Student loan crisis: Scrap the debt! Fight for free education! Make the super-rich pay!

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Ali Mansfield, Yorkshire Socialist Students Organizer

Current students and graduates are paying the price as the proportion of university funding direct from central government has shrunk dramatically over two decades. Over the same period, the average debt for recent graduates has increased by more than five times, now sitting at well over £50,000 (my own is at £87,763.49).

This huge increase in the amount of debt facing university graduates and hikes in their interest mean a much longer time to pay off the loans. Two thirds of Plan 2 borrowers, who took loans out between 2012 and 2022, see their debt increasing rather than going down, as interest on the loan accrues faster than they can pay it off. Nearly three quarters of Plan 2 borrowers will never pay off their loans before they’re written off in 40 years time!

A graduate tax in all but name?

Repayment thresholds being frozen are posed to mean anyone working full time, even on minimum wage, would start making repayments on their student debt by 2030. Graduates have to pay up to 8% of their income above the thresholds – another tax in all but name! Along with an extended repayment period, and freezing the salary threshold for earlier graduates, this marks a clear attempt to place more of the burden for the university funding crisis on students.

Labour’s decision to raise tuition fees last year only adds to this burden, while having no prospect of making up the funding shortfalls universities face. This is far from the “secure future for higher education and the opportunities it creates” promised in Labour’s 2024 manifesto.

As well as being unfair, the tuition fee model of higher education funding is unsustainable. The marketized system, where universities compete for student enrolment numbers (especially more valuable international students, which universities can charge even more extortionate fees), promotes short-term thinking for institutions to gain a competitive edge against each other. Under a marketized tuition fee model, further attacks on students and workers in the education sector are inevitable.

We need a fully funded higher education system, under the democratic control of workers and students. Free from the constraints of the market system, universities could truly become places of learning for all, with the goal of broadening our understanding of all aspects of life. Universities could sustainably expand their services, creating more opportunities and more jobs.

Reject a lifetime of debt, fight for free education

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James Taylor, Birmingham Socialist Students

On top of a cost-of-living crisis now. Students’ futures are of a lifetime of debt. As graduates, money will be taken from our wages monthly, and still the mountain of debt is likely to keep growing.

And to make things worse, in the Autumn Budget, the Labour government froze the threshold at which graduates have to start repaying their student loans. Graduates who make over £28,470, not much over minimum wage, will lose 9% of their income above that to repay student loans.

This is a clear breach of Labour’s 2024 manifesto pledges not to raise taxes on ‘working people’. In fact, this policy is a regressive tax in disguise. Students with wealthier parents can pay tuition fees up front and thereby avoid ballooning interest rates, while working-class students are left with debt for life.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves claims this system is “fair and reasonable”. Is it fair that due to the threshold freezes by 2030, graduates working full time on the minimum wage will have to pay?

This is another in a number of attacks on students by this Labour government. In November 2024 they raised tuition fees from £9,250 to £9,535. Maintenance loans have failed to keep up with inflation, with food prices and especially rent going up. There are profits to be made in charging extortionate rent for sub-par student accommodation.

Universities are increasingly unable to cover their costs, with whole departments being closed around the country. Instead of funding education properly, the government is dipping deeper into the pockets of graduates to put a plaster on the situation.

Successive governments – Labour and Tory – are serving the interests of the capitalist class at the expense of workers and young people. Unsurprisingly, this has made the government deeply unpopular among students, many of whom are looking for a political alternative. Socialist Students fights to build campaigns against university cuts and fee hikes. We will be planning the fightback at our national conference in Manchester on 14 February. If you want to fight for free and fully funded education and to scrap student debt you should attend.

College students: Fight for the education we deserve

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Alex Gerroll, Manchester Socialist Party

Across the country colleges face government funding challenges, falling educational standards, and declining pay for staff. 37% of colleges will operate a deficit in 2026, up from 16% in 2011 according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. College teacher pay has fallen in real terms over the same period, as inflation has consistently outpaced wage growth they are now paid 18% less than they were in 2011.

As wages have not kept pace with higher living costs, many college workers have to take second jobs or face financial hardship, all while trying to maintain teaching quality. Between 2011 and 2020 spending per student fell 14%. This reduction has affected teaching resources, library access, lab equipment, and student support services.

Austerity is being administered to both colleges and students, making it impossible to maintain educational standards. In my own college, even routine purchases like paper require a two-week approval process – a small but telling example of how austerity has reshaped everyday educational provision. Students are subject to safeguarding regimes that often limit our autonomy without meaningful participation in how those rules are designed or implemented.

