in my memory that it was graduation tax the Labour party promised us students at the time.
Is my memory wrong?
Add this to all the other perks the party provides for the Scots and it just looks like bribery.
as it is the vast majority of courses are not directly voctional, rather the idea of university is suposed to instill skills and abilites that will be useful in the workplace.
as for the uni system in britain being pathetic, what a farcical claim to make, we have Oxford, we have Cambridge we have the LSE, which is only low on international lists beacus of the relative lack of science courses. the fact that after 12 years we still have two of the ranked and three of the actual top five ranking universities in the world jion the face of massive funding speaks volumes for the unicersities themselves, their staff and the overwhelmingly british students that attend them.
and by the way, have you ever met anyone that does a david beckham degree?? i havent, thats because virtually nobody ever did one, the majority have useful and intellectualy vigorous degrees
Its probably the case that full funding for a mass system was never going to be feasible, but I'm not convinced that the current situation works very well. I certainly think that repayment should be income linked - there are many jobs which are not high paid but are socially necessary
However, universities are currently funded largely on the research they generate, not producing undergraduates. There is pressure to continually produce meaningless and repetitive articles. Perhaps a higher priority should be given to teaching?
Given this fact I find it bizarre that the above article mentions "Britain" but neglects to mention England in any way shape or form.
Insofar as education is concerned there is no "Britain" (I presume you are using Britain as shorthand for the UK) - there is England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
What a baseless and ill-informed assumption.
Ever looked at Harvard University, for example? They offer full scholarships (including accommodation, fees and tuition) to every student whose parents earn below a certain threshold, such is their desire to increase access to their courses.
And if other universities have to charge lower fees then they are clearly putting on the wrong courses. Removing the cap on top-up fees will force universities to focus on what courses are actually needed by our economy instead of spewing out thousands of graduates who have useless qualifications.
However, I also think it's high time to be discussing alternative methods of funding higher education, probably in the form of a graduate tax. That's the only way in which we shift the debate from one of compromise over the cap to one which actually provides long-term solutions.
But the truth is that we had to try and come up with progressive arguments for a policy that did not orginate from the Labour Party but from elite university Vice Chancellors who saw an opportunity for getting more money. The truth is that the undergraduate population of universities already brought in far more revenue than the fees hike brought. Banks, shops, supermarkets, rents, etc. aren't all there for the post-grads and researchers. Universities make a mint out of fees. And of course, essentially it IS a graduate tax; the money still has to come out of the exchequer budgeted against projected future income (which may or may not come - people may not earn the projected salaries, people may flee the country or be declared bankrupt, etc.) Universities then choose where to invest their income - and from what I can tell people are getting less and less tuition, pay is not increasing greatly for tutors - so the new money is not really paying for tuition.
We need to step back and go back to the drawing board. The logic has always been that people can afford to pay the money once they have graduated. There's an easier way to achieve that: tax the rich.
One down, one to go.
There also has to be more effort made to encourage alumni donations (one of the reasons that top US Universities are able to provide such massive bursaries). The government's match funding scheme was novel, but it really is down to the individual institutions to invest in alumni relations and not just turn to government for support all the time. The choice is not simply between government funding and student fees.
1) Government claims that the cost will be covered by increased earnings is a lie as they clearly don't beleive that the tax on those increased earnings will cover the cost.
2) The related 'student loans' are an evil that deters the poor and has softened up an entire generation of graduates to living on credit - and so directly contributed to the current 'boom/bust'.
I despise labour, because they never deliver on the few 'good' principles they claim to support, but are ruthless in delivering on totalitarian principles and personal benefits to the leadership, their acolytes and activists.
My kids 'collage funds' are unfortunately being blown on private secondary education because the local state comprehensive education is hopeless.
I had hoped that the savings would allow them to eventually graduate and enter adult life debt-free, but useless state secondary education has put pay to that.
What we have is loads of new useless courses to keep the unemployment figures down and make some worthless stats about 'increased opportunity' look better, and in the process damaged genuine social mobility.
