Trebling student fees is not the right way ahead
IT has become an iron rule of higher education finance that changes are implemented by a conniving political class behind the backs of the British people.
Labour scrapped maintenance grants without a mandate to do so and then brought in top-up fees despite promising not to.
Both Labour and the Conservatives conspired to keep university funding out of this year’s general election by setting up the Browne review. Yet now the Tories propose trebling fees to £9,000 a year while Labour, which no doubt would have done the same had it remained in power, is posing as a faithful ally to students and their families.
The position of the Liberal Democrats is even more duplicitous: they promised to vote against any rise in fees yet are now walking away from that solemn pledge.
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Nobody should believe that annual fees of £9,000 are inevitable. There are many ways in which fee rises could be avoided, such as diverting the ridiculous increase in the foreign aid budget into higher education or paring back the vast amounts spent tackling climate change.
Ministers should also reflect on how it is that taxpayers end up spending more money on young people who do the wrong thing – such as committing crime or having children they are in no position to care for – than on those who do the right thing by passing exams and preparing to make an economic contribution.
To expect youngsters to sign up for half a lifetime’s debt at the age of 17 is simply asking too much. If Britain cannot afford to properly fund the existing number of undergraduates it would do better to cut university places than to go down such a path.
The Government’s policy on fees deserves to be defeated.