All of these factors contribute to a suffocating college experience for a lot of young people. Not to mention the pressures on the teachers to perform in these conditions, barely surviving themselves. Workers organised in education unions, including the University and College Union (UCU), taking collective action, as has happened in many colleges across the country this year already, can win better working conditions and higher wages.

To fight back against these pressures, students need to collectively organise too. Getting in touch to help set up a Socialist Students society at your local college is a good first step if you have an interest in affecting change and finding like-minded people. You will be able to receive support from Socialist Students, which brings together groups from across the country as well as your nearest university Socialist Students branch.

If you want to find out more, come to Socialist Students’ annual conference, this year being held at University Place, University of Manchester on 14 February.

Socialist Students says:

  • Fund our education, take the wealth off the super-rich! We need the resources necessary for the education we deserve and for the pay and conditions our lecturers need
  • We need fighting democratic student organisations that can mobilise students around actions to fight for our education
  • For democratic control of our education, with curriculums, policies and how schools are run decided democratically by representatives of students, staff and the local community

Fight for socialism against the dawn of the living dead jobs

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Fight for socialism against the dawn of the living dead jobs

Hannah Ponting, Liverpool Socialist Students

It’s no secret that an unemployment crisis has been looming over Britain for years.

The employment rate has been falling for the past two years, exposing the fragility of the capitalist system.

Young people entering the job market are particularly affected by this crisis. It has been reported that, for some entry-level jobs, as many as 141 graduates are competing for a single job. At the same time, one in seven young people are now currently unemployed.

This figure doesn’t even take into account the thousands of people trapped in precarious employment circumstances, such as those in exploitative zero-hour contacts, with no certainty as to their income from one month to the next, and little-to-no protection in case of sickness.

As we enter 2026, the situation is set to worsen. Economists warn that an increasing number of so-called ‘zombie firms’ are likely to collapse, as increased energy prices, an end to cheap credit, and increases to national insurance contributions ‘kill’ them off.

For defenders of capitalism, the closing of zombie firms may be masqueraded as good for the economy, but it is ultimately workers that bear the price of their collapse with mass redundancies.

This incoming crisis is not the result of bad managements or unfortunate timing. It flows directly from the short-term, profit-driven logic of capitalism.

So to fight this crisis we have to fight against capitalism itself. Workers and young people can fight for a socialist future that guarantees jobs, pay and conditions and offers real possibilities for retraining. We should demand that any failing industries be nationalised under democratic workers’ control, and take the economic power held by the bosses into our own hands to plan to provide a decent job, housing and standard of living for all.

Capitalism means war – Fight for socialist change

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Gone forever is the world where capitalist regimes – chief among them the US regime – could confidently pretend to defend ‘justice and democracy’ internationally.

The brutal state execution of anti-ICE protesters in Minneapolis. Trump’s kidnapping of Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro. Threats of escalating trade wars in pursuit of acquiring Greenland. Trump’s to-the-point honesty in declaring his actions a defence of the economic and strategic interests of American imperialism, illustrates the dangerous and volatile world that capitalism in its era of decay and decline has created.

The brutal truth of the cut-throat competition, conflict and war inherent to capitalism – which capitalist world leaders previously promised us had been consigned to the dustbin of history – is being reasserted. All the capitalist world leaders are scrambling to rearm, in many countries funded by even more brutal cuts to public spending.

The Middle East is increasingly in turmoil. Over two years of genocidal slaughter in Gaza by the Israeli state has been aided and abetted by all the ‘good and the great’ of the capitalist world, including Starmer’s Labour.

Following the so-called ceasefire in Gaza last October, the Israeli army continues to kill Palestinians. It has been reported that between 10 October 2025 and 15 January 2026, the Israeli government violated the ceasefire agreement 1,244 times, pushing the death toll over 71,000.

Trump has since unveiled his proposed ‘Board of Peace’ to rule over Gaza. At the time of writing, representatives from 35 nations have signed up, which is dominated by Trump and his political allies in the US. Unsurprisingly, there is so far no representation whatsoever for any Palestinian body – or for that matter representatives of the working class of any country.

Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’ will not deliver peace for the Palestinian people, let alone a decent quality of life, with genuine national and democratic rights.

Needed is the building of workers’ strength through the development of mass independent workers’ organisations – trade unions and parties. Through mass struggles with the aim of removing capitalism in Israel-Palestine, an independent, socialist Palestinian state can be realised, alongside a democratic socialist Israel, as part of a voluntary, equal socialist confederation in the Middle East.

In Britain, we also need a political alternative to all the pro-war, pro-austerity capitalist parties. A party which is rooted in the most powerful force for socialist change in society, the working class, and its organisations – the trade union movement, with over 6 million members.

