Tag Archives: higher education

NewsHound

LibLink: Phil Willis – We must re-think the role of universities if we want to produce a world-class workforce

By NewsHound | Wed 28th July 2010 - 12:25 pm

Former Lib Dem MP, Phil Willis – or Baron Willis of Knaresborough to give him his full title – has penned a piece for the Yorkshire Post arguing that now is the time for a radical re-think about the role and function of our universities and how they could be re-engineered to provide a world-class workforce to deliver world-class goods and services to a global economy. Until his retirement from the Commons, of course, Phil was chairman of the Innovation, Universities, Science and Skills Select Committee.

He has some tough things to say about the Coalition’s emergency budget:

The emergency Budget,

…

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged , , and | 6 Comments
Andy Mayer

Opinion: A lucky escape from the graduate tax?

By Andy Mayer | Mon 26th July 2010 - 4:35 pm

If the BBC is correct there is sufficient opposition within the Coalition to stop a graduate tax seeing the light of day and instead come up with a system that is like fees, but not fees, and retains some kind of link between student and university. On that we will have to wait and see what it is before commenting.

I do not though fully understand why a reputable economist like Vince Cable gave the National Union of Students’ graduate tax proposal serious consideration. Apart from the clear inconsistency and hypocrisy, Vince presided over a party tax …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , and | 17 Comments
Malcolm Wood

Opinion: No Need for a Graduate Tax

By Malcolm Wood | Fri 23rd July 2010 - 11:50 am

For a decade or so now governments have been firmly fixed on the idea that students should pay for their own education. So firmly fixed, in fact, that it’s easy to forget that until 1998 Higher Education was funded from general taxation and was, to the student, completely free.

It’s true that most taxpayers are in no further need of Higher Education. But that doesn’t mean they don’t benefit from its existence. Since most tax payers will one day be dependent on a pension (public or private) it’s in their interests that the next generation of wealth …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 7 Comments
Tim Farron MP

Graduate tax is the fairest way of abolishing tuition fees

By Tim Farron MP | Mon 19th July 2010 - 5:25 pm

I was one of the lucky ones. When I went to university in the late 1980s and early 1990s I didn’t have to pay tuition fees. I left for the world of work without thousands of pounds of student debt hanging over my head.

I would like nothing more than to be able to abolish fees for good and make universities free for all. But to suggest that it is possible to do so now wilfully ignores reality.

The fact is the higher education sector has changed beyond all recognition in just a few short years. Universities face a funding …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 17 Comments
David Thorpe

Opinion: Why a graduate tax is progressive

By David Thorpe | Sat 17th July 2010 - 6:20 pm

There has been at best, a muted response among Lib Dem members to the graduate tax proposals announced by Vince Cable on Thursday.

There appears to be a general agreement that these proposals are better than the status quo but not really ‘progressive’ and that the only really Liberal outcome is so-called free education.

It could however be argued that this phrase is a misnomer. Nothing is free. It may be free at the point of use, but it still has to be paid for. The suggestion of its advocates is that it be funded through general taxation, and specifically through a …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 34 Comments
Iain Roberts

Vince’s Graduate Tax is no easy win

By Iain Roberts | Fri 16th July 2010 - 11:20 am

Vince Cable yesterday floated the idea of a graduate tax to pay for university funding, as an alternative to top-up fees.

In the early 1960s, around 4% of young people went to university.  Today that’s nearly 50%.   Undergraduate education has changed beyond recognition over those fifty years and, with money tight, another government is having another attempt to sort out funding.  As Vince has made clear, a graduate tax is one option he wants considered.

Encouraging those with the ability

The UK has never quite cracked the problem of getting people from poorer backgrounds into higher education.   If you’re in the poorest …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 30 Comments
The Voice

Vince Cable’s speech on higher education funding

By The Voice | Thu 15th July 2010 - 6:24 pm

Vince Cable, Lib Dem secretary of state for business, innovation and skills, today delivered his much-trailed speech on higher education funding. The full text was published on the department’s website, and is reproduced below. A shorter version appears on the Lib Dems’ website here.

This is my first attempt to set out my views on the university, and wider, HE sector and my aspirations for it. The background is a very sombre and difficult one, financially. Without doubt the most serious within living memory. David Willetts and I are working together to find a way of dealing with it.

