Socialist Students

The world is in crisis: wars, climate catastrophe, youth unemployment and the rising cost of living. Meanwhile, the big-business billionaires only get richer.

Millions of young people despair at the prospect of our futures being torn up and thrown away, while the powerful elites compete for evermore power and profits.

But we won’t accept that. That’s why we will be joining the international youth walkouts on 20 November, together with over 20 other youth organisations across Europe.

We are fighting for our futures. Billionaire-funded politicians like Nigel Farage want to divide workers and young people – encouraging us to point fingers at each other rather than the big-business capitalists whose interests this rotten system serves.

Instead, young people across Europe will be taking united action together. Socialist Students will be building for the biggest possible walkouts and raising the need to take the wealth and power out of the hands of the capitalist bosses – so it can be put to use to meet the needs of all.

Robbie Davidson, Manchester Socialist Party

This September, almost 300,000 18-year-olds will enter the student housing market. Most of them will be making the first steps, praying a degree can secure them a stable job, into a spiral of debt which will follow them through decades of their working lives.

Putting themselves on average £50,000 in the red, students will hope against hope that they can cover their expenses whilst succeeding in full-time higher education. As young people suffer, Paragon Bank found that 91% of uni landlords reported positive returns – the highest of any sector. This has come by bumping rents up by 60% over the last decade, whilst cutting costs and leaving young people in cramped, mouldy houses.

On dozens of campuses around the UK, Socialist Students is already leading the way in putting forward what is needed to end market misery and housing hell at university. We are fighting alongside community activists and trade unionists for rent controls to cap rents and enforce decent standards, for a mass council house building programme, for living student grants not loans, and for fully funded, free education for all.

Rent strikes

At the beginning of the 2020s, a national wave of rent strikes erupted – and things have only got worse since. New struggles will come as the crisis of the profit-based capitalist system progresses.

It is clear that Burnham’s crumbs won’t offer any way out for young people under the thumb of the cost-of-living crisis. Socialist Party members will be taking part in Socialist Students activity at freshers fairs around the country, making the case that we need a party which will.

On 20 November we are planning to stamp our mark on our futures, fighting for affordable, safe housing and decent jobs – not more money for their wars. Fight for our futures!

Scrap the failed loan system

Daniel Bassey, York Socialist Students

In college, I was told that you could afford to go to university, no matter your personal background. And that loan repayment was merely an extra ‘tax’, that would be offset by the higher-paying job opportunities that a degree could offer.

I wasn’t told that in 2023, the loan repayment threshold had lowered from £29,000 to £25,000. Meaning that the annual amount repaid jumped from roughly £50 to £453, on an average graduate salary.

Recent headlines around loans being ‘missold’ point at the crushing reality of fees and debt faced by ambitious young students, with no other choice but to bite the bullet.

The system hasn’t always worked this way. In 1977, student fees were funded entirely by government, with a modest maintenance grant too!

This funding system was threatened under Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government. But due to the backlash from students, nothing changed until 1998.

Then, Tony Blair’s Labour government introduced an upfront fee of £1,000 a year. Labour tripled tuition fees in the 2000s.

And the Tory-Lib Dem coalition tripled fees again in 2012. Annual tuition fees are set to rise to over £10,000 next year.

While some have the ability to pay, the reality for many students is that tuition fees are unaffordable. A typical working-class student has parents unable to provide maintenance support. With most loan money going on rent, we’re forced to pick up a part-time job alongside full-time university, affecting our studies.

Graduates are rarely able to pay off the £50,000 in debt. Instead, many pay until it is written off after 40 years!

The loan system is a failed, predatory, capitalist solution to the higher education funding crisis. Further increases to student fees are completely unaffordable, and do nothing to address uni budget deficits.

Courses are being cut, staff laid off, and our universities continue to tumble down international rankings. Socialist Students calls to end the market-based fee model, and for a free, fully funded higher education system.

Manchester and Liverpool Socialist Students

35 universities have become founding members of a new initiative launched alongside the Ministry of Defence, the ‘Defence Universities Alliance’, which aims to use the resources of universities around the country to ‘strengthen research and innovation and build the highly skilled workforce needed to support the UK’s future defence capability. After almost 100 universities applied, Manchester and Liverpool were among those chosen to be founders.

