We need free education

Hamza Khan, West London Socialist Party

Over a decade since tuition fees were trebled and amongst mounting graduate anger, a parliamentary inquiry was launched to examine the impact of the student loan repayment system. The inquiry was conducted following controversy over Plan 2 loans, which were created by the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government in 2012. A Plan 2 loan means that if you earn over a minimum threshold, 9% of your income above that amount is deducted toward student loan repayments. In November last year, Rachel Reeves fixed the minimum repayment threshold to £29,385 from 2027 to 2030, while the loans themselves continue to rise by at least the RPI inflation rate.

Of the 49,357 respondents to the inquiry who had taken out student loans, 40,373 said the financial impact of repaying their student loan was worse than they expected. 28,275 said that they did not understand the terms and conditions of their student loans before they took them out, a statistic that is wholly unsurprising when you consider that the majority of people signing up for this loan are 17 or 18 years of age, signing on to a potentially 40-year-long commitment. 45,843 said that they think the repayment terms were not reasonable and 25,291 said they would not take their student loan out if they were given the choice again.

These numbers reflect the dire reality of a generation of graduates who were promised that a university degree would give them a reasonable route to gainful employment, only to be met by an incredibly harsh job market. A generation was told that student loan repayments were nothing more than a small graduate tax and more than worth the amount of extra money you would be earning from entering the working world with a degree. They have been met by graduate salaries that have been unable to keep up with years of inflation and an ongoing cost-of-living crisis that makes any deductions from your wages increasingly difficult to manage.

Free and fully funded university education would irrefutably benefit society. Yet scrapping tuition fees seems utopian for a government that is more than willing to waste billions of pounds on wars and protecting the wealth of the super-rich. Tony Blair’s ‘New Labour’ introduced tuition fees in the first place, then the Tories and the Lib Dems created even more of a mess, which Starmer’s Labour has done nothing but preserve. Most of the graduates surveyed said they had no other choice but to take out student loans with hard to understand and unreasonable conditions. We need fully funded, free education with maintenance grants that students can actually live on, instead of loans. Student loan debt should be abolished, paid for by taking the wealth that the super-rich bosses make at all of our, including graduates, expense.

We need funding not fees

James Taylor, Birmingham Socialist Students

Student life has only become more expensive over the last decade, with tuition fees rising and the cost of living skyrocketing. During this same period, successive governments have chipped away at maintenance grants, replacing them with loans which burden students for life.

Now, university vice-chancellors are threatening to cut what few meagre bursaries are still available. A Universities UK poll found that hardship support for working-class students could be on the chopping block, with around one third of vice-chancellors saying they would cut grants and outreach programmes if the funding crisis isn’t resolved.

Students are increasingly having to take part-time jobs to the detriment of their studies in order to afford food, rent and bills. It would be unforgivable for university management to cut support to these students who need it most, especially while the same vice-chancellors talking about the lack of money in universities continue to make upwards of £400,000 a year.

The impact of decades of cuts and tuition fees means higher education floats from one funding crisis to another, with its financial dependence on international students looking increasingly precarious.

This same survey found 90% of universities are looking at hiring freezes or voluntary redundancies. As many university employees discovered the hard way in the last few years, it is a slippery slope from hiring freezes to the closure of entire departments.

Socialist Students are fighting back against cuts to jobs and grants. In the short term, action by students in conjunction with industrial action by education unions can prevent cuts. But we also must provide a vision for what education could be if provided for the good of society. The wealth is there in society but it is sucked away as profits are hoarded by a few.

Tuition fees should be scrapped, grants reestablished, and staff jobs made secure. This change is achievable if we fight for it.

Archie Betts, Liverpool Socialist Students

A new surge in the cost-of-living crisis is beginning to bite, and its getting even harder to find a job, especially for young people.

Over one million people aged between 16 and 24 are not in education, employment or training (NEET), according to the latest government report. The climate crisis continues to get worse, and all the horrors of war fill our screens. This is a system that can’t provide us with a decent future.

People are angry – and rightly so. The capitalist system makes the rich richer but our services are crumbling and we keep being asked to pay more for the basics. There is a deep discontent and a complete lack of trust in the establishment.

Is Reform an alternative?

In the May elections, some working people used a vote for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK as a way to express anger against the status quo and what is seen by many as the Labour-Tory uniparty.

