benjames.org.uk

20th January 2003

This article was published in the 2003 edition of Martlet magazine

FUDGING THE FUTURE

The Higher Education Funding debate

There were a few perplexed tourists in Cambridge on November 11^th last year. One bloke approached me on King’s Parade and asked me just what ‘Top-Up Fees’ were, as 2,000 Cambridge students gathered on the Senate House lawn just over the wall upon which I was fixing a poster advertising ‘The Big Noise’. He was presumably expecting some kind of esoteric Cambridge regulation that applies when your wine glass is running a little low. I explained what the general principle was to the guy, who thanked me and carried on his way. I didn’t have the chance to tell him that this sort of thing wasn’t typical in Cambridge.

For it isn’t often, these days, that students turn out in force for a political protest like this. As reflecting the general apathy of the population towards politics, students have lost their radical streak, in the main, and tend to have a scornful distrust of lefty banner-wielding types who are often perceived to have their heads up their own politically correct vegan backsides.

I have better places to put my head. And, for the record, I like steak; but that’s certainly no reason not to have my fingers on the pulses.

Many people felt the need to protest last autumn as momentum seemed to be gathering towards the introduction of hefty increases in up-front fees for the so-called elite universities. New Labour seemed to be flirting with an American-style system and the PM, pouting, his dusky pupils like glittering noughts, was ready to ask it back to his place for coffee. The Rector of Imperial College, London, expressed the desire to charge his students up to £10,500 p.a. to make up the shortfall in funding; this proposal was endorsed by a meeting of that university’s Council. Cambridge’s Sir Alec Broers remained luke-warm to the idea and aware of the access implications – though telling us that if the system became reality, Cambridge would have to follow, or fall behind financially. Imperial’s students had gathered en masse outside that Council meeting in sombre silence to express their disgust. Cambridge gathered outside the equivalent meeting to express the same, but through opposite means: by making a ‘Big Noise’ against ‘Top-Up Fees’.

The Proctors looked on, traditionally subfusc and stony (giving us their encouragement and support when the backs of the press were turned). Cambridge students used their trumpets, didgeridoos, drums and airhorns to create a ten minute wall of sound. A fine Pembroke contingent were there, hammering away at their frying pans (in the absence of anything better to do with them). The Dean, whose beard would be a credit to any revolution, often tells me of those heady days when Pembroke had, shock horror, a politically active group called ‘Pembroke Left’, but this sort of behaviour is quite unusual today.

We were angry: faced with a ludicrous cocktail, shaken and stirred (and most certainly spun), of government hypocrisy and contradiction. Hypocrisy – because most ministers benefited from a free University education. Contradiction – because, while simultaneously proposing to get 50% of people into University and vilifying ‘top’ universities for not working hard enough to improve access, they were putting the squeeze on central funding and thinking about enabling institutions like ours to charge five figure sums. Make no mistake: this would be an insurmountable barrier to access that no number of initiatives could rectify.

I’ve worked on access initiatives, including the Pembroke House Higher Education Project in South London, that I’m sure readers are aware of. The single most significant trepidation that teenagers have about going on to Higher Education, especially if they don’t know anyone else who has done it, is the cost. Obviously. And, because of the palatial surroundings that we enjoy, Cambridge is expected to cost more than others. It doesn’t currently, and we have been able to tell people that, but we would no longer have that defence under a top-up fees system. Differentiating ‘top’ Universities from others through introducing different scales of cost would put people from low income backgrounds off even further than already, irrespective of what they would actually pay through a means-tested system. There would be an underclass of cheap Universities that students from lower-income backgrounds would be less apprehensive and self-conscious of applying to. And what about public sector workers? They earn just enough to mean that their children would be subject to heavy charges, without earning quite enough to foot that bill. Cambridge would lose talented individuals.

Phew, good old benevolent Blair, listening to students’ concerns, has now said that there will not be substantial increases to charges at the point of entry contained in the HE Funding Review, which will have been published by the time you read this. It will have suggested some kind of graduate tax, so those with degrees can contribute to the cost of gaining them once they are in their well-paid cushy jobs. Degrees have given them the chance to earn loadsa money, so why not make them give something back?

Hmm. Can’t really say no now, can we. We faced down the government’s original plans and this is the more palatable compromise. We are right where they want us. Spam is a tad more palatable than Kit-e-Kat, but it doesn’t mean I want to eat either for lunch. Less of a fiscal barrier at point of entry might prove less of a barrier to access. But, these taxes are still likely to be differential. You will be taxed more if you have been to Pembroke, Cambridge, because the University will need to recoup more money. You would be in deeper debt for longer. So Cambridge is still an ‘expensive’ university, and, unlike certain Belgian beer that students drink, not reassuringly so. Hardly Belgian at all, in fact, as an access mountain would remain, with the government cutting the ropes, one by one.

Anyway, your income gets taxed already, doesn’t it? So the extra earnings that you are likely to get as a graduate will be essentially taxed twice. Take your self-made business-person, for example, with a hefty income built up without University education: conceivably, they would not be subject to a tax that low-paid graduate public servants would be, even if the government built in some kind of concession to help them. Where is the logic in that?

The whole philosophy of this sorry state of affairs revolves around a presumption that when people take the happy step of furthering their education, and are talented enough to do that in the most celebrated institutions in the land, the only effect, and their only motivation, is the furtherance of themselves. Education solely to advance personal wealth – and that’s it. No question of education of one being beneficial to all through the contribution that that person can go on to give to society at large. There is no such thing as society. Sound familiar?

I’m going to be radical now. Call me old-fashioned, call me a loony, cover me with lentils and bash me with a banner. Do you think it might just be possible to cover the undoubted shortfall in funding from general taxation, without bothering to differentiate what is basically income tax for those with degrees and those without. It’d probably save on bureaucracy, for a start. Let’s tax wealth, not knowledge, not letters after names. If your degree leads you to fabulous wealth, then you can still make a proportionate contribution in paying for it. But your “self-made” millionaire can also help pay to train the teachers that teach their children and the doctors and nurses that will one day fix their dicky ticker.

I’m not saying smash the state. Just don’t smash the students.