University lobbying groups have been increasing their calls for an increase to tuitions fees ahead of the Autumn Budget. IF researcher, Toby Whelton, argues not only are these calls intergenerationally unfair but they are also cynical.
Calls to raise tuition fees
On this morning’s BBC Radio 4 Today’s programme, Universities UK (UUK), the lobbying group for British universities, came out demanding that tuition fees must increase by at least this year’s inflation but preferably to their 2011 value of £12,000−£13,000 per annum.
For those that have been paying attention, this is far from a surprise. UUK, vice-chancellors and other higher education organisations have been campaigning for higher tuition fees for years. However, until now, calls have often been hushed and timid, either buried away in research reports or veiled by the placid language of “indexation” as opposed to nominal figures that the public can quantify.
The challenge they have faced has been how to lobby and persuade policymakers when in the eyes of the public an increase to tuition fees is deeply disagreeable, or in the words of the Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, “unpalatable”.
The latest strategy lobbyists have opted for is to leverage the destitution and appalling cost-of-living conditions of current students in order to raise their own revenue and by doing so further disadvantage young graduates. UUK have sanctimoniously emphasised that an increase in tuition fees must happen alongside a rise to maintenance loans and greater investment in student mental health provisions. Perversely, universities are hiding behind the financial struggles of students in order to justify charging these very students more.
The “broke student”
While increasing maintenance loans may have nothing to do with increasing tuition fees, the UUK are right to call for an increase. Year-on-year real-term cuts during a cost-of-living crisis has meant that the average maintenance loan no longer covers the average cost of student accommodation. Even the maximum maintenance loan of about £10,000, which is given to an increasingly diminishing amount of students due to a decade-long freeze of the means-tested income eligibility threshold, is £8,000 short of the income needed for a minimum living standard research suggests.
The trope of a “broke student” is no longer an amusing stereotype of having baked beans for dinner to being able to afford a night out. That image has been replaced by the reality of students relying on food banks and working excessive hours at a part-time job just to make ends meet. Recent research has shown around one third of current students have considered “dropping-out” as a result of their financial situation.
Student’s mental health
Similarly, mental health provisions offered by universities are inadequate given the scale of the current crisis. In a 2022 survey, 57% of university students reported experiencing a mental health issue. This has been a result of the pandemic as well as the aforementioned cost-of-living crisis, but also due to inadequate mental health services offered by universities. A 2023 survey of 4,000 UK students found that only 12% of respondents believed their university handles the issue of mental health well. There has to be change.
Raising tuition fees
However, to act as if maintenance loans, mental health provisions and increasing tuition fees are in any way related is absurd. The first two would aid the current plight of the young while the later would just further burden them.
Increasing tuition fees is simply unthinkable given British universities already charge some of the highest fees in the world. UK households face the third highest burden of paying for tertiary education out of all countries in the OECD at 54.4%, even higher than the United States (US). However, unlike the US, these great costs are not compensated for by higher graduate wages: workers’ wages have not risen since 2005; and the graduate premium ever-diminishing to a point of near non-existence. Instead, young graduates are saddled with over £60,000 of debt for the poorest students and an additional marginal tax rate of 9% on their already measly earnings, if earning over the threshold set – for new students that threshold has dropped to just £25,000.
While universities may believe the answer to their current financial struggles lies in passing on their costs to students and graduates, they should perhaps instead reflect on the incomprehensibly high pay of vice-chancellors or over ambitious expansions following the windfall of tripled tuition fees in 2011. Raising tuition fees simply cannot be the answer, and no increase to maintenance loans or mental health provision can compensate for this.
“It doesn’t matter as they won’t repay it anyway”
The wisdom currently in vogue (largely thanks to certain money-saving experts) is that the debt owed does not matter as the majority of students will not pay off their student loans anyway. We should just view it as a graduate tax, and ignore the fees charged.
However, while this may have had some credence for the past decade, this advice is out of date. If tuition fees were to rise it would affect students on Plan 5 student finance. Under Plan 5, students are paying more, paying it earlier and will be paying it for longer, up to 40 years after graduation. As a result of this squeeze, around half of all Plan 5 graduates are in fact expected to have paid their loan in full meaning they would feel the full effects of any increase.
We must resist
While a rise in tuition fees may be “unpalatable”, the new Labour government has not technically ruled it out and instead implied that all options are on the table for the rumoured overhaul of higher education. The strength and incessant petitioning of the universities lobby combined with the backlash from the old-age lobby regarding cuts to Winter Fuel Payments may mean that the government try their luck targeting the young. It is crucial all campaigners and organisations that believe in intergenerational fairness, equality and protecting the young and workers push back and resist these calls.
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