Four years ago Keir Starmer promised to scrap tuition fees. One year ago Starmer promised he would provide fairer tuition fees. Now he is drawing up plans to raise tuition fees to £9,535, a 3.1% increase in line with inflation. Maintenance loans will also rise by 3.1%, but an increase in tuition fees and loans which must be repaid is no help during a cost of living crisis.
Students up and down the country are signing themselves up to incredible amounts of debt in order to attend university, with the House of Commons estimating that the average amount of student loan debt is £45,000 per person. Starting out your adult life with unpayable debt, on top of the cost of living crisis, and an impossible to climb housing ladder is leaving students and recent graduates helpless. Young people are told that we need to attend university to get a degree, so we can get a good paying job, buy a house, and so on. . . But this seems out of reach for so many students, and Starmer’s new plans to increase student loans will only make this harder. The proposed increase in fees has sparked debate about the value of a degree and the long-term implications for graduates.
Constantly climbing fees
University fees were introduced under Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1998, starting at £1,000 a year, and have continuously climbed to the current price of £9,250. There are several factors which have contributed to the rise of tuition fees, the first being increased operational costs. Universities are supposedly struggling to balance rising costs related to salaries, facilities, technological advancements and overall maintenance. These expenses are often passed onto students, by increasing tuition fees.
However, as a student at the University of Sussex I can see that the current tuition amount we pay by no means reflects the quality of education we receive. In third year, the average student receives six hours of contact time learning per week, for an average of 9 weeks per term. We are taught for only two terms a year , making contact teaching hours across a full year an average of only 108. Therefore each hour of teaching at the University of Sussex costs us approximately £87.96.
Is it even worth it?
But where is our money going? It’s certainly not going to our lecturers, who get paid an average of £16.28 per hour. A substantial amount of money for societies is given to the Students’ Union by the University, in 2021/2022 this was 1.2 million. However, in that same year there were 18,510 students at the university, meaning that the total income from tuition fees can be estimated at £175,845,00 million pounds. This is assuming that each student paid a fee of £9,250, which is not true, that is in fact the lowest possible estimate as international students pay a fee upwards of £20,000 per year.
Whilst there are 3,500 staff members at the university, who all deserve fair, well paid salaries, there was still enough money for previous vice chancellor Adam Tickell to be paid £293,000, a fee that included £17,000 to relocate from Birmingham and £9,000 for his pension (Source: The Guardian). Before Adam Tickell, the vice chancellor was Prof Micheal Farthing, who was paid £295,000. This was made up of a £230,000 salary, other taxable benefits making up £24,000, and a pension contribution of £41,000 (Source: BBC). The total of these two salaries is the same as half the amount of money as is allocated to all 18,510 students through the Student’s Union . Current Vice Chancellor Sasha Roseneil’s salary is undisclosed.
A decline in the UK’s standing in the world of education
A reduction in government funding for higher education has forced universities to rely more on tuition fees to maintain their programs and services. Universities are competing for resources, leading to increased spending that contributes to higher fees. But, the quality in higher education has certainly declined in recent years, as has the number of young people attending university. According to UCU ‘there is a shocking decline in the UK’s standing in the world of education. It has gone from a mid-ranking nation to one at the bottom of the pile and risks being overtaken by the few countries still below it and being left behind the countries that have overtaken it in the past 12 years.
Unless urgent and decisive action is taken, the UK risks being the poor man of the developed world and ill-prepared for life in the new knowledge economy.’ Even though Universities and colleges are worth £87bn a year to the UK economy, the percentage of people actually benefiting from them is decreasing.
It is outdated
As students we now pay thousands of pounds for a below average education. This old, outdated model is crafted for the elite, and is no longer succeeding in the slightest. An increase in tuition fees is an attack on young people, in particular the working class. Due to the lack of contact hours, our education does not feel worth the current fees, let alone £300 more. Completely scrapping tuition fees is of course an option, but under Starmer’s Labour this seems impossible.
Scrapping fees is possible
Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, calculated that removing tuition fees and funding higher education through increasing national insurance and corporation tax would cost the government £8 billion a year. In our current tax system the bottom 10% of earners have an effective tax rate of 44%, which is more than twice as high as those in the top 0.01% of earners. While the working classes struggle continuously, the combined wealth of Britain’s billionaires continues to skyrocket from £53.9bn in 1990 to more than £653 billion in 2022. This means that the richest 1% of Britons hold and hoard more wealth than 70% of the country (Source: Oxfam). Even a 2% tax increase on those with assets over £10 million, could raise £22 billion per year, more than enough to significantly improve the quality of higher education, and scrap tuition fees for everyone.
There is no benefit for students
This increase in tuition fees is a tactical choice made to further disadvantage the young people of today, as our education does not reflect the debt we accumulate. While the government protects billionaires from taxes to fund education, and Vice Chancellors pay themselves extortionately high salaries, when will the money we invest in our education benefits? Declining rates of education do not seem worthy of an increase in tuition fees, so where do we as students draw the line, and say enough is enough?