Labour ministers are going on expensive courses to give their kids an edge on getting admission to desirable educational institutions.
Meanwhile the governments own report on social mobility shows that it plummeted immediately following the introduction of 'comprehensive education' and is only re-approaching the levels pre-comprehensive.
A truely misguided and pathetic approach to education - well done labour, think kids who grew up with chips on their shoulders (like prescot et al) finally get their revenge on the system - sod the modern kids eh?.
Matt, it includes further education - there are a lot more people at sixth forms than there are universities.
Could you clarify a couple of points, please.
With reference to the published Higher Education stats from the Higher Education Statistics Agency here:
http://www.history.ac.uk/makinghistory/resources/statistics/students_HESA.html
a) How do the total numbers for students in Higher Education of around 2.5-3 million reconcile with an NUS membership of 6 million? I'm sure they do, but I don't know how.
b) You say:
"After all, since when did we trust the Tories with education? In their 18 years in office they did little to widen participation or increase access, and allowed our universities to crumble though years of under funding."
According to the stats I've linked, in fact the increase between 1977 and 1997 in participation in Higher Education was 500%.
So I don't think your aside stands up.
Rgds
Matt
My piece:
http://tinyurl.com/labourlist
World class? The fact is that you have destroyed our education system, and the "university for all" project is simply to keep unemployment figures down
Not that long ago, we have a very effective three-tier higher education system; CFEs, Polys, and Universities. The first served trade apprentices, and those who were not too bright. (You may not like it, but some kids just are not)
Then the Polys, which served many professions which did not also require a rigorous academic background. Finally, Unis for professions that did need a solid academic grounding
This system worked and it worked well. What we have now is a disaster that could take all of two generations to remedy - if it can be.
Never mind all the money pissed away. All I do know is that I used to have a number of friends who were all dedicated teachers. They have ALL left the profession. The only I still know has gone into the private sector, fed up with minding ignorant and abusive teenagers on behalf of their ignorant and abusive parents.
FUBAR. Utterly, totally FUBAR. And that you should even pretend it works is grotesque. You should hang your head in shame.
This caught my eye because I am in fact an Old Warwickian, and was in that room with Plaskitt in 2005.
That being said, to the issue at hand. Europe's higher education institutions are way behind that of the US, and we are fast losing ground to East Asian institutions. Only two of the worlds top universities are now in Europe.
I think fees have a two-fold purpose: they provide funding that would otherwise not be there, and they make students value their education. Studies consistently find that people with degrees could expect to earn £150,000 more over their lifetimes than those with just A-levels.
Surly we should pay an in fact minimal cost to boost our higher education institutions which grant us access to such increased life chances?
So much of the top-up fees debate seems to be between anti-fees activists who sometimes post wildly inaccurate stories about how the fee system works, and frustrated Labour supporters struggling to explain how the system will work in practice. I've always felt that the 'fee' label makes it harder for us to make our case. Would it really be that difficult to tweak the current system so that we can describe it as what it in practice already is- a graduate tax?
That said I can accept that they are needed. We saw the effects of underfunding universities in the 80's and early 90's when Thatcher cut spending on unis and tried to implement a semi-open market there. The effects on British R&D and the subsequent 'brain-drain' where catastrophic. However, I can also accept that it is impossible for the government to fund every university to the levels that are needed to compete with Japan and America; funding has to come from somewhere and I can see that top up fees are the way to do that. The system of bursaries and grant also helps to mitigate the current effects on the poorest.
That said, I am extremely worried about the current proposals to life/raise the cap. Fortunately I won't be too effected as my degree will be coming to an end at that point but my sister will be hit hard by the charges. She wants to study medicine and I believe that under the proposed change she would be paying in excess of £10,000 a year; my family simply can't afford those sort of costs and unless we heavily subsidise poorer families I can't see how we will avoid making higher education the privilege of the rich.
