Tuition Fee Changes

You would have to have been living in a cave for the past few months not to be aware that the Coalition Government plan to make changes to university funding. The large protests marked by violence and questions over police tactics have meant that the issue has featured highly in the media – even if most of the focus has been on the protests, not the policy. I, along with every single Labour MP, voted against the Government’s proposals.

I want to take this opportunity to raise points that I think it is important that people know, and which may have been lost in the furore over the protests and the headline £9,000 per year figure. The first is that the Welsh Assembly Government has decided to pay the difference between the current fees and the new fees for all students who will have lived in Wales for three years prior to the start of their course. This will apply no matter where in the UK the students are attending university. This policy is paid for through different policy choices made by the Welsh Assembly Government and the UK Government and is not, as some suggest, a matter of English taxpayers subsidising Welsh students.

The second point is an explanation of why the higher fees will be charged. The Government has decided to cut the amount of funding it gives for universities to teach undergraduates by 80%. It is cutting all Government funding for undergraduate courses in the arts, humanities and social sciences. Universities will need to increase fees just to try to plug the gap left by this astonishing cut – the increased fees will do absolutely nothing to increase teaching standards in our universities. The Government has essentially privatised the teaching of these subjects, providing no public money whatsoever for the teaching of history, English literature, economics or politics in our universities.

These changes are not about improving standards or investment. They are an ideological attack on the tradition in this country of a public funding contribution to our university system.