“If you’re walking down the right path and you’re willing to keep walking, eventually you’ll make progress.” Barack Obama
“Our party has long prided itself on its commitment to education as the great leveller; the best way to create social mobility and equality of opportunity in society” – words written by Jo Swinson MP in her article yesterday.
I agree with her, and that’s why I disagree that a near tripling of fees meets that commitment. That’s why I will be lobbying MPs to vote down the measure in the House of Commons in December.
There is much that is progressive in the governments announcement, part time students will no longer have to pay up front, the threshold will increase, interest rates will increase with earnings, the payback is time limited – this is good – indeed the Institute for Financial Studies says its more like a tax liability than a debt liability, a tax liability for graduates, no less.
However, this is set against the headline figure of £50,000 worth of debt and interest, fees of £27,000 for a three year course. No matter what safeguards you put in place, or proposals for scholarships are promoted this will put people, particularly poorer students, off going to university, that can’t be labelled progressive by anyone.
£9000 fees, and I will put my neck on the line and say that most universities will want to charge the maximum, is the headline figure, its what a teenager thinking of going to university will understand, it is intellectually dishonest to say that the proposals will induce social mobility and equality of opportunity when poorer students will try to avoid massive long term debt by either taking cheaper courses or not going at all. That is not acceptable.
After all there is no guarantee, in 4 years time with Universities crying for more money and a new government in place, that the cap won’t be scrapped, the conditions won’t change, the limited fee deferential in place would be amplified and student debt privatised.
The direction of travel, the reason I can’t support ministers, is this point – we are not just walking the wrong way on fees, we’re sleepwalking into our worst nightmare, a privatised higher education sector – and I fear that when we wake up we’ll be in opposition.
I don’t buy the spin, I’m sorry I don’t, and I don’t think those spinning it believe it either – the email from Vince set out four key points – none of them was the fee increase, Jo’s argument in her article that we are delivering a fairer system in keeping with our beliefs rings hollow to party members, and ministers aren’t exactly lining up to support this initiative in the media.
I can understand it’s tough for ministers, but we are Liberal Democrats, when is it not? I can see that they’re trying to make the system fairer, but the problem is that Labour’s fees system was not fair, a system based on a fees system will not be fair and I for one will have no truck with it.
I recognise we can’t implement our manifesto pledge, that the graduate contribution has to rise and that the economic situation is grim. I know we can’t bring back free education in this parliament – I knew that in January when we changed our policy from an immediate abolition to a six year one because of the economy – but I also recognise that allowing this new system to be based on a tuition fee plays into Labour and Tory ambitions for a free market in Higher Education.
There has to be another way, surely its not beyond our wit to come up with one – I know a ‘pure’ grad tax is undesirable, but no one was arguing for one anyway, but rather than trying to make the current system look more like a private tax liability for graduates than a private debt liability, why not walk down the right path, scrap fees and introduce a new and imaginative method of funding universities, a compromise we can all agree on?
Our policy of scrapping fees in the long term must remain – but if we can’t achieve it now, we have to at least be seen to make progress towards it – this is not it.
We have to do better for those people who put their trust in us.
Martin Shapland is Chair of Liberal Youth – the Youth party has launched a petition against a rise in the cap here.
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42 Comments
Martin
What’s the point of this article as MP John Hemming states that tuition fees have indeed been scrapped and that we have fulfilled the pledge https://www.libdemvoice.org/liblink-2-21993.html (I am of course being sarcastic) and as the comments have been turned off for that article you are going to get an awfully large amounts of posts about that rather than yours, which btw I do agree with.
Why have the comments been turned off for John Hemming’s posting? Surely this gives the wrong message (and is wrong anyway! ) We seem to be good at digging holes at the moment.
Let us be clear. John is right – the proposed system is significantly better for students than the present Labour system. (Whether it is better for the univeristy system is a different matter which can be argued).
I would vote against any increase in tuition fees if as a candidate I had signed that pledge. That is a different political matter which all the technical improvements in the world will not fix. But it does not alter the fact that the proposed system is better than the present one – which would probably not have been the case under either a Labour or Tory government.
Tony Greaves
“What’s the point of this article as MP John Hemming states that tuition fees have indeed been scrapped …”
To judge the truthfulness of Hemming’s argument, one has only to ask oneself how many FOCUS leaflets are likely to display the headline “Lib Dems fulfil pledge to abolish university fees” when the new scheme is approved.
