The education bloodbath

Published in Student Direct, 21st September 2009

The summer has been a sizzler for universities and their government cronies. As the burden of debt looms large over this year’s crop of freshers, the wheeling and dealing that has become the trademark of New Labour’s Higher Education policy has swung into motion.

Behind the scenes, vice-chancellors are salivating over the prospect of squeezing students to the tune of £20,000 a year in tuition fees – an astonishingly incompetent proposition that ignores the financial reality confronting students in the recession.

For prospective students, the financial outlook is bleak, with the impending review of tuition fees hanging like a black cloud over their studies. The recession has been shamelessly used by university vice-chancellors and politicians as an excuse for the latest round of fee increases. Last year saw sporadic demonstrations breaking out on campuses around the country as students reacted in horror to the lunacy of the government’s proposals.

Aside from ignoring the sheer financial implication of having to pay up to £60,000 for three years at university, the proposals reveal the increasingly bullish stance taken by the political establishment on the issue of higher education funding. The NUS president Wes Streeting has slammed the arrogance of vice-chancellors who are “fantasising about charging their students even higher fees.”

But this arrogance is nothing new. In 1997 Tony Blair boldly promised “Education, Education, Education.” Labour, he said, would uphold the interests of youngsters at school and university. Gone were the days of Conservative cuts in education funding. The party would right the wrongs of the previous 18 years and restore commitment to education as the lifeline to a successful career. But in reality, the government’s corrosive education policies have turned common sense on its head.

Instead of upholding its pledge to the electorate – and more importantly, to students – Blair and Brown have successively taken an axe to the equality of opportunity that should naturally give any young person wanting to go to university the chance to do so. An obsession with targets and performance saw Labour make the incredible suggestion that 50 per cent of school leavers should attend university shortly after it took power.

In its desperate attempt to be seen as the party of ‘equality’, Labour opened new universities and cobbled together new degree programmes at breakneck speed. Throwing caution to the wind, courses were set up simply for the sake of it, with minimal consideration to the financial implications that duly came in the form of crippling tuition fees, demanded by universities in order to fund these aptly named ‘Mickey mouse degrees’ – anyone for Surf Studies or Golf Management?

The government’s record reveals a staggering degree of incompetence and disregard for the views of the student population. In 2001, David Blunkett assured students that “there will be no levying of top-up fees in the next parliament if we win the next election.” Yet in 2004 they were introduced, and by 2006 universities were already pressuring the government into increasing fees, claiming they needed more money.

This policy of misinformation has not been limited to the Labour party, with the Conservatives readily jumping on the bandwagon. In 2003, then party leader Iain Duncan Smith said: “we will scrap university tuition fees – a tax on learning. The fees have penalised hard-working families who simply want their children to get on.”

In 2004, David Cameron assured his party that it would act as a bastion of opposition to the fees, and yet in 2006 bluntly announced a U-turn, claiming, “the money’s got to come from somewhere.” The repeated sell-out of students by the political establishment suggests that in terms of importance, young people are as usual bottom of the pile.

If the government would momentarily depart from its fantasies, it would realise that fewer student attending university is not necessarily a bad idea. Reduced numbers of students would reduce the need to charge students for the privilege of obtaining a degree. Whilst the higher education system creaks under the financial strain of Labour’s ludicrous targets, the skilled trades such as plumbing are crying out for recruits. Less students attending university would divert badly needed funds into apprenticeships and training schemes.

Meanwhile the crippling cost of education has meant that whilst more youngsters now choose to attend university, poorer students are increasingly discriminated against in the process. 20 years ago, a potential medic or barrister from a working class background could count on a reasonable grant to see them through the university process. Now, thanks to Labour’s education catastrophe, that same working class applicant may well decide that the cost of their training simply isn’t worth it – a trend that is seemingly confirmed by the House of Common’s spending watchdog report earlier this year that confirmed there was little to show for the whopping £329m spent on tempting poorer applicants to university.

The coming academic year promises to be a bloodbath. The evidence so far has shown the government’s blatant disregard for the student voice on the issue of fees. With the discontent growing, alternative plans are hastily being wheeled out: UCL Professor Malcolm Grant’s suggestion that fees should be replaced with a graduate tax, payable varying to students’ future earnings, at least suggests that some in the academic world are thinking on their feet.

But piecemeal opposition to Westminster’s bullying is futile – and the government knows it. Grant claimed in The Guardian that: “We have moved a long way from the ideological divide…but…people are increasingly nervous about debt because of the recession.” Yet the reality is that ideological division is essential if the student body is to take a stand against the profit-driven agenda of the political establishment. The NUS’ ill-fated decision to fight to keep the tuition fee cap rather than take a tougher stance and oppose tuition fees outright, gave the government the green light to push on with its plans. An entire rethink of the way higher education is managed and funded is badly overdue and is essential if the railroading through of education reform without student consultation is to be stopped.

Tinkering with the system is not sufficient. The government must realise that its attempts to boost the chances of bright young people have failed miserably. As students flock to university in ever-increasing numbers, the worth of a degree is eroded and downgraded. Gordon Brown’s increasingly dire poll ratings may prompt him to think about the future of Labour’s education policy. An abandonment of fanciful targets might just persuade the average student that Labour is indeed on their side, and not totally driven by targets and profits.

If Labour is to win the student vote at the next election, then change is desperately required. The political establishment must be held to account by students and prevented from exacerbating the financial misery that threatens to engulf higher education. Top of the agenda must be young people from the poorest backgrounds who have been failed by an education system that seeks primarily to maximise profit, seemingly at any cost.

“Education, Education, Education” is dead in the water. Now it’s time for “Reform, Reform, Reform.”