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.
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.”
UCU members in Sheffield, including a list of student signatures gathered by Socialist Students in support of the strikes
Sheffield Socialist Students supports UCU strikes
Joseph McHale, Sheffield Socialist Students
17 November was the first day of joint strike action by the University and College Union (UCU) at both the University of Sheffield (UoS) and Sheffield Hallam University. Hallam had also gone on strike a week earlier.
After a busy first morning of picketing – at least ten buildings at UoS – UCU members and supporters converged outside the City Hall for a joint union rally. Socialist Students members were in the crowd supporting the speakers.
The UCU strike action is happening due to the shocking cuts both universities are aggressively pursuing. UoS has over £200 million in reserves but is pursuing £50.7 million in cuts for the 2025-26 year!
Socialist Students at UoS has worked with the university’s anti-cuts coalition to make students aware of strike action, petitioning over the last three weeks. We continued our support on the picket lines.
The rally included speeches from both UoS and Hallam staff and a student, all highlighting the dire conditions that have forced staff to take this action.
Many of those speeches mirrored Socialist Students demands for fully funded and free education that is democratically run. This is imperative to improving the experience for both staff and students, which was well received at the rally.
The failed experiment of marketisation of our universities is acknowledged in the UCU bulletin. These cuts treat students as customers and staff as service providers, rather than appreciating the true value that they bring to education.
We need a fully publicly funded and democratically run university system, putting both the staff and students at the heart of it rather than soulless management and business interests. This is what Socialist Students will continue to fight for.
Socialist Students campaigning in support
A Socialist Students meeting was addressed by UCU branch officers recently, and members have already been out campaigning in support of the UCU. Socialist Students is part of the anti-cuts coalition which pushed for a student referendum last academic year, in which students overwhelmingly voted in support of staff strike action (83%) and for ‘no confidence’ in the University Executive Board (89%).
Socialist Students is linking the fight to their Funding Not Fees campaign – exposing the broken market-based higher education funding model which allows Hallam to borrow huge to build a satellite campus in London, and UoS to pay its vice chancellor £330,000 a year, while both universities cut courses and staff.
There are nearly 5,000 fewer international students across Sheffield than two years ago, causing budget deficits. UoS’s dependence on arms manufacturers has been highlighted by Palestine campaigners, and now Hallam is accused of trading one of its professor’s academic freedom (research into forced labour in China) for access to the Chinese student market. The need for full funding and an end to marketisation couldn’t be clearer.
Fighting course closures and redundancies at Leicester uni
Alanah Carey Peacher, Leicester Socialist Students
At the beginning of the summer, University of Leicester (UoL) management announced that they would be slashing the staffing budget at the university by £11 million. Several courses, including Environmental Sciences and Chemistry, are under threat as well as many jobs.
Since then, the university bosses have revealed phase one of their cruel redundancy programme. Modern Languages is being shut down, and a whole series of departments are being merged, which will threaten further courses. A total of 160 redundances are planned.
On 12 November, the University and College Union (UCU) held a rally in the city in protest at the cuts. Over 300 staff, students and UCU members from around the country, as well as Unite members and other trade unionists and supporters, marched up to the university campus to hear speeches from staff and students affected by the cuts.
Staff members from Geography expressed their heartbreak upon hearing the news and their concern for the current and future students. The chair of UoL UCU explained that there is no transparency about the cuts. The university has the funds to create a campus in Dubai but not to fund the education of students in the city where the university was founded!
Members asked all in attendance to vote no confidence in the governance of the university. Socialist Students members will continue to build solidarity.
Build ‘Your Party’ to fight for free education and socialism
Starmer’s Labour government has confirmed its plans for university tuition fees to go up every year. Left up to Labour, our fees will rise to well over £10,000 by 2029. That’s after fees have already gone up this term – the first rise in almost a decade.
And what do students get? Not only are we set to graduate with even more student debt, our maintenance loans don’t even cover the cost of housing, let alone other essentials. Even those receiving the maximum maintenance loan this year would need to take 20 hours of paid work per week just to reach a basic standard of living.