The talk of tax versus debt is missing the point. Lib Dems want higher education to be free, paid out of general taxation. Sure, the coalitions repayment plans are better than the repayment plan we have at the moment. They’re better than a straight graduate tax. They’re better than upfront fees. But they’re not free and that’s the rub. They’re not even the same price as we have at the moment; they’re 3 times higher. Nicer repayments on three times the sum?
The fees could have been kept at the same level, they could even have been scrapped altogether. We had costed plans in our manifesto if you remember but the Tories don’t want more tax on the super rich. They don’t want to cut the deficit more slowly. They’re quite happy to let fees to rise as a means of keeping higher education for the wealthy and the deficit is a useful excuse.
What, though, can Lib Dem MPs realistically do? I’ve no doubt that Tory plans have been tempered a little and that the plans presented to Parliament will be better than a minority Conservative government alone would have generated. That’s just not good enough for the party. So should they vote against the fees rise? Should they abstain? Should they complain about the nasty Tories and say that this is one arguement that we lost? Perhaps they should just take it on the chin and vote for the marginally improved plan. In some ways it hardly matters. The damage to our reputation is already done. In which case, I would do the decent thing and vote according to the pledge – vote against the rise in the cost of university education.
Anthony Aloysius St,
“How many FOCUS leaflets are likely to display the headline ‘Lib Dems fulfil pledge to abolish university fees’ ”
Mine won’t.
“To judge the truthfulness of Hemming’s argument, one has only to ask oneself how many FOCUS leaflets are likely to display the headline “Lib Dems fulfil pledge to abolish university fees” when the new scheme is approved.”
Well at least students will then be able to save money on toilet paper I suppose.
I totally agree with this blog posting. Free university tuition has to be the goal, even if it cannot be implemented at the moment.
I agree the new system of tuition fees looks like a graduate tax in many ways, but it’s a tax you can opt out of if you (or your parents) have the money to pay the fees upfront. Imagine the outcry if you had the option to pay a lump sum at the beginning of your working life in lieu of income tax. This is exactly the same: If you have wealthy parents, you will pay 9% less tax for 30 years.
The only way tuition fees can made to work in a progressive manner is if it becomes impossible to pay them upfront or to pay them off early.
The John Hemming article is actually on the Guardian website- you can comment there. The article on this site is just pointing to it.
…however Lib Link articles normally allow comments on LDV as well as the site where the comment is actually hosted.
Spot on. In some ways Browne is fairer than the current system but that’s like saying that guillotining someone is better than disembowling them.
.
If I can coin a phrase from Harriet Harman, “to try to win elections by telling lies” should not be condoned by anyone.
Rankersbo
“The John Hemming article is actually on the Guardian website- you can comment there. The article on this site is just pointing to it.”
There has been many other articles on LDV that “point” elsewhere that have allowed comments, I wonder just what’s so different about that one? (as if we didn’t know)
Is can’t be just me who would hope that anyone considering a university, certainly anyone likely to benefit from it, would be equipped with the capacity to understand and rationally respond to how they are being asked to pay for it?
To present tuition fees as a debt is misleading and unhelpful; the language and narrative for the policy has been wrong, perhaps irreperrably.
The actual proposals brought forward have many benefits for low earning students, for part timers, and when considered logically for children in low income families.
My main remaining concern is with regards the fees lent but not paid back and the potential for a toxic debt bubble, with a need to plug the gap
later on when many loans default. I’d like to see course funding linked to increased earnings potential, not courses of little worth getting state funding and costing tax payers, whilst graduates of others foot their bills.
Politically though, a promise is a promise, and a pledge is a pledge. If you signed it you live up to it, if you didn’t you’ve more choice.
I am all for the idea of scrapping tuition fees. But it has to come with a credible plan for university funding – a plan that actually raises university funding (as neither the LibDem manifesto nor the current government plan does).
As it is, students, whether they pay or they don’t will see ever larger lecture groups in ever more crumbling buildings.
It’s just no good to tackle Higher Education purely from the student persepctive – there is no point in sorti ng the tuition fees problem if universities go down the drain at the same time.
As it currently stands, if the tuition fees proposal is voted down, universities will see a huge cut in teaching funding – in the case of the arts and humanities this will be a 100% cut. Yes, you read that right. NO government funding at all.
