Tuition fees – what we’re missing

By Ryan Thomas

With the seemingly endless amount of stories on how the Liberal Democrats would vote on tuition fees and the attendant (and wholly justified) betrayal felt by many students and parents across Britain, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture: the most dramatic and far-reaching reform of British higher education in living memory. While the media obsessed about the ruminations of Simon Hughes, the Lib Dems’ very own Jiminy Cricket, and provided comedy gold by “doorstepping” the supercilious Sarah Teather, we are arguably in danger of losing sight of the broader ramifications of coalition policy.

We have been told constantly by the coalition that this is a progressive policy. Backbenchers and ministers alike spoke to its progressive nature, Paddy Ashdown was wheeled out to defend the policy, while Shirley Williams, not content with having played a role in keeping Thatcher in power in the 1980s by splitting the Labour Party, also rallied to the cause. It would seem this “this policy is progressive” has become the Lib Dem equivalent of “four legs good, two legs bad.” It is illustrative that during the during the parliamentary debate on the trebling of the cap on tuition fees, the word progressive was bandied around as an empty vessel waiting to be filled with meaning. It was mentioned eight times by Vince Cable alone.

In the Liberal Democrats claiming that the policy is “progressive”, we learn two things. Firstly, that the term “progressive” has become damaged beyond any hope of repair and should be erased from the Labour vocabulary as soon as possible. The term has suffered for too long as a result of being an empty signifier that almost any policy under the sun could be categorized under; the trebling of the cap on tuition fees and the subsequent explanation that this is somehow a progressive policy is the final corruption. It is surely time for the last rights to be administered.

Second, we have learned that the Liberal Democrats do not have a clue about the values or attitudes of the working class in this country. In their attempt to claim that this is a progressive policy, they point to the income a graduate must be earning before repayment will begin, the lack of up-front fees, and the conditions imposed on universities that seek to charge the higher amounts of tuition fees. This, frankly, is irrelevant and an intentional sideshow to the real issue, which is the amount of the fees. It is not the date, scale, or method of repayment that will put those on low incomes off going to university, it is the lump sum amount. Labour should not accept the diversions set up by the Liberals and hammer home the message that the coalition trebled the fee cap. As John Denham rightly argued during the parliamentary debate:

“The ‘fairest’ can be judged only by how much graduates pay. It must also be measured by the chance of becoming a graduate at all”.

These are the arguments that Labour must develop as they take on this appalling coalition and its peculiar notions of progressivity.

I come from Merthyr Tydfil in the South Wales valleys, one of the most economically deprived towns in the United Kingdom. I was the first in my family to attend university (though my mother went back to school later in life to get a nursing degree). I am saddled with debt as a result of going to university. What the coalition government fails to understand, as The Guardian’s Jackie Ashley recently and rightly pointed out, is the deep-rooted fear in working class households of debt. Credit cards were something to be fearful of in my household, a glorified version of putting something “on tick” rather than a means to an end. The thousands of pounds of debt I have incurred by getting a degree is often referred to by my mother as the first thing she would pay off if my parents win the lottery. Debt is the enemy of aspiration.

Imagine, if you will, the prospect of beginning your working life with thousands of pounds of debt from student loans (upon which interest is gradually compounding). If you fall in love with another graduate you take on each other’s debt. Add to that the cost of a mortgage, a car, children, and bills to pay, and we get a glimpse into the life of a graduate. For working class families on low to moderate incomes, sending their children to universities is not a decision taken lightly. The coalition plans will increase this anxiety. The coalition claim that they could have cut university places; what they do not realise is that their policies could very well have the same net effect as children from low to moderate income families are forced to abandon their plans for higher education due to the overwhelming fees they will be faced with (if indeed they make it into post-16 education in the first place, thanks to the scrapping of the Education Maintenance Allowance).

The balance under the coalition’s policy, according to Liam Fox on Question Time, will be 60% student, 40% state, though this was disputed by Sadiq Khan on the same show. According to Khan, the balance under the Labour government was 60% state, 40% student. I would be far more comfortable with a proportion closer to 80-90% state, 10-20% student. I believe it right that the graduate bear some of the cost of attending university, as graduates will have opportunities afforded them as a result of that degree and will benefit – financially, professionally, and personally – from it. However, this benefit is dwarfed by the overwhelming benefit to society that university graduates bring.

The labour movement must challenge the utterly spurious argument that it is wrong for taxpayers to fund university education. As a society, we all benefit from an educated populace, be it from lawyers to doctors, teachers to accountants, writers to lecturers, engineers to architects, artists to nurses. The taxpayer that has not benefited from the services provided as a result of somebody else’s university education is a taxpayer that has lived a life of complete isolation. We need to start viewing society as a coherent whole, an organism of interdependent parts rather than an atomized, disparate collection of individuals whose decisions and actions have no impact on those around them. The Labour Party needs to start seriously articulating this view of society.