Both Labour and Tories are backing plans to more than double student tuition fees to £7000 within four years. Labour shamelessly abandoned its 2001 election manifesto promise that ‘it will not introduce top-up fees and has legislated against them’ – then introduced them in 2004.
The Dearing Report, commissioned in 1996 under Tory PM ‘Sir’ John Major (who achieved only 3 O levels, didn’t go to university but won an election with the greatest margin in electoral history, published in 1997, recommended charging students 25% of their tuition costs. Newly-elected Labour ‘reluctantly’ introduced means-tested fees, claiming it as a Tory initiative. In 2003, a Labour-commissioned White Paper proposed that universities could charge students top-up tuition fees capped at £3000. In November of the same year, Tony Blair (educated free at St John’s College, Oxford) pontificated in the Queen’s Speech:
“A bill will be introduced to enable more young people to benefit from higher education. Up-front tuition fees will be abolished for all full-time students and a new Office For Fair Access will assist those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Universities will be placed on a sound financial footing.”
Professor Jugears, Chairman of the I'm Alright Jack Club
On the very same day, Norwich North MP Ian Gibson (yes, him Thus passim) tabled a motion on ‘top up fees’ signed by 185 MPs. Earlier that year, Tory Leader Iain Duncan Smith (Sandhurst, no university) pledged that Tories would abolish fees, to Labour claims (audacious even by the standards of spin at that time) that this would ‘disadvantage’ poorer students and cost 6500 academic jobs. On January 27, 2004, Education Secretary Charles Clarke (coincidentally MP for Norwich South - educated free at King’s College, Cambridge) introduced the Higher Education Bill on the very same day as the Hutton Inquiry into circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly. Amid the muck and bullets, having bought off Labour rebels with last-minute concessions and support from right wing Tories, the bill was passed with a majority of only 5, the closest Blair came to defeat thus far. At a stroke, Professor Jugears and his cronies undermined the 1944 Butler Education Act, which had safeguarded the rights to a free education at primary, secondary and tertiary levels for 60 years. If they had tried the same trick on the NHS, another (rightful) sacred cow, there would have been bloodshed, but the bill was enacted on the premise that “Universities exist to enable the British economy and society to deal with the challenges posed by the increasingly rapid process of global change” (Charles Clarke).
Herein endeth the history lesson. As a product of the Butler Act – a poor kid lucky enough to get a great free education leading to Oxford, Manchester (and the school of hard knocks) – I despise the foul cant about ‘engineering social mobility’ belching from the arse of ‘five jobs’ Alan Milburn (Lancaster University), and the rest of his Blairite bastard squad, shameless elitist social climbers who have burnt the ladder behind them. It is an obscene insult to the intelligence to claim that career success in the professions is a direct result of the networks created at elite schools and universities. Of course it is, and always was. Blair’s clique was notoriously stacked with fellow lawyers, Oxbridge room mates, Scottish Public School kiltlifters, Trotskyite student union bores and a fat bloke who used to be a ship’s shop steward to appease the unions. Cameron’s Notting Hill Haw Haws reek of Eton, Oxbridge, Bristol. It’s debatable whether you could ever stop the tendency of elites to form, or whether it is ethical or even sensible to do so, but you certainly don’t go about it by erecting financial barriers to entry to higher education for ‘the less well-off.’ During Labour’s tenure, the percentage of middle class students has risen, as has the number of debt-burdened graduates.
The crisis in education funding is as much a product of the overweaning burden of administration, the 1992 (Tory) elevation of polytechnics to university status and the bewildering number of ‘new’ universities that nobody has heard of, whose qualifications are commensurately worthless but which increased the intake and number of academic posts. Bothering kids at primary and secondary level with endless tests, grade inflation, league tables burying teachers under mountains of target-inspired assessment programmes and whipping parents into a frenzy of fear that their kids will be ‘left behind’ are unforgivable and premeditated crimes of social engineering. Give us back our Butler Act, you lying hypocrites. And stop sniggering, Cameron. We hear you’re thinking of privatising state secondary schools. Have you learned nothing? What kind of education did you have, boy? Oh, Eton and Oxbridge.
John J Kelly
8 Comments
Dear John, absolutely brilliant, every word of it. Charles Clarke, when he was minister of education, said that he only wanted the government to pay for subjects of ‘clear usefulness’. That would not include him.
As someone still somewhat in the system, I have to raise 2 questions.
1) At what point are the Baby-boomers going to pay their debt to society?
2) When will my generation stop having to pay it?
Thanks, Daniel. The answer to both your clever rhetorical (?) questions is ‘never.’ We need to define the meaning of ‘debt to society’ – in terms wider than merely financial, something the current monsters in charge are unwilling or incapable of doing. The right to free education, especially in the arts and humanities, enhances society. Taxing education – tuition fees are a stealth tax – creates a barrier to entry for those from poorer backgrounds whose aspirations do not extend to entering the well-paid professional classes with a virtual guarantee of a high income after graduation – cf. lawyers, accountants, management consultants, doctors, politicians, financial engineers. I don’t include teachers – professionals who are still poorly paid – or doctors, who are still relatively poorly-paid until they acquire the experience and status to exploit others and are therefore inconvenienced and stressed by debt until they can do so. It is equally unfair to tax their education, since theoretically they will repay their ‘debt’ in the form of higher tax receipts later.