Building such a mass workers’ party, armed with a programme for socialist change, would not only be able to challenge Starmer’s war and austerity agenda, but could give solidarity and assistance to the struggles of the long-suffering masses of Palestine and the Middle East as a whole.

Socialist Students Conference 2026

Organising the student fightback for socialist change

Saturday 14 February, University of Manchester

Herts uni sit-in wins for Gazan student

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Charlie Cunningham, Herts Socialist Students

Two Herts Socialist Students members organised a sit-in in December to advocate for a Palestinian student, who had been denied an offer by the higher-ups at the University of Hertfordshire, for discriminatory reasons.

The student had been granted a series of phone-call interviews to assess their English language abilities, rather than sitting a conventional English language test, due to their circumstances living through the genocide, and currently living in a camp in Gaza.

No management understanding

However, these interviews put them at an unfair disadvantage. Management failed to show any understanding for the student’s lived experiences:

  • Damaged infrastructure in Gaza, causing poor phone reception
  • Immense pressure of their family’s and their own future at stake
  • Inappropriate and inconsiderate questions, such as “what’s your favourite food?”, and “what do you like to do in your spare time?” to someone suffering through starvation and frequent displacements

Herts Socialist Students recognised this institutionalised racism against international students, and decided to take action, acting as last-minute unofficial advocates for the student’s case.

By sheer luck, we met the heads of the uni’s International Office in person. They told us there was nothing we could do. We informed them we would not leave until we had the opportunity to advocate properly.

After several meetings that day, we convinced them to give the applicant a third interview, with questions that were trauma-informed, and took their circumstances into account. They passed with flying colours.

Mass movement

The fact that two students were able to have such a large impact on their decision highlights the sheer disregard for the lives of international students, which was demonstrated with the original decision. The uni insisted it was not negotiable, until it was.

We can stand up to oppression, and unchallenged unelected bureaucrats on campus. If only two students were able to have such an immediate impact, the possibilities for mobilising on other issues are huge.

Students get organised! Come to Socialist Students conference

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James Gretton, Southampton Socialist Students

Student life leaves a lot to be desired right now. Before we even make it to university, tuition fees get hiked year by year. When we’re on campus studying, it’s under precarious conditions with cuts to resources and staff. When we get home from campus, our housing is untenable, leaving us vulnerable to exploitative landlords. When we graduate, obscene student debt burdens us, and youth unemployment is rising.

And every step of the way, we are onlookers to a world in crisis. Trump’s imperialist agenda threatens further conflict and war; it fuels further economic instability which the bosses will try to make the working class and young people pay the price for; the ravaging consequences of climate change continue to worsen. And here, Keir Starmer’s government continues to attack workers and young people. Starmer dined with the King and Trump at Windsor Castle in September, while thousands in Gaza starved.

That is why, across uni campuses, colleges and schools, Socialist Students is fighting back. We are campaigning to defend our education from government and bosses’ attacks, and fighting for decent housing, free education and socialist change.

It’s clear to see why capitalism is losing favour among younger generations. It is a system which values profit over people, and that concentrates wealth into the few, depriving the many. It offers no promising future for young people.

That’s what was behind the initial enthusiasm for Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s Your Party, as well as for new Green Party leader Zack Polanski’s ‘eco-populist’ platform against inequality and injustice.

Socialist Students is an organisation in which students can come together to explore socialist ideas and get involved fighting for them. We organised walkouts of school, college and uni students to protest against Trump’s state visit to the UK last year. We have led the fightback for fully funded free education under the Funding Not Fees campaign. We have fought alongside our teachers and other education staff defending jobs and our education. We have taken part in the mass protests against the slaughter or Palestinians in Gaza. And we are part of the fight for a new mass party that fights for young people and workers, and for socialist change.

On 14 February, the Socialist Students National Conference will take place in Manchester. It will discuss a new constitution to prepare for the road ahead of widespread youth and student struggles and protests.

If you want to fight for your future, for an alternative, this is the opportunity to express yourself and be heard.

Join us at Socialist Students conference!

Socialist Students conference 2026

Saturday 14 February 2026
University of Manchester

Socialists get Cardiff student union to oppose cuts

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James Scott, Cardiff Socialist Students

In December, I helped to get a motion passed into Cardiff University Students Union policy, mandating it to lobby the university to ‘open the books’ to its finances, stop academic cuts by using its hundreds of millions of pounds of reserves, and campaign against cuts.