Some vice chancellors are even looking at ‘mergers’ with other universities. But why should they get to decide this over the heads of thousands of students and staff? Their record is one of running our universities into the ground, in collaboration with successive Tory and Labour governments. We can’t trust any of them with our education, because they all accept a capitalist system that puts the profits of the super-rich before the needs of the vast majority – including the right to a decent education.
Workers have fought back – students can organise too!
By taking strike action last year, university workers were able to halt planned cuts in several universities. In Scotland and Wales, staff also won millions of pounds in extra government funding through their strikes.
Imagine how much more funding could be forced from the government if there was strike action on all campuses across the country! That’s why Socialist Students supports university workers taking strike action, including supporting a vote to strike in the current UK-wide strike ballots by four campus unions (UCU, Unison, Unite, EIS).
Socialist Students members will be on the picket line supporting staff in our shared struggle for funding, not fees and cuts. We campaign for student unions to be democratic, fighting organisations that give us a voice – including committing to building student solidarity whenever staff take strike action for better pay, conditions and funding.
As a step towards the national representation students really deserve, even a handful of SUs linking up nationwide to coordinate campaigns for proper funding – not more fees and cuts – could have a big impact.
We won’t accept their crisis
The university sector is in a deep funding crisis. But the only ‘solution’ offered by this pro-big business Labour government is to raise fees and encourage even more cuts, pushing the burden even further onto staff and students.
Why should we pay the price, at a time when the rich have never been richer? The FTSE 100 biggest corporations in Britain have been paying out around £85 billion annually to their shareholders. Students and staff need to unite in a movement that could put that wealth in our hands in order to fully fund education. That would include making education free for all, by abolishing tuition fees and providing maintenance grants that actually cover students’ living costs.
If education was fully funded, university managements would not be incentivised to invest our tuition fees in arms manufacturers and other shady companies in order to boost income. They would have no justifications for making cuts. Student housing could be massively expanded and improved, with rent controls introduced to ensure no student is paying the majority of their income on a place to live.
Your Party must seriously fight for free education
Socialist Students initiated the Funding Not Fees campaign last year, as a means to get students organised alongside staff in a movement for fully funded, free education. As well as holding protests on dozens of campuses, a key part of the campaign has been lobbying MPs – fighting for our movement to have a political voice.
When Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party, his anti-austerity, anti-war policies enthused hundreds of thousands of young people. A major reason for that was his offer of free education in the 2017 and 2019 general elections.
Now students have the chance for there to be a mass party that will fight fees and cuts, and fund education by making the super-rich pay.
Just the prospect of a new party fighting ‘for the many, not the few’ has Labour under pressure. At the same time as raising fees, the government has been forced to announce the reintroduction of maintenance grants for tens of thousands of students. While this is far from adequate, it is nonetheless a concession to the anger of millions of working-class and young people, who are desperately looking for a political alternative to Starmer’s war and austerity agenda.
Socialist Students members are joining Your Party and will do all we can for it to fight for free education, and a real socialist alternative to the misery that capitalism means for working-class and young people.
For a mass weekend demonstration against Labour austerity
Socialist Students is supporting trade union activists calling on the TUC (the organisation bringing together 5.5 million trade union members) to name the date for a mass weekend demonstration against Labour austerity – ideally Saturday 22 November, just before the Autumn Budget on Wednesday 26 November.
We think Corbyn, Sultana and Your Party members should amplify the call for such a weekend demonstration, which could act as a launchpad for sustained trade union action in defence of workers and young people – including against tuition fee rises and cuts to university jobs.
What better way to announce Your Party as force through which young people could fight for a real future, a week before the founding conference on November 29-30?
Build a movement for:
No fee rises! Scrap tuition fees and cancel student debt
Bring back maintenance grants for all students, rising with inflation
Stop all cuts and closures on campus
Rent controls in student accommodation
End low pay and precarious employment
Divestment from arms and big business – no place for profiteers from war and exploitation on our campus
A political voice for students that fights to take the wealth off the 1% and for socialism
Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students national organiser
The Labour government has announced that it will bring back maintenance grants for tens of thousands of students from ‘low-income backgrounds’ who opt for so-called ‘priority courses’.
