One last chance to halt the Marketisation of our Universities

By Danny Adilypour

So now we know. This Thursday is the fatal day when Conservative MPs are set to march through the yes lobby alongside their Lib Dem colleagues to raise university tuition fees to £9,000 a year, condemn future generations of students to punitive levels of debt and seal the backdoor privatisation of our higher education system.

This isn’t just an argument about the rights and wrongs of Liberal Democrat MPs breaking their pledge to vote against any increase in tuition fees. This is a fundamental, ideological debate about whether we believe as a society that higher education is a valuable public service that should be supported and funded by the government and whether we believe a university education should be available to all, regardless of their background.

Labour Students are absolutely clear about our position on this – universities perform a vital public service that benefits society and should therefore receive support and funding from the state. We should also accept that graduates benefit from their university education and should therefore contribute to the cost of funding it. However, we must ensure that this is done in a progressive way that doesn’t deter people from going to university or saddle future generations with an extortionate amount of debt. This is why increasing tuition fees is not the right answer and why a free-market system of variable charging has never been right for our universities.

On every measure, the government’s proposals fail the progressive test. By cutting public funding for university teaching by 80% and completely withdrawing state support for many undergraduate degrees, the Tories and Lib Dems are sending a clear message that they do not believe the state should fund universities and that the market can fill any funding gap. This is a dangerous Thatcherite fallacy that has damaged our public services before and will damage our universities now. The government falsely claims that this decision has been forced on them by financial circumstances but the facts simply don’t bear this out. Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain are not cutting investment in their universities. In fact, the only other OECD country that is not increasing investment in higher education, research and science is Romania. This is a political choice being made solely for ideological reasons.

It has also been claimed that tripling tuition fees to £9,000 a year is somehow a progressive step. This would be laughable if the consequences weren’t so damaging and corrosive for anyone who harbours ambitions of going to university. Under the government’s proposals 75% of graduates will be left financially worse off and end up paying considerably more to go to university. This will inevitably make course prices a significant factor in the choices students make. A truly progressive system would allow students to make decisions based on the courses and institutions that they believe to be best for them, without being deterred by the financial consequences. The government’s proposals do exactly the opposite, which is why they are not progressive and should be strongly resisted.

The cost of university education should be shared fairly between taxpayers and graduates – a principle that this government is ending by transferring the cost of degrees fully onto the shoulders of many students. This is why Labour Students are supporting Ed Miliband in opposing the government’s plans and calling for the introduction of a graduate tax which will see people make a contribution to the cost of their higher education based on what they earn and what they can afford. All progressives should support such a move.

This week represents the last chance to halt the dangerous slide towards the marketisation of our universities and the privatisation of higher education funding. Labour Students will be supporting student unions across the country who are organising demonstrations this Wednesday to highlight the strength of opposition to the government’s proposals. On Thursday NUS has announced a day of lobbying in parliament, in order to contact as many MPs as possible before the vote on raising tuition fees takes place.

Please take one final stand this week to try and defeat the government’s proposals. Support any protests being organised by your local students’ union, contact your MP before Thursday’s vote and ask them to vote against higher fees and sign up to support our campaign “Stand up for Students”. The future of our publicly funded higher education system rests on the decision that parliament makes this week. Please join us in standing up for students, help us in opposing the government’s plans and help us to win.

Danny Adilypour is the National Campaigns and Membership Officer for Labour Students