Much

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged | 12 Comments
Martin Shapland

Liberal Youth respond to graduate tax proposals

By Martin Shapland | Thu 15th July 2010 - 3:40 pm

Well I, for one, was hoping for a quiet summer.

Having been elected as the new Chair of the Youth party exactly two weeks ago I’m just about getting my bearings about where all the buttons to push are, so imagine my surprise when I found the big red button marked ‘Higher Education Funding.’

The issue of Higher Education funding is, perhaps, Liberal Youth’s biggest single issue, and our policy, and that of the Federal Party, is probably our most recognisable to young people across the country; When you ask a student about Fees they will be able to tell …

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Posted in News | 27 Comments
Stephen Tall

Vince Cable set to propose graduate tax to replace tuition fees

By Stephen Tall | Wed 14th July 2010 - 8:05 pm

The BBC reports:

A graduate tax is to be proposed by the Business Secretary Vince Cable, in a keynote speech on the future funding of higher education. This would mean students in England would repay the costs of going to university through taxation once t hey began working. A review of tuition fees and student finance is due to report in the autumn.

Mr Cable, who has pledged to oppose raising fees, will suggest a graduate tax as an alternative system. This would mean students’ fees being paid by the government to universities – and graduates would then pay a higher

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , and | 60 Comments
Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: transport & universities and further education

By Mark Pack | Sun 6th June 2010 - 5:50 pm

Welcome to the twentieth and last (phew!) in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

Traditionally the transport sections of party manifestos contain commitments to various expensive, long-term public expenditure projects. In the current financial climate it is no surprise that the coalition agreement’s transport section is rather heavy on matters of regulation and bureaucracy and rather light on directly spending money to improve transport.

So we have a promise to “make Network Rail more accountable to its customers”, a commitment to “fair pricing for rail travel”, a …

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 5 Comments
Helen Duffett

Daily View 2×2: 28 May 2010

By Helen Duffett | Fri 28th May 2010 - 7:00 am

As Big Ben chimes seven, it’s time to celebrate the day 151 years ago, that the famous bell was drawn on a carriage pulled by 16 horses from Whitechapel Bell Foundry to the Palace of Westminster.

To show that cuts in Westminster are nothing new, the cost of the bell was reduced by recycling the metal from the previous, faulty bell:

George Mears, then the master bellfounder and owner of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, undertook the casting. According to foundry records, Mears originally quoted a price of £2401 for casting the bell, but this was offset to the sum of £1829 by the metal he was able to reclaim from the first bell so that the actual invoice tendered, on 28th May 1858, was in the sum of £572.

If you’d like to know what Big Ben itself has to say today, you can follow it on Twitter: @big_ben_clock.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that caught my eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.

2 Big Stories

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Posted in Daily View | Also tagged , , , , , , , and | 3 Comments
Matt Folker

Opinion: Liberal Youth needs to remain the party’s conscience

By Matt Folker | Thu 27th May 2010 - 11:20 am

This article is written by Matt Folker, who is a candidate for the chair of Liberal Youth. It is a response to this article which appeared yesterday.

Lib Dem Voice welcomes articles from any candidates in the Liberal Youth elections.

One of the things which believe makes Liberal Youth and the Liberal Democrats so special is that the Chair or leader of the party does not determine the organisations policies, indeed no one member does. The policies of the organisation are and should always be determined by conference, the beating democrat heart of our organisation. Therefore I would welcome any motion …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 14 Comments
Richard Heinrich and Phil Jarvest

Opinion: Liberal Youth and the thorny question of higher education funding policy

By Richard Heinrich and Phil Jarvest | Wed 26th May 2010 - 11:13 am

The following article is by Richard Heinrich and Phil Jarvest, who are joint candidates for co-chair of Liberal Youth.

Lib Dem Voice welcomes articles from any candidates in the Liberal Youth elections.

The issue of higher education (HE) funding will very likely become a serious and highly contentious subject during the present Parliament.

We believe that for Liberal Youth – and indeed the Liberal Democrats – to play an active and useful role in this debate a full and wide-ranging internal discussion on the notion of a student contribution is needed. In our opinion Liberal Democrat policy has failed to adequately address …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 31 Comments
Mark Whiley

Opinion: Stand firm on tuition fees

By Mark Whiley | Fri 14th May 2010 - 1:50 pm

For every vote and every candidate up and down the country that signed the pledge on behalf of the National Union of Students, may I please put this to you – at the Emergency Conference on Sunday, oppose the provision in the coalition agreement which prevents us from voting on the outcome of the Lord Browne review on Higher Education Fees.

