Following years of financial decline amongst universities in the UK, it appears that bosses are facing a new low. The uni regulator ‘Office for Students’ is projecting economic trouble for nearly three-quarters of universities by 2025-26.
While the propaganda arm of the capitalist class acts as if this is a shocking new development, students and workers have been experiencing the consequences of this downturn for a long time, with growing class sizes, wage cuts, course closures and redundancies. All of which are set to escalate, unless we fight back.
This downturn hasn’t been felt in the pockets of management. But ordinary young people have been hit with a rise in tuition fees and the worst student cost-of-living crisis in history.
Rents, students working alongside their full-time degree, student food bank use, and the percentage of students dropping out, are all at their highest rates ever. Now we are being threatened with further course closures and university mergers to make ends meet.
The answer is clear, and is resonating with many on campuses. It’s time our education, and our future livelihoods, were run in our interests – paid for by the £21 trillion in new wealth that the richest 1% worldwide got their hands on in the last four years alone.
This is why we have taken to the streets raising the demands of our ‘Funding not Fees’ campaign, and received a positive response. Few students disagree with an end to tuition fees, grants not loans, cancelling debt or fair pay to all, and many will be prepared to rally against the university bosses when more attacks come in the future.
We are required to take on tens of thousands of pounds of debt to receive a university education, an education that politicians like Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves never had to pay for
After paying ridiculous amounts, we enter into university and are faced with budget cuts and course closures.
Like many other young people, until this July, a Conservative government was all I had ever known and all I could remember.
This July, despite my best efforts, I deep down had a little bit of hope that maybe things could get better. But let me be clear, my hopes, and hopes of all students across this country, were shattered. Not three months into power, this government broke their election promises and raised tuition fees.
We don’t just stand against this latest rise in tuition fees, we call for all tuition fees for both university and college students to be scrapped, and for student debt to be cancelled immediately.
We call for the reintroduction of living grants not maintenance loans, and for them to rise properly with inflation each year.
We also stand in solidarity with university workers to end low pay, job insecurity, and bad working conditions.
At the end of the day, what we call for and what students need is for universities to be properly and democratically funded, paid for by taking it from the super-rich, not by raising the bill for students.
Just days after the budget, the so-called Labour government announced a rise in tuition fees to £9,535, coming into effect in the 2025-26 academic year. This will not only affect students starting university in 2025, but also returning students.
The fee hike will anger many already stressed, outraged students. Young people are already facing a cost-of-living crisis, massive debts, and cuts to their services and courses.
Some people say that if you’re low paid after studying you won’t have to pay it back, but if you are a graduate working full-time on just next year’s minimum wage you will still have to start to pay it off.
The budget had already contained attacks on young people, such as the increase in the bus fare cap to £3, making it more expensive for students and young people to travel.
The Labour government is testing to see what it can get away with without triggering a mass movement.
This is why Socialist Students has initiated the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign with other groups on campus. To fight to scrap tuition fees and cancel student debt, for fully funded education, with living grants not loans. To fight for rent controls in student accommodation, to end low pay and unstable contracts for staff, and to stop all cuts and closures on campus.
Socialist Students groups will be writing to student unions and trade union branches to ask to speak at their branch meetings and to ask them to support the campaign.
Funding Not Fees will also be lobbying MPs to see if they are on the side of students or of rotten university managements and a government that wants to make students pay for the university funding crisis rather than the super-rich.
We have ten months till this fee rise will be implemented, so we have to get out there and fight back to show the government that students will not just accept attacks.
It’s not just on the universities where young people are angry. We face the devastating effects of cuts to our public services, such as youth services and schools, which are making life harder for millions.
If you are interested in campaigning for funding not fees, if you want to fight back against cutbacks and for socialist change, then join the socialists today!
Socialist Students says
No fee increases – get organised on campus to fight for free education! Cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
No cuts and no closures! Build democratic student organisations to link up with campus trade unions and the wider working class to fight for the funding our universities need
Kick big business off campus! End marketisation of our education. Open up university finances to democratic oversight and control, including by elected students’ representatives and campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war, occupation, profiteering and exploitation, while guaranteeing jobs and funding
Students need a political voice. Build a new mass workers’ party that will stand up for students and workers and fight for socialist policies
Fight for socialist change. For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
Funding Not Fees campaigners in Liverpool on the October 30th day of action
The Labour government has today announced that university tuition fees will rise in line with RPI inflation from September 2025.
In anticipation of a tuition fee hike this term, the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign organised protests at over 20 university campuses across the UK on Wednesday 30 October, the same day that Labour announced its first Budget.
The ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign was launched, with the support of Socialist Students and other campus organisations, to demand that big business foots the bill for education, not students and workers. The campaign calls for fully publicly funded higher education, paid for by taking the wealth off the super-rich, as the means to:
Scrap tuition fees and cancel student debt
Replace maintenance loans with living grants for all students
End low pay, job cuts and the casualisation of higher education workers
Student activists from around the UK will be discussing the next steps for the free education movement at the Funding Not Fees rally, taking place as part of the Socialism 2024 weekend at the Institute of Education in London on Sunday 10th November, 3-4pm.
Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students national organiser, said:
“In the space of five years, the Labour Party has gone from pledging the scrapping of tuition fees, to now increasing them. Today’s announcement only confirms that when Starmer talks about his Labour Party governing as ‘changed Labour’, he means a complete abandonment of the anti-austerity policies of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.”
“Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has meanwhile indicated that an inflation-linked fee rise would only be the first step towards a wider overhaul of the university funding system, signalling the potential for even bigger attacks to come on students under this government.”
“Today’s fee rise announcement confirms that Starmer’s Labour wants students to pay even more for education, instead of big business and the super-rich, whose interests this government dutifully serves.”
