Calling the Shots on Top-Up Fees

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Calling the Shots on Top-Up Fees

False Choices Over University Funding

Treasury Report Offers Universities Cash for Business Links

National Union of Students on the Campaign against Fees

Alternative to Top Up Fees - Early Day Motion

Students should ask, who is calling the shots on top-up fees?

According to reports, the government has put back a vote on the proposals for university top-up fees until the New Year after reports that Labour’s business managers apparently warned the Prime Minister that he faced defeat. "Tony Blair has insisted there will be ‘no retreat’ over the government’s plans for student top-up fees," said the BBC.

At present, over 170 MPs have signed a motion opposing the new fees, which will allow universities to charge up to £3,000 per year.

It is evident that a vote on the issue is being delayed by the government until the moment that is most advantageous to its own agenda. Lord Dearing, who headed the most authoritative inquiry for decades into university finances, came out in favour of the government's proposals for top-up fees yesterday. Figures such as Lord Dearing have been mobilised to say that it is "right for the government to invite students after graduation to make a contribution", but call for compromises on other parts of the university funding, while saying that the figure of £3,000 was about the right upper limit.

Such speculation only assists the aim of the ruling circles in keeping people off guard. Even opinion polls are being utilised to try and mould public opinion in favour of fees, together with reports which are being published suggesting that citizens are willing to accept increased taxes for health and education. Senior politicians are adding to the mix by urging that the issue should not be turned into a "vote of confidence" for the government.

These goings on should raise very important considerations for students, especially those organising for the right to education. Firstly, students must take up politics themselves to assert that right. Secondly, they should seriously discuss what is the alternative to the form of party-dominated "democracy" that marginalises the people. And thirdly, they need media of their own to report and analyse the developments that are taking place.

Speaking at his press conference on December 2, Tony Blair declared that there would be "absolutely no retreat" from his government's policy of introducing top-up fees of up to £3,000 per year for university courses.

He said that this change is "essential for the future of the British economy". Citing reports that there was an £8 billion infrastructure backlog in higher education and that academic salaries in the sector have fallen behind, Blair declared that the choice facing the country was one of "dramatically reducing the number of students going to university by somewhere in the region of a quarter of a million or alternatively putting up general taxation for everybody in a way that ... the public would rightly consider to be regressive and unfair". Faced with his self constructed dilemma and his self professed commitment to "fairness and social justice", Blair declared that the alternative to introducing top-up fees would be to "make some ancillary worker in the Health Service on a very low income, who hasn't been to university, pay more of their taxes in order to boost the funding for the universities". Therefore he argued a "fair method" of funding university education needs to be found and his government's proposals are such a method since they strike "a balance between what the state pays and what graduates pay on graduation".

With this whole self-serving presentation of the issue of funding higher education in Britain, Tony Blair negates the idea that education is a right and constructs false choices over how it should be funded. Since by his own admission widening access to higher education is "essential for the future of the British economy" and "absolutely engaged with the national interests", the question naturally arises as to why individual graduates should be charged up to £3,000 per year for their education, if the work for which they are being educated is so essential to the country's economy? Of course, however, Tony Blair sees education not as a right to enable citizens to play their full role in a modern country, but rather as a form of investment in the labour force to enable British business to compete on the global market. This he made absolutely clear when he said that "the university system today is of vital importance to the British economy, because as we need more and more skilled, higher value added jobs, more people will go to university. … one of the most innovative and important things happening in the British economy is an increasing link and spin-off between universities and business ……… the university sector is no longer simply a focus of educational opportunity, it is also very important part of the future of the British economy". Therefore it is clear that Tony Blair's Labour government is intent on pursuing a policy of placing the higher education sector in the service of big business and its drive for maximum profits in the global market. Since these higher education reforms are intended to benefit big business, why shouldn't they foot the bill? Why raise general taxation, especially for the underpaid ancillary NHS worker, when the billionaire business tycoons are more than able to pay and are the intended beneficiaries of these changes?