As a Party we have consistently been the only party to talk about fees, let alone come up with a costed policy for replacement of the present system where many graduates leave with thousands of pounds of debt. Students …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 28 Comments
Richard Flowers

Every single Lib Dem vote is a vote for change

By Richard Flowers | Sat 17th April 2010 - 3:14 pm

There are only EVER two stories in an election: CHANGE or MORE OF THE SAME.

The BIG difference that Nick Clegg’s acknowledged win in the Leader’s Debate has made is that many people now realise that while the Labservatives are more of the same old sleaze and spin, EVERY vote for a Liberal Democrat is a VOTE FOR CHANGE.

I’ll say that again:

EVERY SINGLE VOTE FOR A LIBERAL DEMOCRAT IS A VOTE FOR CHANGE.

This may just be the ONE election under our corrupt and broken electoral system where EVERY VOTE COUNTS.

Here’s why:

If you vote for Liberal Democrats you GET Liberal Democrats –

    These

…

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Posted in News | Also tagged , , and | 4 Comments
Stephen Tall

The Guardian’s approving verdict on the Lib Dems’ manifesto principles is correct … but for the wrong reasons

By Stephen Tall | Tue 12th January 2010 - 10:10 am

Nick Clegg will have enjoyed reading this morning’s Guardian editorial (Nick Clegg: Liberal parenting) over his breakfast porridge today. The paper commends Nick for yesterday’s launch of the principles which will underpin the Lib Dems’ election manifesto.

At the same time it betrays the Guardian’s usual unawareness of the party’s democratic decision-making principles. According to the Grauniad, Nick “ordered his party to drop some of its favourite policies”, issuing “instructions” in order to transform the Lib Dem manifesto from “a third-party wishlist” into “a credible agenda for directing a government”.

Hmmm, not so much.

In fact, all that …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , and | 13 Comments
Danny Alexander MP

Danny Alexander writes … Campaigning on Our Manifesto

By Danny Alexander MP | Tue 22nd December 2009 - 11:50 am

On Friday, Nick emailed all members to outline our position on the abolition of tuition fees. It was great to see our position, agreed by both the Federal Policy Committee and the Parliamentary Party, broadly welcomed on LDV and elsewhere.

Saddling students with huge debts as they leave universities, particularly at a time when many are failing to find jobs through no fault of their own, is clearly wrong. And the prospect of such debts putting talented young people off going to university is equally wrong. That is why our plan to scrap tuition fees over 6 years from the election will be one of a very small number of core commitments in our manifesto.

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Posted in General Election and Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 9 Comments
Mark Pack

Party’s policy committee agrees to axe tuition fees

By Mark Pack | Fri 18th December 2009 - 2:33 pm

From an email from Nick Clegg:

This week the Party’s federal policy committee agreed a way to deliver one of our most important policies, the scrapping of unfair tuition fees. We’ve developed a plan to phase out tuition fees over the course of the next six years, to ensure this vital policy is affordable even at this time of economic crisis.

Labour and the Conservatives refuse to address the issue of fees and there is a real danger that both of them would lift the cap on fees which could mean even more debt for students when they leave university. We think

…

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Posted in News and Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged , , and | 23 Comments
Stephen Tall

Do university tuition fees deter the poorest?

By Stephen Tall | Thu 15th October 2009 - 7:20 pm

The issue of tuition fees exploded into the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth, when Nick Clegg appeared to suggest he was rowing-back on the party’s long-established commitment to abolish them.

I’ll state clearly my position: I support tuition fees, and believe they are the only possible way of funding world-class higher education for UK students. As and when extra public money is available, I believe it would be much better invested in early years and adult education programmes if we are serious about combating the real causes of social inequality. I am equally clear that I’m in a small minority in the party, and that bulk of opinion is with our existing policy.

I noticed this article in today’s Independent, Universities finally open their doors to the poor. This shows that, over the past decade – and therefore since the introduction of tuition fees, and then top-up fees – the proportion of young adults reaching university from the poorest backgrounds has increased significantly:

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 22 Comments
Stephen Tall

LDV post-conference members’ survey (2): ‘savage’ cuts, tuition fees, ‘mansion tax’ and the leadership

By Stephen Tall | Wed 7th October 2009 - 6:35 pm

Over the weekend, Lib Dem Voice invited the members of our private forum (open to all Lib Dem members) inviting them to take part in a survey, conducted via Liberty Research, asking a number of questions about the party and the current state of British politics. Many thanks to the 200+ of you who completed it; we’re publishing the results on LDV over the next few days. You can catch up on the results of all our exclusive LDV members’ surveys by clicking here.