It is vital that governments (of whatever colour) maintain the widening participation agenda, ensuring that those who would benefit most from a university education are not starved of this. As a result I for one would like to see better targetting of resources to those from poorer backgrounds and to those who come from families that haven't previously benefited from university education.
Lifting the cap would, aside from introducing colossal levels of unfairness and regressiveness into our higher education system, make Labour MPs job in winning back this big group of voters that much harder.
I did it all by myself and it was all paid off before I was thirty. I don't regard myself as anything special, so if I can do it, anybody can. And I never wittered once about how unfair it all was, it was just the price of the decisions I took.
Just who exactly are you, and by what authority do you propose to "develop a fair and efficient funding system based on our values"?
I can't see that you have been elected to act on the above.
The scary thing as an employer is that the former has barely even a basic grasp of arithmetic and the neither of them are articulate enough to write coherent emails or reports to enable them to do their jobs properly.
They are both saddled with massive debts and both consider that they should, by virtue of their degrees, be doing more "high-powered" roles within the company.
The problem is quite frankly, that neither is up to it, despite having qualifications that a generation earlier would have set them up for life.
This is of course only anecdotal, but now when recruiting I look for something other than qualifications as trained exam sitters are about as much use in the real world as a chocolate tea cup.
It may be simplistic, but the rush to put people through higher education to tick certain boxes has not been in either their best interests, nor ours as a SME trying to compete in the current economic climate.
The debts that they have racked up under the false promise of increased future earning power is bordering on insane.
It would be much better for the country as a whole to have fewer ill-prepared graduates with lower levels of personal debt, and to encourage those for whom University is not a panacea to get into work, learn a trade and stop giving unrealistic expecations to armies of unemployable graduates in the future
If Obnoxio won't I will. My sister did History, had one lecture a week the first year. What job did she eventually get? Computer programmer.
Since uni she has shown no interest in history or any knowledge of it. She keeps voting Labour.
It's bad enough at the moment as it is with Master's degrees being so expensive - we don't need to start at an undergraduate level too.
And you say universites were good before Labour? Ha! You really are a clown. Our universities were cash-strapped and falling apart before 1997 (as were schools, hospitals and pretty much the whole of Great Britain).
Anyway, on to more important things. You asked some questions:
How can we build a world class university system, able to compete on an international level and produce the high calibre graduates that Britain needs to succeed in the future?
(Britain used to have a world-class university system. It was turned into a wasteland by New Labour.)
And:
How do we support individual students in higher education, giving them real choice and the resources they need, ensuring they are able to make the most of their time at university?
(How about: let them pay for it themselves? That will keep them focused on maximising the value of their time there. By giving it to them, they do not value it and therefore will not make the best use of their time there.)
That's on the one hand. On the other hand you ask:
And how do we do this while at the same time increasing the quality and quantity of higher education provision, so that more and more of our young people can share in the opportunities that were previously available just to a privileged few?
Well, here's the rub, dear: there is no real need to make university access open to more. By practically forcing people to attend university, you devalue the whole process and providing people with degrees in "David Beckham studies" does nothing but leech money from taxpayers.
The beneficiaries of said "education" are not in the least bit better off, their employers are not better off and the taxpayer has a lovely open wound where their wallet used to be.
The simple solution is to stop trying to force people to go to university. People who want to go to university should be given loans that they are responsible for, or they should fund themselves.
I'm sure it will outrage you greatly to hear this, but actually, people are different and individual. They deserve to be treated as such and not herded along by meaningless governmental policies in the valueless drive for "equality" and "fairness".
If people want to go to university, they need to shoulder the responsibility for that. The government shouldn't be hyping university attendance as a panacea.
Interesting article, the future of funding for Higher Education is a complex problem for the centre-left. I have published an article calling for the introduction of a graduate tax whereby a student's financial contribution is determined by the financial gains they receive from their degree. http://www.thepolitics.co.uk/2008/10/23/be-careful-what-you-wish-for/
Joe Coward