A few weeks ago, I was happy to blog about why tuition fees needed to be raised, however, thanks to the gratuitous rampage that the students went on, we have been a little side tracked about the real issue. So on the eve of the vote today, I will finally address the issue at hand.
The question about whether student fees should rise is not about fairness, per se. Rather, the starting point should be the question that has its basis in reality rather than fantasy. That question is: what can we afford?
Over 45% of the population now goes on to higher education. Can we as a society afford to subsidise that? The answer to this is not in debate. The resounding answer is no. I wish we could afford it. I think the experience of university obtained by graduates is extremely valuable to society and I refer not only to that which can be measured in GDP.
In actual fact, if we were starting again from scratch I would recommend that only 20-25% of the population should go to university; those who have achieved a certain accredited standard. If this were the case, (as was the case not so long ago) we could seriously consider funding this cost. However, the great rush over the last twenty years or so to keep as many people in education for as long as possible at any cost, has meant that that is not the reality we have to deal with.
If you want world-class universities, like Oxford and Cambridge have been since their founding, (although struggling to keep up because of recent under funding), then you have to fund them properly. First-rate education cannot be provided cheaply. If we compare the average yearly fees to go to Havard or Yale, (over $30,000) two of Oxford and Cambridge’s competitors, £3,000 a year to go to university here looks scarcely believable. The reality is that universities have been grossly underfunded for years and that was the situation even before the advent of this new age of public expenditure austerity.
Please don’t interpret this post as a brutal, heartless assessment of this issue. This is not an easy issue. I myself could not afford to go to university without a full loan from the government, and still have a serious amount of debt to my name to this day. No, I am certainly not insensitive to the realities of a potential student considering university, but is put off because he or she happens to come from a poor background. Such an outcome would be highly regrettable and certainly not the type of society we should be seeking to create.
Which is why the Coalition government should be commended for coming up with various ways in which the likelihood of a poor student being dissuaded from applying to university is kept to a minimum. Indeed, a poor student under the current proposals would actually have more grants and bursaries available to them than under the old position, as well as not having to pay back any government loan till later in their working life. This issue is not as simplistic as some of the slogans and chants on the protest would have you believe. It is not about simply putting up fees and the government being nasty. This is a very complex challenge, to balance on the one hand the harsh realities of funding the cost of higher education and on the other ensuring that going to university remains a meritocracy and not simply a reflection on the wealth of your family.
Well done to the government for broadly achieving that delicate balance. It has not been easy. If only the students could stop aimlessly shouting their childlike response ‘It’s not fair’ and give some further thought to this, they might also see that the government have come up with a very reasonable response to a very difficult issue.
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