Before we come up with lofty promises, we should have an answer to this.
To achieve any sort of ppoliciy the first step on the path has to be in a position of power to implement that policy.
The Lib Dems have finally made that step.
The £9000 cap may be a hard pill to swallow but at least it is something – the Browne Report recommended uncapped fees – something that would probably been introduced by a Labour or Conservative majority.
Other concessions have also been won – to vote against what has been put in place could lead to a breaking of the coalition which in turn would lead to a loss in Lib Dem influence in National Policy (given the opinion poll results last week)
Real change can only be made by staying on the current path to show what the Lib Dems can achieve in power and by building confidence in the electorate to vote for Lib Dem majority
“staying on the current path to show what the Lib Dems can achieve in power and by building confidence in the electorate to vote for Lib Dem majority”
It’s just my opinion, but I would say that the two things are mutually exclusive…
Perhpas if we got over the ridiculous idea that 50% of school leavers should go to university – a Labour figure that even the Labour Chair of the Commons Education Select Committee said was arbitrary – and accept that it should be for our best and brighest (maybe only 20% of the population?) then we could afford for people to go for free. We have to tackle numbers as well as funding, as one dictates the other.
In agreement with Andrew Tennanf, I am confused why there are so many articles where the general thrust is “I know that the funding proposals are better for poorer applicants than the status quo, but I don’t think that sixth-formers from poor backgrounds are intelligent enough to work that out”.
Aside from the fact that not being able to work it out asks questions about the applicant’s suitability for university, it also worries me that people claiming to have the interests of applicants from lower-income backgrounds at heart have so little faith in their intelligence.
On the variable interest paid, can anyone tell me whether it is the universities getting a slice of this extra money or is it kept by the Student Finances organisation? Presumably the university gets the course-fee cash-in-hand from Student Finances when the student enrols, if they then land a super high-paid job, at what point does the university reap the benefits?
Good article unlike John Hemming’s which is just a sop to ease the effects of his broken pledge..
At least the youth understand that a pledge is a pledge..
Spot on.
John Hemming may be right that (particularly after this hike) tuition fees will simply be a 9% supertax on (recent UK) graduates, and that at least we are sweetening it with a higher threshold and yet more means-tested benefits for poorer students. However:
(i) a discriminatory 9% supertax sweetened by means-testing is not what we campaigned for, it will distort economic decisions by students’ families and those graduates who choose to stay in the UK for most of their working lives, and we should not be trying to make it more acceptable or palatable, we should be opposing it;
(ii if the proposal is voted down, universities will not be deprived of funding, the Government will simply have to go back to the drawing board and provide for some proper funding paid for by all graduates, foreign bankers, professional footballers, school-leaver-turned-entrepreneur billionearies etc, which would be a very good thing; and
(iii) in any event, Lib Dem MPs should be keeping their pledges, keeping faith with Lib Dem members and students who got them elected in the first place, and above all aiming to keep their seats.
@Ed – @Andrew Tennet its not a question of capacity – its a question of fear of debt
The government has quite rightly put tackling national debt as the key priority of this parliament, putting students into huge amounts of personal debt seems absurd. This is particularly true for those from poorer backgrounds – £50k is a lot of money which ever way you look at it, and for a family which has a low income, a simply unimaginable and unmanageable amount of debt – whilst the model says that person will be better off, it fails the human test.
More to the point the government can privatise the loans book at any point – http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=104941§ioncode=26 this story from 1997 – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11545459 and this one from last month shows exactly that the Secretary of State can change the terms and conditions at any time and/or privatise the loans book – a system based on loans and a private debt liability is not future proof – whilst the terms and conditions are objectively progressive now that’s no guarantee that will continue for the next 30 years – these proposals are too easy to change.
Threads like this are fine. But where is the heavyweight substantive debate on Browne? My take at http://bit.ly/cLAHjC
Martin Shapland – I have some suggestions for how Browne could be made dramatically more progressive. Can you indicate how I can get in touch with you, or contact me at wocb [at] researchresearch.com. See also the link above, http://bit.ly/cLAHjC
The argument seems to be whether students should know what they are going to pay for their higher education, or should they be blind to the costs and pay for it through increased taxes. If we don’t socialise university funding then it stands to reason that taxation will be less. If we were to have free universities then we’d most likely have to cut the number of places quite dramatically which wouldn’t be popular at all. Indeed, it would probably turn out that the majority of people who get places for uni in such a system would be the well off who’ve been encouraged to succeed by their parents and have had much better chances to achieve their full potential than the poorest in society.