This is happening in the midst of the worst funding crisis the higher education sector has ever seen, with nearly half of UK universities presently running at a deficit – whilst young people more broadly are struggling with crises of unemployment and the rising cost of living.

On his way out of office, Keir Starmer announced an annual ‘defence’ spend increase to £80 billion by 2029. Andy Burnham, Starmer’s successor, has since then indicated support for increased military spending at the expense of welfare spending. This is alongside similar, and in some cases more extreme, moves in other countries. Our universities have made clear that they seek to be a part of the capitalist class’s drive towards militarisation.

Wanting to help build a fightback against a system in crisis, that offers no future to young people, Socialist Students recently joined a Europe-wide youth assembly in Cologne with other anti-war youth and student organisations. The outcome of this meeting was an agreed international youth strike on Friday 20 November. Over twenty groups from eight different countries have agreed to support and build for the strike so far. This includes German youth organisations who recently helped lead a strike of 55,000.

We are pleased that Liverpool Guild’s [equivalent to a Student Union] officers have come out and opposed the university’s actions, and we hope they will join us in November. Liverpool Socialist Students believes that the resources of the Guild should be used to build among the widest possible layer of students at our university, while making contacts with officers in other student unions to seek support from other universities, particularly those directly complicit in the drive toward militarisation.

Help us build towards the strike on 20 November under the banner: “Fight for our futures, not their wars.”

Socialist Students member in Young Greens

Over the weekend, the Young Greens held their national convention where motions are deliberated and voted on and internal elections are held alongside discussion sessions and knowledge-sharing between activists and groups. Outside the convention, members of Socialist Students held a stall where we had an overwhelmingly positive response from the majority of Young Greens who supported our stall calling for them to work with the trade unions and join the international student walk-outs against militarisation on November 20th.

In the convention, motions were passed encouraging more cooperation with the trade unions and advocating for the Young Greens to adopt more left-wing policies. Unfortunately, a motion on adding a ’Trade Union Liaison Officer’ to the Executive Committee did not come to the floor due to time constraints but it will be appearing again at the winter convention. Efforts to add new roles are also being worked on by the Green Party Trade Union Group.

Bringing together the largest non-party political youth and student organisation with the largest party-political youth and student organisation would demonstrate that young people can unite around common struggles; opposing militarisation and war, strengthening the trade union movement, and fighting for socialism.

This convention, the first since the meteoric rise of the Green Party and Young Greens, has shown there is a growing appetite for stronger leadership and a wider mobilisation across the country, moving beyond environmental issues and advocating for anti-zionism, workers’ rights, fighting austerity and other crucial areas where common ground with Socialist Students can be found.

The newly elected co-chairs, who identify as socialists and anti-zionists, have already expressed an interest in cooperation with Socialist Students and joining the international student walk-outs against militarisation on November 20th.

Needless to say, we congratulate everybody who won their new portfolios on the Executive Committee, Democracy and Accountability Committee and International Committee and we look forward to increased cooperation and communication between Socialist Students and the Young Greens to fight for a liberated Palestine, more militant trade unions and a democratic socialist transformation of society.

Hackney linking socialism to everyday issues

Saad H, Hackney Socialist Students

Socialist Students members organised a campaign stall near Stoke Newington School & Sixth Form, speaking to students about the issues affecting them. Large groups of students stopped to ask questions, discuss politics, and find out more.

Conversations focused on lack of job opportunities, pressures in education, and that establishment politicians offer little real change. Students showed an interest in socialist ideas, and how collective organisation can provide a way to challenge inequality and give young people a voice.

We distributed our ‘No to Reform – get organised’ leaflet. We oppose Reform’s division. Working-class people, regardless of background, have common interests that can only be advanced through collective action.

Students were particularly receptive to the call for stronger organisation in schools and colleges, including student unions and campaign groups that can fight for affordable and quality meals, accessible trips and activities, democratic rights for students, and support for staff striking for better conditions.

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Tower Hamlets – striking workers and youth getting organised

Adam Gillman, Socialist Students

Staff at St Paul’s Way sixth form have been striking against job cuts. National Education Union (NEU) members were enthused by Socialist Students campaigning to organise school and college students, and were supportive of us leafleting the sixth form.