‘Debt’ to society (in the strictly financial sense of the term) is repaid by contributing to society – in the form of taxes – the higher-paid pay more tax and buy more (taxed) products and services etc. It’s a question of how these revenues are allocated by government. Any government which imposes supplementary taxes on further education in the name of equality is barbaric and ideologically corrupt. While we sustain a government which imposes this, your generation will continue to pay, in the form of an accelerating slide towards intellectual and actual mediocrity. See Patrick Hughes’ comment above. Best, John
This is the first time I’ve read your blog – and have to say this article is better written and wields a far sharper intellectual scalpel than most of the ‘Commentaries’ I read in the broadsheets.
Keep venting that spleen in righteous forensic anger.
Thanks, Anthony, especially for recognising that spleen is best vented in a forensic fashion. Too many of the broadsheet Commentariat (a largely free-educated elite) are implicated/complicit. ‘Access’ to politicians requires that they toe the party line, and (post Campbell) many of them are scared to say or do otherwise. Nobody owns me, I listen and I do my homework – as I was taught to do at school, in tutorials and in the company of bright folk from every walk of life. Feel free to tell me when I get it wrong. John
John,
I agree with the thrust of your article but disagree with the left hook at the conclusion.
The way students are financed to attend universities is a disgrace and a huge waste of human talent. It is insane to stick the costs of education (in the form of part time work and student loans) to individuals at the beginning of their working lives when they have negligible experience, education and economic value. Stick it to them later through higher rates of tax when they are capable of generating much higher economic value.
University should be free to all who meet minimum entry standards and maintain performance. And “free” should include living expenses so students can study full time rather than working part time as many students do. Part of that education experience should involve wide reading and study outside subjects that students are enrolled in as well as large volumes of socializing, extra-curricular activities, travel, loafing around, reading, thinking and dreaming.
The quality of our civilization rests fundamentally on the quality of our education system. The pressures of juggling study, part time work and student loans must also increase the drop out rate leading to further waste. And to impose student loans on young people must be a bar to people from more straightened economic circumstances undertaking university study and is therefore socially regressive and wasteful of human potential.
The United Kingdom can and must be able to pay for free tertiary education, grants to cover living expenses, wide participation and full time study which will yield a stronger economy and a more advanced civilization. A highly educated work force will generate higher economic value and will be able to fund full time high quality university education through higher tax payments. If we assume a full time four year degree costs £80,000 and the recipient has a forty year working career then that person only has to pay an extra £2,000 in current year pounds to fund the cash costs of the degree. The value created for our society by a university education is much higher.
As to your point on Cameron privatising state schools that could be the subject for another discussion. However, state provision of education has led to a high cost, low quality system which has the effect of imposing an educational apartheid on this country. The system is run for the benefit of the producers not the consumers. We spend £5,000 per student on primary and secondary student but we do not get that value. In my humble opinion all schools should become independent and all students provided with a £5,000 voucher which can be used at whichever school they want to. The market and social entrepreneurs will provide a complex set of solutions with specialisation in niches which a monolithic state system cannot provide.
Cheers
Peter
Thanks for a very thorough and perceptive comment, Peter. I return your compliment, except for the last part. I doubt that the free market could provide a working solution for primary and secondary education at anything like £5000.00 per pupil. In fact, fees at most private schools inside or outside London are double or greater than double that amount – and they are theoretically not-for-profit establishments. If you add a profit margin, then I fear we might see a return to wholesale Dotheboys Halls. In most civilised countries, including the USA, schools are state-funded. Scandinavia, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, even (especially) Switzerland have exemplary state school systems. Even in the US, private education at primary and secondary level is predominantly provided by the state.
I’ve no problem with a version of the Direct Grant system, but unless the Tories want to walk onto a landmine, they should learn the lessons of rail privatisation and the dreadful NHS patient choice markets and focus on making schools work better, not adding complexity. As you say, it’s another complex story.
John, yes I broadly agree.
I think that Peter takes up some key points about when and how people pay back, and how this is efficient.
Leaving aside that currently dominant groups are unlikely to do payback (except perhaps via inflation) the question of when and how the rest of us do so most efficiently is key.
As Peter points out it makes sense to tax people when they have money, rather than compromise their education when they don’t.
In other words this privitised approach is a dumb way to run an education system. The evidence is there in terms of schools that comprehensive systems that are well run, as in Finland, give the best overall results and so contribute most to society.
The US is going for socialised health on economic efficiency grounds – they can’t afford their current stoopid system in the longer run.
I can only repeat that there is a great body of economics on the most efficient ways to provide public and private goods emanating largely from the Scandinavian academy.
I wish I had the time to read it properly.
But the UK is mobilising to march the other way. Sigh.