Labour has not yet announced how much grant money students would receive, nor whether the grants would be paid on top of the existing maintenance loan allowance. But if the introduction of grants means that some of the poorest students have more money in their pockets, and leave university or college with less debt, then that is a victory.
Reintroducing maintenance grants, even in this very limited current form, was mentioned nowhere in Labour’s general election manifesto last year. This latest announcement has to be seen as a concession to the widespread anger that has developed against Labour since then, as millions of working-class and young people correctly see Starmer’s government as doing nothing but continuing the Tories’ war and austerity agenda.
Jeremy Corbyn
Labour’s hand has also been forced by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ announcement. As leader of the Labour Party, Corbyn inspired millions of young people with his offer of free education: scrapping tuition fees and introducing maintenance grants for all. A new party fighting for free education as part of a socialist programme to transform young people’s lives today would gain massive youth support – and Labour knows it.
Just the prospect of a new party fighting ‘for the many, not the few’ has Labour under pressure. At the same time, there is the prospect of a new round of national strike action in further and higher education, as the University and College Union (UCU) launches ballots this month. Now is the time for students to join the fight – to go on the offensive and fight for what we need by making the super-rich pay, not workers and young people!
We could start by demanding the government rolls out its maintenance grant plans immediately, rather than waiting until ‘the end of the Parliament’ as is currently planned. We should also demand that grants are made available for all courses, not just so-called ‘priority courses’ deemed most important by big business and their politicians.
Another important battleground will be the level of grants paid to students. The current level of maintenance support for students is woefully inadequate, whether that comes in the form of a loan, or as a mixture of a loan and a grant (as is the case for Welsh students studying in Wales, for example). A student receiving the maximum maintenance loan would still need to work 20 hours per week to meet a “basic standard of income”, according to the Higher Education Policy Institute.
Explaining the targeted rollout of maintenance grants at Labour conference, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson declared: “Students’ time at college or university should be spent learning or training, not working every hour”. Great! In which case, let’s make sure that maintenance grants are made available to all students.
Let’s also make sure these new grants cover the full cost of living and studying. That would also stop student loans saddling us with a lifetime of debt after we graduate.
The shareholders of the FTSE100 companies get payouts of around £85 billion every year. Instead of charging a levy on international fees to provide grants to a fraction of ‘home’ students, students should unite in a mass movement to demand free, fully funded education for all, paid for by taking the wealth from the super-rich.
Funding Not Fees
These are the kinds of ideas Socialist Students societies will be fighting for on campus with the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign this term. As part of this, we will be organising lobbies of MPs ahead of the 26 November Budget, for them to raise an amendment calling for free, fully funded education, including the introduction of living maintenance grants for all students.
We will also be raising the campaign in Your Party meetings between now and the founding conference, to make sure the call for free education forms a key part of a new mass socialist party giving a voice to young people and the working class.
Young people are bracing for yet another tuition fee attack from Keir Starmer’s austerity machine. Last year’s tuition fee rise, the first since the Con-Dem government tripled fees, may be the first of many, as the pro-big business Labour government tries to placate the markets by making us pay.
The broken funding model of marketised education, along with rocketing housing prices and collapsing services, has already plunged students into a cost-of-living crisis. Bereft of a political voice fighting in our interests, students on average have to work 20 hours every week on top of our studies just to cover our essential needs. The maximum maintenance loan of £10,544 covers just half the costs a first-year student faces.
Politicians and university bosses continue to make us foot the bill for their deepening crisis. Over 40% of UK universities will be dropping into deficits next year, with fee rises, staff cuts and worsening teaching standards to plaster over the central issue: there aren’t enough resources invested in education.
Some universities and private landlords have made a killing with an 18% increase in student rents in the last two academic years alone. Students have nothing left to give, 65% of us already cut back on food spending and other essentials to make ends meet. So the message from the campuses is clear: no to the cost-of-living crisis!
Polls suggest a Corbyn-led party would actually win a general election amongst 18 to 24-year-olds. No wonder there’s been enthusiasm amongst young people since Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana announced steps towards setting up ‘Your Party’. The Corbyn-led Labour Party electrified students and young people with the commitment to free education.