One thing that worries me though will postgraduates want to become teachers or nurses. I would suggest that student debt is paid at a lower rate if people are to go into teaching and maybe the debt is written off altogether if they give 10 years service.
I’ve heard a rumour that the likes of Nick Clegg and Vince Cable have never thought free higher education would be workable and that they only went along with it because the party voted for it.
Dominic (and others): things that are paid for through general taxation are not free. They are paid for by taxpayers! (chews hand in frustration)
Ed Maxfield,
“Free” is short hand for “free at the point of use”. Most people are willing to take it as read.
“As it is, students, whether they pay or they don’t will see ever larger lecture groups in ever more crumbling buildings. ”
One cut that has been missed by many is the capital funding for universities which has been scrapped. So that means universities will have to pay for any new buildings or building improvements all by themselves. Now even at £9000 per year tuition fees, HE is hardly going to be a hive of wealth and money. We are not like the banks who can knock up shinny new buildings in central London over the weekend. Or like oil companies who can afford luxurious headquarters in some of the priciest cities around the world. So don’t expect any shinning new buildings. In fact, don’t expect any new buildings at all in the next decade or so.
I agree with Tony Greaves.
Hemming is wading right in with the commenters, by the way, which hardly ever happens on CiF and *never* happens with politicians. Turned the debate quite interestingly constructive for a while.
@Tony Greaves
Can you, or anyone else, explain to me how the proposed system is better for the vast majority of students than the current one?
The minimum barrier for repayment has been raised, but this will not help the vast majority of students since this minimum barrier is below the average wage and most students will be earning above the average wage. This was a reform that should have been included with the original fees.
Setting that aside, the vast majority of students will be paying more annually than they do now, and they will be paying interest on their loans. I fail to see how this is ‘better’. Students from richer families will be able to pay off their fees instantly, which actually means that students from the ‘squeezed middle’ I.e. lower middle class/middle class/ upper class will be paying more in fees than those who are very rich (and those who are very poor, although Brown suggests nearly halving the cut off point for family income for government support.
It is certainly no better than the current system, it makes most students pay far more for their education and it is much less fair than the current system with poorer students ultimately paying less for their degrees than students from rich families… a very regressive graduate tax if you will.
@Sam
How do you work out that poorer students are less liekly to go to university if fees are scrapped?
I think most students (even most people) would be happy with the idea of university education being dunded by taxation, even if it means they have to pay more tax when they are older.
The problem a lot of posters here seem to have is that they are 1. claiming there is no alternative (there is, vote against) 2. that scrapping fees was unworkable (no it isn’t, it never has been… it is simply a matter of economic policy and priorities… this signed pledge should be a chief priority for Lib Dems).
There are lots of things that can be said about John – lack of willingness to engage in online discussion ain’t one of them!
Rob, you claim students will pay more each year under the new system, this is untrue, they will pay less (9% of earnings over £21k instead of 9% of earnings over £15k – a £540 saving each year for the majority.
The argument for poorer students being disadvantaged by a free system is I suspect that state funding at a level lower than fees eliminates the ability to expand with higher demand, therefore increasing competition for limited places, with wealthy and private school pupils better able to compete, particularly at elite institutions.
I’m puzzled as to why this has been brought up again?
It has already been demonstrated to be the fairest possible way to fund higher education and to be positively benevolent move towards empowering people who previously had to pay much, much less for their tuition.
you would think it wasn’t obvious…
@ Rob. Well I’m assuming that university places would be limited to a fewer amount of places if university was free. If there fewer places then that would mean a higher grade standard would probably be needed to go to a university than is currently needed, and I would presume that it would be harder for a smart kid from a poor background who doesn’t go to a great school to achieve say three As, than it would be for a middle class kid who goes to a good school, who has supportive parents that will provide extra tuition if they need it and such. You could have a quota ensuring that unis take x amount of poorer students, but it would probably still leave quite a lot of people who got say 2 Bs and a C who wouldn’t be able to go to uni, who currently can.