We held a stall outside to build for the east London youth day of action on 26 July and the international youth walkout on 20 November. 

Students were receptive on the issue of youth unemployment. One had applied for tons of jobs, with no reply.

We spoke in favour of funding public services to ensure high-quality jobs that have trade union-agreed rates of pay. This chimed with students too.

The issue of war also got students taking leaflets. We also had a groups of students taking leaflets after seeing our Socialist paper back page: ‘Fight for our futures, not their wars – youth walkout on 20 November’.

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Waltham Forest protesting racism, climate change, and war

James Ivens, Waltham Forest Socialist Students

There was a good response to our material against Reform and interest in the 20 November international youth walkout at Walthamstow School for Girls. One person, who had taken part in Socialist Students’ anti-Trump walkouts, gave their details and is interested in doing more.

A passerby also gave his details after seeing what we were doing. I was using the slogan – “School students are protesting this year against racism, climate change, and war” – and that got a lot of interest.

Schools have now broken up for the summer. So now we’re campaigning, meeting youth in shopping areas and parks. Then we’ll be back campaigning at schools in September.

Socialist Students members have launched a campaign calling for free bus travel for all in West Yorkshire, starting immediately with under-25s. Route cuts should be reversed, services expanded, and SEND (special educational needs and disability) transport fully funded.

The entire bus network should be brought into public ownership, under the democratic control of workers and service users. We have run campaign stalls, taking our petition across Leeds, targeting popular student and residential areas, and sixth-form colleges. And online too.

West Yorkshire Labour mayor Tracy Brabin had previously stood and won election as an MP when Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader. Then, Corbyn pledged free bus travel for under-25s. So why can’t this be implemented now she’s mayor?

We built for a public meeting, inviting supporters of our campaign and users of the network to speak on the issues they face. The campaign didn’t stop after our meeting.

We took part in a protest outside Tracy Brabin’s offices, organised by Better Buses West Yorkshire. They staged a ‘People’s Question Time’ to highlight that there is no public consultation on changes to our bus network.

Speeches took place, and this allowed Socialist students members to raise our demands for genuine public ownership. We also raised campaigning with bus drivers in Unite the Union. Franchising leaves their terms and conditions in the hands of private companies.

Brabin did come out to briefly address the crowd, and agreed to a public mayoral ‘question time’ at an unspecified date. Our campaign activity will continue throughout the summer. And, in September, we’ll have the opportunity to raise it with the next cohort of students at freshers’ week.

Ryan Leonard, London Socialist Students

For the second academic year in a row, the government is poised to cut £100 million of university funding from high-cost and priority subjects, including nursing.

The Department for Education (DfE) has announced that the strategic priorities grant will be cut to £1.25 billion (£1.45 billion in 2024-25), in a move that pushes the burden of funding higher education even more firmly onto individual students through their fees and a lifetime of debt.

The Russell Group, 24 prestigious research universities, have responded by calling into question how this latest cut will impact the government’s stated aim of growth. They amplify the role universities can play in “delivering much needed economic growth, innovation and jobs.”

The £336 million in capital funding promised by DfE shows a fundamental misunderstanding of higher education. Universities aren’t renovated buildings, they are made up by the people working, teaching and studying there. New buildings and equipment won’t bring back redundant staff or convince working-class students to get a degree.

Like required reading, few students ever read the contract they sign with student finance, but a recent NUS survey suggests that a third of students now believe getting a degree is not worth the time and money.

These students have recognised that, after the impact of funding cuts and increased debts, their degrees have simultaneously risen in cost and fallen in value over successive years.

Many universities are now faced with a choice: how will they make up the shortfall? A favoured target to cut is student services and welfare programmes, seen as non-academic non-essential services. At my university, Brunel, in 2022 an engineering student Jos Winfield took his own life, resulting from poor mental health brought on by the pressures of university life. His father is adamant the university should have done more. The budget for student welfare has decreased markedly since that time.

One thing is clear, as the funding model for higher education places more strain on students mentally and financially, many more students will be placed into an even more vulnerable and precarious position.

We say:

• We need free education, with full funding not more fees! Scrap student debt and provide maintenance grants we can live on
• No course closures and job cuts. Take the wealth off the super-rich to provide decent education for all, with university staff paid what they deserve