Categories: uncategorized
Date: 10 June 2009 18:01:54
remembers marching on the streets of London singing "Education is a Right, Not a Privilege". She remembers politely collecting signatures on a petition against tuition fees and being the LDYS representative, speaking at a local public meeting discussing the issue. Student finance was the issue that got me joining the Lib Dems rather than Labour at my first Freshers Fair. It's something I cared passionately about then and still care about.
However, time moves on....sort of. The Lib Dems are still fighting their corner, vowing to axe tuition fees but one wonders how long that will last. Today young people born without a memory of the concept of "free" higher education published their vision. The NUS "Funding Our Future Blueprint".
Part of the introduction to the report reads as follows:
"Graduates should contribute to the future costs of higher education according to their actual future
earnings, so that those who benefit the most from university by earning more will contribute more, in order
to give future students access to higher education. This contribution would be paid into an independent fund – a People’s Trust for higher education – which would be built up over time and eventually deliver considerable additional resources to the universities of the future. The system for personal contributions would be designed to ensure considerable flexibility in the way higher education works. By establishing payment related to the amount of higher education studied and abolishing all up front fees for part-time students, our system would initiate a new era for non-traditional learning and continuing education through life. Routes would be opened up for voluntary employer contributions, so that employers could support far more employees to study than ever before."
All sounds v. sensible and fair and in one way it is. It's sort of what people like me were proposing over a decade ago, in those moments when we realised the traditional socialist ideal was no longer a likely option. However, it's couched in a language which jars. The old fashioned idea was quite simply a graduate element to National Insurance contributions. This talks of "trust funds" and "employer contributions" all carefully avoiding the "t" word.
There is something which is increasingly worrying me though. In our middle years what conflicting demands will we have to choose between? By this I mean if you are one of middle England's graduates, with a public sector job giving you one of the lower levels of responsibility or a similarly paying private sector job having to pay back your student loan / fees is it your pension that any "spare" income will go to or helping to support your aging parents who were sold the dream of a pension that would support them but had it plundered, (by state or employer)? Or might it be your children who you have to help out? The children who can no longer afford the deposit for a first home? Or the children who you want to help out at uni, in order to try to keep their level of personal debt down?
The simple fact is we won't be able to afford it all. There are major structural issues involved which have to be faced in a joined up way. The current financial crisis is making us aware of some of the "issues", but there are a whole raft of others which are involved and which are going to "hit" over the next decade or so. The issue of student fees can't be looked at as an independent variable. We need to look at the whole package of provision and responsibility together. The welfare state debate isn't about saving a few quid by dealing with scroungers, it's about the world we and are children are moving into.