All this Cable/Browne scheme does is to move debt off the Government’s balance sheet onto individual graduates balance sheet for thirty years. It then transfers the unpaid debt to the government of the day in the thirty years time, giving future generations the problem. However, the millstone debt will be round the necks of individuals for a large part of their lives.
It’s odd that the coalition claims government debt of 70% of GDP is simply not acceptable, but believes debt of over 200% is acceptable for individuals just for education. Add a mortgage (IF they can get a mortgage) and debt goes up to around 500%. For graduate couples who start a family it’s even worse. With only one breadwinner, debt levels rise to over 700% of family income. The government’s 70% debt pales!
Further – Vince Cable has consistently raised concerns about the rising debt amongst the population in recent years. He even wrote about it in his book, “The Storm,” published in 2009. Yet what he is proposing is far worse than the debt levels that existed when he was writing his book about the financial crisis.
What I’m surprised by is that a lot of commentators in favour have accepted the premise put forward: That the Government, who benefit from graduates at a rate of around 2.5 pounds of additional revenue for every 1 pound currently spent on education (UCU figures), should reduce its commitment to education. That what we need is to somehow muddle around at the same level of funding, which is slowly killing Universities anyway, rather than seek to open up new revenue streams. The problem is that the obvious solution is right there in the Dearing Report. And we ignore it. At what point will business be asked to pay its share for the University sector it demanded? At what point will we say that ‘Yes there is a cost for all those graduates you wanted, and charging the students for a degree that is increasingly of less value to the individual is not fair, it is not progressive, it is wrong’.
But more importantly, who here isn’t sick of hearing that politicians all lie. That you can’t trust them. How many of you said ‘Ah, but the Lib Dems are different. Our members matter. Our politicians are different and accountable.”? Well, we have /no/ defense if we don’t honour our pledge. I have been told that we didn’t win the election, which I am aware of. That we cannot enact all our policies. This is true. Policies are what we promise to do if we win. But this was a pledge. A statement of principle. A matter of honour. We would do it, no matter what. No matter what.
Tennanf
“Rob, you claim students will pay more each year under the new system, this is untrue, they will pay less (9% of earnings over £21k instead of 9% of earnings over £15k – a £540 saving each year for the majority”
Wrong. The majority of people earn salaries over 21K, the vast majority of students earn salaries of 21K. They will be paying interest, unlike now, they will be paying for longer than the current write-off period.
So the vast majority will be paying more, otherwise what would be the point of raising the fees in the first place? If not to get the majority to pay more?
Daniel, I agree with you on the consequences and tragedy of going back on the pledge; but I have to ask, are you under the impression that businesses don’t pay taxes? At the heart of your argument is the false premise that they’re only contributing to the cost if a specific levy is made, not a proportion of their general taxation?
Rob, you said ‘pay more annually’ in your original post; to retrospectively revise that and pretend not to have done so might help save face, but is intellectually dishonest.
So there you have it!!!!
Nick Clegg just said in the house of Commons Whilst taking Prime Ministers Questions.
On Tuition Fee’s
2 parties on this side of the House has 1 policy
Whilst 1 party on the opposite bench has 2 policies.
Nick Clegg practically just just admitted, that the Liberal Democrats, have abandoned their parties policy on tuition fee’s to abolish all fee’s. in favour of the new Coalitions Policy. No mention that the Party could look at fee’s again in the future, just a clear stance that they now have 1 new policy that they claim is more progressive than the last Labour Governments.
He claimed again, that the reason his party has have had to change their policy on Tuition fee’s, was again because they where not aware of how bad the financial mess and the deficit was before coming into government.
He also failed to respond to Harriet Harmens question, To admit that tuition fee’s have been capped at 9k to make up for the 80% cuts to HE Funding, and that the rise of the Tuition fee’s have nothing to do with the deficit really, because as George Osbourne has claimed time and again, The Deficit will be paid down by 2014
I can’t believe some Libdem Mp’s are now trying to spin the Pledge that they all signed on Tuition Fee’s
John Hemming was on BBC News and said that he is getting “annoyed” that people are not accepting that Liberal Democrats are delivering on part of the Pledge.
Apparently the Pledge now was, To oppose any rise in tuition fees AND deliver a fairer system.
And he believes that they are delivering a fairer system and so therefore are delivering on the pledge.
What utter nonsense, this must be the worst Liberal Spin, That I have heard to date.