First up, LDV asked: In a media interview before the party conference, Nick Clegg spoke of the need for the Lib Dems to be “quite bold, or even savage, on current spending”. Do you agree with Nick’s assessment?

Here’s what you told us:

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged , , , , , and | 2 Comments
Tim Leunig

Opinion: MPs have the power – so how do we involve the members?

By Tim Leunig | Fri 25th September 2009 - 10:20 am

It is 1946, and Labour have just won a landslide under Clement Attlee. Harold Laski, head of Labour’s National Executive Committee, tells Attlee that he must not sign a peace treaty at Potsdam, because it is the NEC, not Attlee or the parliamentary party, which is the sovereign body of the Labour Party. Attlee replied that

You have no right whatever to speak on behalf of the Government. Foreign affairs are in the capable hands of Ernest Bevin . … a period of silence on your part would be welcome.”

Now imagine the Liberal Democrats win the 2010 election. For financial – or other – reasons the party leadership decide to defer or abolish our pledge to abolish tuition fees.

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Posted in Op-eds and Party policy and internal matters | Also tagged , , , , and | 19 Comments
Alex Foster

#ldconf podcast: Voxpops (including @katygordon)

By Alex Foster | Tue 22nd September 2009 - 4:30 pm

We asked delegates if their constituency was ready for the General election; if Nick Clegg was right on tuition fees; how a mansion tax would go down in their area; and how they were campaigning online.

Answering our questions were Tom Holvey and Chris Wiggin, from York, Katy Gordon for Glasgow North, Alan Bullion from Tunbridge Wells / Sevenoaks and Brendan D’Cruz from St Albans.

Posted in Conference, Online politics and Podcasts | Also tagged , , , , , , , , , , , and | Leave a comment
Alix Mortimer

Conference: Higher education paper

By Alix Mortimer | Sat 7th March 2009 - 12:01 pm

Breaking news! The Lib Dem Voice cupboard has a WINDOW! Yes, it’s a slightly unnerving black smoked glass internal window which reflects us as well as revealing the outside world, but it’s a window!

I missed Simon Hughes’ speech this morning, which is a shame as I am extremely hopeful about his capacity to advance the environmental agenda – we’ll bring you that video as soon as we’ve established that it exists.

Listening now to the motion on the Investing in Talent, Building the Economy paper (Adult, Further and Higher Education policy paper).

I’ve missed the movement from Stephen Williams, and come …

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Joe Taylor

Opinion: We must fight the Tories’ plans to privatise the education system

By Joe Taylor | Tue 10th February 2009 - 4:40 pm

I couldn’t help but to raise an eyebrow at the Telegraph’s recent front page splash, in which David Cameron unveiled his education plan for the future: “a new generation of comprehensive schools.”

Say what? Has he at last morphed into Tony Blair, grin and all? Well, no. The truth behind the headline (as usual with the Tories) is more sinister – and a glimpse of this truth could be found in the Telegraph’s leader on the story. It says:

Charities, private companies and parents’ groups will also be allowed to set up schools – competing with existing primaries

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 43 Comments

Opinion: Tuition fees are not a panacea

By Alex Church | Fri 9th January 2009 - 11:50 am

Those of us who campaign in student-heavy seats can breathe a sigh of relief; the party is keeping its commitment to scrap tuition fees. This will spare us the challenge of having to explain a new and in all probability less snappy policy to students. I am, however, still concerned. I have heard too many activists talking as if tuition fees are a panacea for winning the student vote. That is far from being the case.

Students are a key part of the Liberal Democrat coalition. Their votes have helped us to win seats like Cambridge, Leeds North West and Cardiff …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 10 Comments
The Voice

Key Lib Dem policy committee votes to keep party’s pledge to scrap student tuition fees

By The Voice | Wed 7th January 2009 - 4:03 pm

Antony Hook has the story over at his blog:

Last night the Federal Policy Committee voted 14 to 5 to keep our policy to scrap university tuition fees.

Posted in News | Also tagged , , , and | 44 Comments
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