Socialist Students believes the launch of such a party would be a welcome challenge to establishment politics. A new party involving campus activists and trade unions to launch a serious fightback against both the failing marketised funding model, and the rotten capitalist system behind it would be a massive step forward. Thousands of cash-strapped students could be prepared to fight for a socialist programme for education: including an end to fees, grants not loans, an end to redundancies and the complete renationalisation of higher education.
Adam Powell Davies, Socialist Students national organiser
Around 500 rallied in London on Saturday 10 May for the UCU ‘Protect Education Now’ national demonstration. The protest brought together workers from across the education sector to demand an end to cuts in universities, colleges and prison education.
Socialist Students brought solidarity, with members travelling from across the UK to attend. Our placard slogans and chants included ‘funding not fees, no staff redundancies’, and ‘money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation’.
Post-16 education faces its deepest funding crisis in decades. Currently one in two universities are cutting jobs and courses.
This Labour government, acting in defence of the capitalists’ profit interests, is determined to squeeze funding for education and all our public services. Only a mass campaign bringing together workers across sectors will be able to win the public funding that is needed to save post-16 education from the current crisis of marketisation.
That’s why this demonstration was significant – it was a glimpse of what can be done when a national lead is given. It was positive that UCU general secretary Jo Grady told the rally that the 10 May demo will not be the last national action in the campaign to stop the cuts.
Socialist Students supports calls by activists in UCU for 10 May to be a step towards building a concerted fightback, including properly preparing for UK-wide action, coordinated with other education unions.
The demo heard from UCU activists from Cardiff and Dundee universities, where staff have taken strike action and successfully halted compulsory redundancies this year. This shows the potential for UK-wide strike action to halt cuts. Any industrial action should be linked to a political strategy that demands full public funding, paid for by the super-rich.
Several speakers called for more lobbying of MPs. Socialist Students agrees with this approach, as it can help clarify who is on the side of our movement. But that has to be combined with a call for action from those MPs who claim they stand with us – like demanding they raise our campaigns in parliament.
Socialist Students has been organising lobbies of MPs through the Funding Not Fees campaign this year. In the run-up to the 11 June government spending review, we will be contacting MPs to ask that they submit an anti-cuts, free education amendment – to demand the super-rich pays for the crisis in post-16 education, not students and workers.
Unfortunately, Socialist Students did not get the opportunity to address the 10 May demo. Two of our members asked to speak, to bring solidarity to UCU and talk about our campaigning. But despite being told there might be time at the end, the rally was cut short by 40 minutes without explanation.
There was one speaker bringing solidarity from students, NUS president Amira Campbell. Members of the Socialist Students steering committee will be meeting with Amira and NUS vice-president (Higher Education) Alex Stanley to discuss how to build a student movement alongside staff to end the crisis in higher education.
Socialist Students held a successful day of action on 13 May, building a visible and defiant stand against devastating cuts proposed by university management.
Many shared sadness and disbelief at the university’s decision to axe its media and television course during Bradford’s tenure as the UK City of Culture. Culture means little to profit vultures.
There are proposals to stop their flagship chemistry course, close down the university nursery, and slash 300 jobs – an eye-watering 20% of the workforce.
The protest was backed by the University and College Union (UCU) branch. And staff from across the university came out in support.
Further solidarity was shown online by Unison union at Leeds uni, which promoted the protest in the days prior. Supporters of Bradford and Shipley Trades Union Council also attended.
This action was the result of weeks of consistent organising. Through weekly campaign stalls, online promotion, and raising the issue at local trade union meetings, we heard the frustration and growing anger from staff and students.
Support wasn’t just garnered from the university community. Cars going by our action blared their horns in support, crowds across the street shouted their sympathies, and passers-by commended our efforts.
All of this just goes to show the growing awareness of austerity and the national crisis in higher education funding. Uni vice-chancellors are earning more than the prime minister, and making decisions at the cost of student’s futures and staff livelihoods.
There was overwhelming support for strike action in Bradford UCU’s indicative ballot. Socialist Students continues to organise, raise awareness, demand no redundancies, no austerity budgets, and free, fully funded education for all. Because a post-16 education is not a commodity.