A vote for Reform however, is anything but a vote against the status quo. As with the many other failed ventures of Nigel Farage, Reform plays up to the anger of the working class. It doesn’t point towards how we can win a fight against the bosses getting richer at our expense though.

In fact, it deliberately helps the bosses by trying to divide the working class and young people – something Labour and the Tories do too. Asylum seekers, trans people, disabled people – all are being scapegoated by the bosses and their politicians. And now the Labour government is preparing the ground to attack young people, arguing that we should be paid a lower minimum wage and be forced to do unpaid work placements.

What is needed is a united struggle of the whole working class, together with young people – fighting for decent jobs, a home for all, fully funded services, and against the bosses’ division. The trade unions should lead that fight, and put forward a clear socialist programme to address the real needs of society, one that vehemently rejects the current wave of fearmongering and scapegoating.

Socialist students members attended a demonstration at De Montfort University in Leicester on 21 May, against the newly proposed cuts set to make approximately 20 technicians in the arts department redundant.

Approximately 100 people attended, most of whom were arts students whose education would be compromised by these cuts, as well as other university staff and members of the University and College Union (UCU).

A Socialist Party member addressed the rally, highlighting the increasing prevalence of cuts to education, the growing wealth gap as a result of intensified austerity measures, and the importance of building a workers’ party of working-class people, students and trade unions in order to fight austerity. The need to coordinate the fightback with staff and students, and across other campuses like the University of Leicester where staff have recently organised strike actions to fight job cuts, was put forward as a necessary step to escalate the struggle. The speech went down well, we sold eight copies of the Socialist immediately after it finished.

It was generally a lively protest with chants of “Save our Techs” drawing the attention of other students and staff around. One of the protesters had a placard with the inscription “£2.2m for the Innovation Centre but £0 for the innovators”, highlighting how the university management is spending money on a centre to promote business ventures while implementing job cuts. Last year, UCU members at DMU called out management for spending money to establish international campuses in Dubai and Kazakhstan while carrying out redundancies here. This brings to the fore the question of democratic control of universities.

Louie Nardini, York Socialist Students

Students at the University of York protested against the ratification of an official Restore Britain Society on 22 May. The society has been getting lots of attention for its provocative social media posts. One, for example, advertises a ‘detain and deport pub golf social’, showing their racist scapegoating.

Speaking at the demo, I raised the role that all capitalist politicians, including the Labour government, are responsible for the growth of the right. By implementing austerity, and themselves using racist scapegoating to divide the working class and young people. Thousands of young people and students attended the March demo against the right, organised by the Together Alliance. But its slogan of “love, hope and unity”, won’t cut across the right – students need a better plan of action.

In York we have been calling for an open forum that students can use to debate and discuss the issues we are faced with. By putting forward a fight against cuts, for free and fully funded education and a united working-class fightback, we can cut across disillusionment and the ability of Restore to get an echo. We can’t just oppose the far-right, we need to get organised to  strike at the heart of austerity and brutal student cuts.

York Students’ Union (YSU) does not play that role, and has defended its decision to ratify the Restore society as protecting free speech. One chant read: “How do you spell useless: YSU.” We completely agree. YSU has done nothing to help with the fight against bursary cuts this year. We’ve got to build the pressure and fight for the reimbursement of the bursaries.

Alan Milburn, the Blairite former health minister, has blamed too many young people going to university for the fact that almost 100,000 recent graduates are currently not in work or further study.

As part of his ongoing review into ‘NEETs’ (16 to 24-year-olds not in employment, education or training), Milburn will instead push the government to reallocate funding to technical and vocational courses, which he says would better suit the needs of employers.

Clearly there is an urgent need for more funding in further education. Some college leadership teams are warning they could turn away thousands of prospective students this September, owing to insufficient government funding. Staff in the University and College Union (UCU) have taken nationally coordinated strike action this year in response to more than a decade of cuts, demanding real pay rises that are fully funded by the government.

However, what Milburn is proposing is a moving-around of the existing inadequate funding across post-16 education – in his words, “a better balance” in terms of “allocating resources”; taking from “overemphasised” higher education and giving to further education.

But why should more funding for further education come at the expense of higher education, which is already in a historic funding crisis? A fraction of the money currently sat in the bank accounts of the billionaires would be enough to fully fund both sectors. In contrast, Milburn’s plans would be a green light for university vice-chancellors to go even further in their brutal cuts to jobs and courses, and would increase the risk of university insolvencies.