Cardiff University announced 400 job cuts in 2025 to fill a supposed £30 million deficit in its budget. Job cuts have since been reduced to 286, thanks to campaigning from trade unions, academics, and students.

Socialist Students’ president candidate Aris Prevost voiced these demands in the student union (SU) election last spring. He gained 340 votes, however, did not win.

Not to be put off, Socialist Students successfully backed me in the autumn SU elections this academic year, and I was elected to the Student Senate, the SU’s policymaking body.

Our anti-cuts motion was passed by Senate, with 88% of the vote – mandating the elected full-time sabbatical team of the student union. Another three motions are due to be voted on by Senate in February.

Herts workers and students unite against racism

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Morgan Tritton, Hertfordshire Socialist Students

Hertfordshire Socialist Students joined a collective of local organisations opposing racism, marching through the town, under the banner of ‘Herts Not Hate’. We were responding to rising anti-refugee and anti-migrant action in Hertfordshire, where several temporary accommodation hotels are located.

As we build for the Socialist Students conference on 14 February in Manchester, Herts Socialist Students is focused on strengthening links with organised workers locally, and highlighting the role students play in community action.

I spoke at the rally on behalf of Herts Socialist Students. I also shared the success of a recent sit-in by two Herts Socialist Students in defence of a Gazan university applicant, who had initially been unfairly denied an offer. As a result of the action, the university met our demands, and the applicant has now been offered a place at the University of Hertfordshire.

The speech by Morgan Tritton, Hertfordshire Socialist Students

“Students of Hertfordshire and the workers of Hertfordshire, fighting together against austerity, war, and all forms of oppression.

Higher education is in crisis. And Labour’s answer is just to push the costs onto us – the students and staff, while the rich get richer.

So, Socialist Students is saying we want to take the wealth off the super-rich, and put it to use. Fund education properly, abolish tuition fees, cancel student debt, and bring back real maintenance grants that rise with inflation.

And make education a public right, not a privilege or a big business. We’ve shared this message of ‘Funding Not Fees’ across campus.

And, in the last year, we have got considerable backing from the students. Starting with just four [Socialist Student members at Herts] last year, we’re now at nearly 100.

Our major campaign in the last year has been to end sexism and violence against women on campus. By ensuring prevention, training, and awareness is in place. But also signposting and support for victims is properly funded.

We passed a motion in student council to fight for this. But the university has responded with apathy and even refusal to back down from their non-compliance in providing quality anti-harassment and sexual misconduct training to all students.”

Youth fight for socialist change

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A US Federal agent shot and killed Renee Good in Minneapolis, USA on 7 January. Videos widely circulated online show Renee using her car to block a road in the city, in solidarity with her neighbours, to obstruct immigration raids carried out by ICE.

Already this autumn, tens of thousands of school students in North Carolina walked out in protest. This latest brutal killing will spur more protests. Under Trump’s instructions, ICE agents terrorise working-class neighbourhoods and workplaces across the US. Workers are organising to defend their communities and co-workers.

And the cost-of-living squeeze for ordinary Americans grinds on. No president has ever become so unpopular so quickly. Trump has already faced the two biggest single-day protests in US history.

Already this year, Trump has kidnapped the Venezuelan President and threatened to take ownership of Greenland – both blatant attempts to pursue US capitalist interests. Including the pursuit of access to oil ahead of their biggest rival, China. The plunge towards deeper climate crisis continues.

Beyond his so-called ‘backyard’, Trump has threatened intervention into Iran. Mass protests have erupted, fuelled by a rising cost of living and the brutal experience of a repressive regime. Reportedly thousands have been killed by state forces, including 23-year-old student Rubina Aminian, shot in the back of the head at close range.

Youth and workers in Iran can in no way rest hopes on a Trump intervention to help them to pursue their aims. They must get organised to settle their own scores with the theocratic regime.

Trump’s second presidency is an accelerator of world instability and crisis. The world is simmering with uprisings and protests – including those led by youth and students, so called ‘Gen Z protests’, bringing down governments and regimes in Nepal, Madagascar and Bulgaria, for example. Millions have protested against the Israeli state’s slaughter in Gaza, including those who took part in a general strike in Italy in September.

When the red carpet was rolled out for Trump at Windsor Castle by Keir Starmer in September, Socialist Students helped to organise school and college walkouts. Building our own struggles of workers and young people, including a new workers’ party to challenge Starmer’s Labour and fight for a decent future for young people in Britain, is the most effective act of solidarity young people and students take with those fighting for change internationally.

If you’re angry at Trump and Starmer, and the capitalist crisis they represent – get organised!

Come to Socialist Students conference in Manchester

Saturday 14 February, University of Manchester