We could have stronger universities that charge much lower fees

The introduction of £9000 a year university fees defined the new Coalition for many. Nick Clegg’s honest image was lost forever and a generation of students realised that election outcomes do make a difference. The unpopularity of the change was obvious from the outset. What’s now clear is how disastrous it has been for university and family finances.

The financial base of English universities is slowly sliding off a cliff. Fees are declining in real value, research has been cut, and the BIS budget is in tatters as Ministers ponder slashing support to the poorest students. We have the most expensive public HE system in the world but most options for change see fees going up. But, as it is, half of this year’s students will pay 9% of their income above the threshold for 30 years and still not clear their debts. It’s so bad that the coalition is now planning to spend £6 on debt cancellation for every £1 spent teaching students anything! At the same time, NUS say there is a £7k a year gap between the maximum student support and the real cost of living.

Despite the excellence of many universities, we can’t be complacent about the system as a whole. Half of new graduates can’t find graduate jobs and a third don’t have them after five years. There’s still a gulf between what the economy needs and the education universities offer.

As I hope to show tonight, it doesn’t have to be like this. We could have stronger universities that charge much lower fees, offer more choice to students who cannot or do not want to spend three years full time studying for a degree; give students more choices of ways to reduce their living costs; made it easier for employers to partner universities in the delivery of degrees; and freed up other resources for re-investment.  All this could be done within current public spending and while cutting graduate debt and payments!

The key is to turn our backs on the ideology behind the high fees system. Labour set up the Browne review but it was the Coalition who instructed him to propose slashing the teaching budget, making graduates pay for nearly all their education. That’s why we have high fees, and high debt cancellation.

If we reverse the process, and put everything we can into teaching, the fees we need tumble and so does the cost of debt cancellation. As we stop the waste on debt cancellation we put more money into teaching and fees come down further. In my model, I transfer £2bn from debt write off into education!

I also suggest changes we should make anyway. We should revive employer co-sponsored degrees – Labour had 20,000 of these a year before the Coalition scrapped them. Two year intensive degrees have a role for students with maturity and commitment and who want to cut living costs. Studying from home should be an option for more – though this means our insular universities learning to cooperate and collaborate together.

If we do these things we can not only graduate as many students, but we can free up money for university research.

My model proposes a flat rate student entitlement of nearly £15,000 that each English student gets towards the cost of their education. This would bring the average total fee for a three year degree (to cover the remaining costs) down to below £10k – the same as when Labour left office. A two year degree would cost just £5000 in total. And an employer backed degree would cost the student nothing.

Modelling HE is complex and a lot more work needs to be done before this goes in anyone’s manifesto. But the approach meets many of Labour’s aims. It safeguards middle class incomes while looking after the poorest. And it show that if we reject dogma and ideology we can get a better HE system for the same amount ofpublic money.

John Denham is Labour MP for Southampton Itchen