And how would a ‘reallocation’ of resources be achieved in practice? More than half of higher education funding comes from students’ tuition fees, with UK undergraduate fees set at more than £10,000 per year. In comparison, students at FE colleges below the age of 19 do not pay a penny, with over-19s still only paying a fraction of what university students pay each year for a degree.

There is a danger therefore that Milburn’s recommendations to increase funding for vocational courses will envisage an even more marketised FE sector, in which student fees and private funding from big business both play a more influential role.

The reason that so many young people do not get a job after completing uni is because the capitalist bosses are increasingly not investing their profits back into hiring or training workers. Getting more school-leavers to take ‘technical’ courses is one way for the capitalists to make the government and individual students bear this cost of training. But it will not fundamentally change the lack of decent and stable jobs on offer to young people, across all educational backgrounds, which is a product of the capitalists refusing to invest in jobs during a time of crisis for their system.

What young people need is a real choice after leaving school. That means a fully funded and high-quality apprenticeship, training scheme, vocational course, or degree programme for whoever wants it – all with a decent job guaranteed at the end. That means fighting to take the vast wealth and resources, as well as the levers of power, in society out of the hands of the capitalist class, so that the needs of the working class could be actually reflected in a plan for how education and the wider economy is run.

Morgan Tritton, Hertfordshire Socialist Students

The University of Hertfordshire has informed staff that it will be cutting humanities undergraduate courses – English Language and Linguistics, English Literature, Creative Writing, History, and Philosophy. A petition against the cuts already has over 3,000 signatures.

The uni has not responded to requests from staff regarding the security of their jobs, or how this will impact current students. Prospective students have not been told whether their offers to study the cut courses next term still stand. The University and College Union (UCU) says that staff were denied having input into the decision-making process, and were not given timelines for the cuts.

What’s the truth?

The university says that humanities courses are “no longer financially viable”. The uni vice-chancellor then wrote to staff, assuring that the university is financially stable, and the actions are “not being taken in response to an immediate financial crisis”.

Staff and students say that, by the university’s own admission, these cuts are not being driven by financial necessity, but by management falling in line with the wider marketisation of UK higher education.

In cutting humanities, the university will also create a ‘cold spot’ for these courses in Hertfordshire, meaning higher education will become less accessible to local, working-class, prospective students. Staff have called out the university’s hypocrisy in being a ‘widening access’ institution.

What do we actually need?

Staff and students at the University of Hertfordshire work and study on what feels like a perpetual building site. Management are narrowly focused on so-called profitable courses, and the perception of a successful university to attract international students, rather than actually delivering what students and staff need and demand.

Many Herts students recognise that the UK university funding model is broken, when we see that management treats education as a business first, prioritising reputation over student experience on campus, and the conditions and job security of staff.

Herts Socialist Students stands in solidarity with staff and the UCU in fighting these cuts. And students will be meeting with the vice-chancellor to demand answers. 

Fin Cozens-Stott, Manchester and Salford Socialist Students

Socialist Students members from Manchester and Salford attended the Green May Day rally, organised by the Green Party Trade Union Group.

We spoke to people outside, and it was agreed we could have a Socialist Students stall inside too. This allowed us to talk directly to Green Party members, including local election candidates.

We’re pushing to encourage the Green Party, its internal groups, elected officials, and members to change course and reject the austerity mandated by this Labour government, by voting against cuts. When the Greens have been in power in local government, they have so far complied with Tory and Labour austerity.

Fighting austerity

Green-controlled Bristol Council put through £50 million cuts, while adding £60 million to council reserves. Manchester Greens supported the Labour council’s £6.7 million cuts, continuing the £400 million decline in funding since 2010, worsening council house waiting lists, which stand at 600% of the national average.

When we approached Green leader Zack Polanski at The World Transformed conference, he said that Green councillors had “nothing to do about it”. This is a mistake.

We had many people sign the ‘Trade Unionists for a New Party’ petition, calling on Zack Polanski to ensure Green councillors oppose Labour-enforced austerity by refusing to implement cuts. On the day, this included Aatif ‘Ate’ Zafar, newly elected Manchester councillor for Whalley Range, and Joe Gosling, Usdaw (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers) activist, and candidate for Stanley & Outwood East ward in Wakefield.