Adam Gillman, Socialist Students national organiser
Further education is in massive crisis. Teachers and staff leaving, courses cut, high class sizes – the list goes on. Students face a cost-of-living crisis, unable to afford high transport costs and expensive food.
Afterwards, there is the prospect of crisis-ridden university education with mountains of student debt, or low-paid insecure work. Adult college learners have to pay sometimes as much as thousands to study.
Facing what can feel like it’s going to be an increasingly bleak future, stressed from exams, many students face mental health crisis, not helped by the terrible state of mental health services.
Further education has been underfunded for decades. Between 2010 and 2020, per pupil funding fell by 14% in colleges, and 28% in school sixth forms.
Further education faces a shortfall of £400 million. The Labour government has proposed a plan for £300 million, £100 million short, and way less than what’s actually needed for our education.
This is only the beginning. Unless we fight back and win, more attacks will come.
Job cuts
We can’t rule out mass job cuts, like what’s taking place at universities, where uni bosses have already announced over 5,000 job cuts this year.
The University and College Union (UCU), which organises college staff, has launched the ‘New Deal for FE’ campaign, fighting for more funding for further education, and better pay and conditions for staff. UCU is also opposing uni cuts with the ‘Stop the cuts: Fund higher education now’ campaign.
Students and young people should fight alongside the trade unions for properly funded, free education.
FE colleges are typically managed by education trusts, run as if they are businesses, with highly paid executives and board members. Students sit exams run by privatised exam boards too.
Socialist Students calls for colleges, as well as exam boards and all aspects of education, to be brought into democratic public ownership, with elected bodies of staff and students having control.
We fight for every step forward for students to get organised and fight back, including by developing and building student unions in colleges. Existing student unions typically have very limited democratic structures, shackled by college management. But every opportunity should be grasped to put forward what is needed.
The strike wave showed that by fighting back, we can win. When hundreds of thousands of teachers went on strike, they forced the government to give them a pay rise.
And students can fight back too. In London, Pimlico Sixth Form College students went on strike to protest racist uniform rules, and against removing black history month from the curriculum.
Hundreds of thousands of students and young people have come to the streets against the horrific genocidal attacks launched against the Palestinians. This led to the sacking of right-wing racist Tory home secretary Suella Braverman.
We’ve won before
During the Covid crisis, school and college student protests forced the Tories to back down on their plans to downgrade the exam grades for working-class students.
We can fight and win funding for our colleges too. That means fighting for a political alternative to Keir Starmer’s Labour – a democratic trade union-based mass workers’ party that fights for fully funded free education, against all the attacks on young and working-class people.
Funding Not Fees
Socialist Students is organising lobbies of our local MPs, to see where they stand on education funding, and whether they plan to actually represent us against this Labour government.
Will they join our movement for free, fully funded education, demand that big business foots the bill, not students and workers? Or will they stay silent, as this government destroys our lives and futures?
Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students national organiser
Socialist Students has stepped up our campaigning for a free, fully funded, and democratic education system.
We’ve protested against Labour’s rise in tuition fees on 25 university campuses. When sixth form teachers and university workers have been on strike, we’ve been on the picket lines.
Now we’re bringing our solidarity to education workers rallying against cuts at the ‘protect education now’ national demonstration, organised by the University and College Union (UCU) in London on 10 May.
The government is fuelling the crisis in education. Labour government ministers parrot their pro-austerity watchword of ‘efficiencies’ – cuts. That’s because the alternative – publicly funding education – is opposed by the big corporations and super-rich individuals that this government serves.
The best way to ‘protect education now’ is to build a mass movement for a real alternative to what this Labour government is offering – for free, fully funded education, paid for by taking the wealth off big business and the super-rich.
Socialist Students has launched the Funding Not Fees campaign to raise the kind of demands a movement could fight for now. Socialist Student members on the UCU national demo will be talking to trade unionists about the campaign, to ask if they would like a representative from Funding Not Fees to speak at their upcoming union branch meeting.
We also think that our movement needs a voice in parliament. That’s why Funding Not Fees campaigners are contacting MPs over the next month. We’ll be requesting that MPs meet with us, and pledge to raise a pro-free education amendment in opposition to any further attacks on staff and students in the upcoming Labour government spending review on 11 June.
Socialist Students 