Tuition fees can still be a fair solution to university funding

Ed Miliband ran for leader supporting the idea of a graduate tax. As leader, he has presented a costed policy for reducing tuition fees to £6,000, as proof the Coalition had not put enough efforts into keeping fees as low as possible. Over the last year, all hints and whispers have pointed to conference season for what the manifesto pledge on Higher Education (HE) funding will be.

So why didn’t it turn up? My hunch is that they decided on the NHS as the primary theme for conference, and didn’t want their HE policy drowned out. I imagine it’s ready to go, waiting for a big speech a few months’ down the line.

As a march for the reintroduction of free education takes place in London today, it’s worth considering what Labour’s offer might look like.

An amendment was put to Young Labour’s national executive recently suggesting they support today’s demonstration. They rejected the proposal but, as Maya Goodfellow correctly pointed out, it showed that many believe free education is back on the agenda.

Earlier this year, the National Union of Students (NUS) changed their policy to support free education for the first time in years. Although, strangely, they have pulled their backing for the protest today, citing safety concerns. If only they had discovered a zeal for safety concerns a month earlier, they might have been able to apply it to the well-being of hostaged aid workers or enslaved Yazidi women, and not voted against condemning ISIS.

Labour’s policy will not be free education. It may not even be a graduate tax, and turn out to be more akin to the current £6,000 limit policy. Some may say this reflects Miliband’s hesitance to be “bold” or “radical” enough, but in reality fees can be a fair solution to university funding.

The expansion of universities and the rise in number of people studying at universities over the latter half of the 20th century was so dramatic that it became vital for the state to look at how we pay for the system. Fees were never introduced in order to put people off education, but because it had become so popular that there was a responsibility to find a sustainable funding method.

While celebrities of the art world may claim that they would be put off going to university now because of extortionate fees, the fact remains that the level of university applications are far higher than at any point before fees were introduced. I think that this Government’s HE policies are abysmal – I have marched against them (and been kettled in the process) – but it has done very little to dissuade applicants. Even among the poorest sections of society, the numbers are increasing: the number of applicants eligible for free school meals has nearly doubled since 2008.

People shouldn’t be put off studying because of cost, nor from arts courses because they might not pay off. I recognise education as an important social good rather than simply for its economic worth. That’s why when lots of people want to study, we have to make sure that the funding exists to support them – and let’s not pretend that a lot of money for universities still, rightly, comes from the state.

What I think will put off more people from studying arts and humanities is the ugly sight of a Tory Education Secretary telling people it is not worth it, as Nicky Morgan did last week.

I speak from some experience here: I chose a degree in English Literature because I thought it would be interesting, not because it would lend itself to any obvious practical career path. It is unlikely that my undergraduate dissertation on James Joyce will often come in handy in any work environment. As yet, no one has been willing to pay me to explain what “ineluctable modality of the visible” means, despite having left my phone number sellotaped to bus stops offering my services.

People are willing to make the leap into debt because they know that graduates earn more. It is not unfair to ask them to be prepared to make a contribution towards that. It is unfair and expensive to saddle them with a debt they will never pay off, which is why it is so important that Labour reform it.

While blandishments about taxing the wealthy to fund free education may appeal, in truth the contributory principle of HE funding is not broken. With an NHS funding gap leaving the service teetering on the brink, and a strutural deficit continuing to loom threateningly over the economy, introducing a more expensive system is not a desirable next step for our universities.