The issue however is deeper than that. Noteworthy for its absence from Tony Blair's presentation of the issue of university funding is any mention of Britain's social product the total amount of wealth produced by the labour of workers in this country as well as that plundered from other countries. Why does Tony Blair not speak about the country's total wealth when considering how higher education is to be funded? If he did, he would be forced to acknowledge that the issue of funding higher education is not one of resolving the false choices between restricting access to university, raising general taxation or forcing individual graduate to carry some of the cost. He would be forced to admit that the issue that needs to be resolved is who gets first claim on the social product. Is it to be the financial oligarchs through their ownership of debt and the means of production or is it to be the people and their social needs, including funding higher education to ensure wide access to high quality universities?

The people must step up their opposition to the government's policy of paying the rich at the expense of the society and build this opposition so that they are able to take hold of the social product which their labour has produced and use it to meet the needs of society, including the need for higher education.

Universities were urged last Thursday to raise more private-sector money and modernise their antiquated management systems in return for being allowed to charge students top-up fees. Richard Lambert's year-long review of the relationship between higher education and business, commissioned by the Treasury recommends the creation of an industrial research institute modelled on the equivalent body in the United States. Chancellor Gordon Brown has also signalled that extra funding in next year's spending round is likely to be targeted at collaborative projects between colleges, businesses and public-sector enterprises, one of Mr Lambert’s key recommendations.

REPORT RECOMMENDATIONS
An increase in "third-stream" funding to promote business links and spin-offs, from about £90 million a year to £150 million;
A multimillion-pound funding stream to promote research with local business, administered by regional development agencies;
Reform research assessment to ensure research with business is rewarded.

This year at NUS Conference, our movement responded to the threat posed by the Government's White Paper on the future of higher education. NUS has been given a strong policy mandate from our members setting out the way forward for our campaign. NUS has clear and progressive policy demanding:
* The abolition of all forms of charging students or graduates for their education
* The introduction of a non-means tested grant that accurately reflects the cost of living
* The maintenance of the current rate of interest on student loans
* The restoration of benefits payments to students

"20 key facts"

1. The average cost of a degree is now nearly £20,000.
2. Increased studying and living costs in England and Wales has caused student debt to rise by 31% since 2002.
3. Top-up fees combined with increases in the cost of living could raise student debt at graduation to as much as £33,708 by 2010.
4. Nearly three quarters of students would have reconsidered their first choice of university if it had demanded a top up fee.
5. The shortfall between the maximum student loan of £3,698 for a student studying in London and the actual cost of living and studying in the capital is nearly £5,000.
6. Tony Blair is one of 45 Labour MPs - soon to be voting on top up fees - who received an Oxford University education during the full grant era.
7. Two thirds of 2003 graduates moved back in with their parents to save money and pay off their debt.
8. Since the elimination of grants, student debt has increased by 544% and now totals over £5 billion.
9. Parents are now paying more than £500 million towards university costs every year.
10. In 1992 only a third of students owed money. Now 90% are in debt.
11. Only 17% of university students are from working class backgrounds (a decrease of 3% in less than two years).
12. Applications to medical school from students in the poorest social groups have decreased by 50% in five years.
13. Poorer students owe 15% more on graduation.
14. 83% of school leavers and further education students worry about the debts they will build up while at university. 75% believe that if student loans were abolished and grants brought back, more people would go to university.
15. Three quarters of working class young people who decide not to pursue higher education cite lack of money and fear of debt as the main reason.
16. 40% of all students now work while studying for an average of 13 hours a week.
17. More than half of lower income students work for an average of 15 hours a week. Nearly half of them are concerned that working is adversely affecting their studies.
18. 57% of students who work do so to cover the cost of basic essentials, 11% are working to cover tuition fees.
19. There has been a fivefold increase in inquires from British students about scholarships to US universities since the government proposed top-up fees.
20. If we don't act now, debts caused by top-up fees could become a fact of life for most students in 2006.

Early Day Motion 7 26:11:03

170 signatures as at Thursday, December 4

That this House recognises the widespread concern about the effects variable tuition fees and the perception of debt may have on access to universities, particularly among students from families on modest or lower middle incomes; notes that there are alternative models of funding higher education, which the Department for Education and Skills has considered and which do not involve variable top-up fees; and calls on the Government, therefore, to publish full details of these alternatives to facilitate proper, informed debate and understanding before proceeding with legislation to reform the higher education funding system.