Why the saga of university fees is farcical – and the joke is on the students

With the news that some of the weakest universities in Britain are going to charge up to £9,000 a year in tuition fees, another scene in the Comedy of Errors of our university system is played out.

Yet again students appear to be the butt of a joke that isn’t all that funny. When announcing last year that universities would be able to significantly increase their tuition fees to offset cuts in government spending, ministers assured us that £6,000 a year would be the norm and £9,000 only charged in “exceptional circumstances.” It emerged recently that this assertion was made under the assumption that Offa (the independent public body that ensures fair access to higher education) would be able to put a cap on the fees charged, which it categorically does not have the power to do. This blinding oversight on the part of the government is indicative of the way in which access to higher education policy has been mishandled in recent years.

In thirty years and one generation the incumbent British governments have fluctuated from paying a minority of academically minded students to go to university to announcing that higher education is a right that should be enjoyed by 50% of school leavers to forcing students to borrow £39,000 to fund that ‘right’ (£9,000 a year in fees and £4,000 a year for maintenance over three years). The current result of these U-turns in policy is confusion about the basic purpose of going to university. New Labour’s mantra of ‘Education, Education, Education’ told school leavers that half of young people should go to university as it would give them better paid jobs.  This promise of a meal ticket up the class food chain meant participation in higher education soared to over 40% in 17-30 year olds. The 1992 Further and Higher Education Act had given polytechnic (technical) colleges university status, meaning that the newly re-named institutions could help swallow up the government’s ambitious 50% projection. The motivation behind university applications shifted from a student desiring to expand their minds and understanding in a specific academic field to a belief in university as a necessary holding station from which to graduate into employment. As it stands today, the British higher education system fails to fulfil either purpose.

New Labour’s equation of young person plus degree equals highly paid job failed to take into account that limited highly paid jobs divided by increasing number of graduates means not enough jobs for all. Accordingly, in January the Office for National Statistics found that at one in five, new graduate unemployment is the highest it has been since 1995. The recession has caused a rise in unemployment across all age groups, but Labour’s legacy has seen graduate unemployment rise by almost 3.5 times the national figure. At an individual level, recent years and my own experience have seen 18 year olds leave school seeing university as the obvious next step offered by society and the government. Increasing numbers then drop out, discovering at their own expense that another three years in full time education is not what half of school leavers want or need; so public and private money is wasted.

If Labour’s policies were heavy handed, however, the coalition’s treatment of their inherited higher education sector is unlikely to improve the situation. The increase in tuition fees means that we face a reality in which London Metropolitan University – ranked at the very bottom spot (115th) of The Complete University Guide’s league table this year – will charge its undergraduate students between £6,000 and £7,000 a year. Anglia Ruskin University, meanwhile, with their one in four drop out rate will charge “more than £6,000 and less than £9,000.” It is clear, therefore, that the changes to tuition fees will not equate cost with value as David Cameron asks students to pay vastly inflated fees for even the lowest quality higher education. It is farcical to suggest that these increased costs will not dissuade school leavers from lower income backgrounds from applying, however deserving they are and whatever insufficient bursary schemes the government announces.

Consequently, as the coalition rolls out another series of bewildering changes to higher education, the hangover from Labour’s efforts is still being felt. As politicians continue to disregard the true purpose of university – to give all those who want and deserve it the opportunity to continue academic study – I fear it is the students who will suffer.

Picture:Getty Images

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