“Students have to organise now to stop any rise in tuition fees. We refuse to pay an even higher price for the crisis in higher education, which a Labour government helped to set in motion by introducing tuition fees in the first place”.
“Socialist Students has helped to initiate the Funding Not Fees campaign this term as a step to building a united student and workers’ movement for fully funded, free education with living grants for all, paid for by taking the wealth and resources off the super-rich.”
“We will be reaching out to other student organisations and trade union branches in the coming weeks to build for ‘Funding Not Fees’ lobbies of MPs up and down the country, to demand they call for the full public funding students and university workers need – not more cuts, cost-of-living crisis, and fees.”
University students are suffering again this term. The gap between our maintenance loans and actual living costs has never been higher. Most of us have to work long hours in low-paid jobs just to afford to study. Rents have soared yet again, and courses are being cut at a record number of universities. For the first time ever this year, the proportion of working-class students attending university has fallen – and no wonder.
Labour’s Budget has done nothing to stop the rot. In the 170-page document published by the Treasury today, the word ‘university’ appears just twice – and only to announce some crumbs for the “commercialisation” of research.
The Budget is a continuation of attacks on students and university workers seen under the Tories. It confirms Labour’s immediate approach to the university funding crisis, which is to allow university bosses to continue making savage cuts to jobs and courses.
At the same time, by allocating no new money for universities, it remains a strong possibility that Labour will look at raising tuition fees in the follow-up to this Budget – potentially allowing fees to rise with inflation, to give universities a small funding boost in the short-term.
Faced with a higher education sector in crisis, and the spectre of university bankruptcies hanging over their heads, Labour will try to make students and staff pay, not big business and the super-rich, whose interests this Labour government obediently serves. On the same day as the Budget, the government announced they will be legislating for reform of the fee system next year. Even bigger attacks on students could be in the pipeline under Starmer.
Socialist Students has been preparing for the nightmare facing students and staff this year. That’s why we initiated the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign this term, as a step to building a movement for fully funded, free education with living grants for all, paid for by taking the wealth and resources off the super-rich. As part of the Funding Not Fees day of action around Budget Day, Socialist Students protested on over 20 campuses across the UK.
Socialist Students will be reaching out to student organisations, trade union branches and others over the rest of this term to build the Funding Not Fees campaign. We want to organise mass campus meetings, lobbies of our local MPs, and more protests and rallies around the country to demand a socialist solution to the capitalist crisis in education – not more cuts, cost-of-living crisis, and fees.
Students are angry. Socialist Students members in Liverpool have spoken to thousands of new and returning university students since the start of the academic year. All we have ever known is Tory cutbacks and attacks. Now any hope that things might be different under Labour is being transformed into anger at Keir Starmer and his government, including over the possibility of a rise in tuition fees.
With Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader for the 2017 and 2019 general elections, Labour’s policy was for free education. Starmer said it best at the recent Labour conference in Liverpool – the Labour Party has “changed”. It is no longer a party for working-class and young people. Continuation of war in the Middle East, two-child benefit caps and pensioners’ winter fuel payment attacks; life under Labour feels a lot like life under the disgraced Tories.
The cost of a university education is already staggering. Fees alone are £9,250 a year for most students, add to that loans to pay for rent, food and the basic necessities. Every year the threat of a debt mountain deters working-class young people from achieving a higher education qualification. And the Budget on 30 October could include raising fees further.
Already, universities like the University of Liverpool have upped food prices on campus and removed their food pantries, which gave students hit hard by the cost-of-living crisis access to free food if they could not afford to do weekly food shops.
This academic year, 40% of English universities are facing a deficit in their budget. And, as usual, the fat-cat vice chancellors and the government want us to foot the bill.
But at the same time, the rich keep getting richer. As horrific as it is, the capitalist system prioritises profit over young peoples’ futures.
University education should be free, fully funded and accessible to all. Maintenance grants should be universal and enough to be able to afford a decent quality of life. Life under Starmer’s Labour is making it clearer than ever that we need a party to fight for the many, not the few – a new mass workers’ party that fights for socialist change.
Socialist Students says
No to further fee increases – get organised on campus to fight for free education! Cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
No cuts and no closures! Build democratic student organisations to link up with campus trade unions and the wider working class to fight for the funding our universities need
Kick big business off campus! End marketisation of our education. Open up university finances to democratic oversight and control, including by elected students’ representatives and campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war, occupation, profiteering and exploitation, while guaranteeing jobs and funding
Students need a political voice. Build a new mass workers’ party that will stand up for students and workers and fights for socialist policies
Fight for socialist change. For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
Funding Not Fees campaign
Socialist Students is helping to initiate a new national campaign, Funding Not Fees, with the support of other campus organisations, to bring together students and workers in a movement for fully funded, free education – not more fees and cuts.
The Funding Not Fees campaign demands that big business foots the bill for education, not students and workers. It calls for fully publicly funded higher education, paid for by taking the wealth off the super-rich, as the means to:
For full public funding and an end to marketisation
Free education for all!
Students are once again in the firing line! A statement released by Universities UK (UUK) at the start of the Autumn term has called on the government to increase tuition fees in line with inflation – again passing the cost of the ongoing crisis of the capitalist system onto the shoulders of students and young people. UUK has said that each student now costs a university between £12,000 to £13,000 to educate.
One in five universities is in deficit. The government and so-called experts say the problem is fees being frozen and not keeping up with inflation. So they want us to pay more – and face cuts and closures on campus. But in reality, our universities have gone underfunded for years.
Since the introduction of tuition fees, and their trebling by the Tories and Lib Dems in 2010, government funding for universities has been continuously slashed. Students and campus unions have had to fight vicious cut-backs by management – cuts to entire courses, jobs, and attacks on staff terms and conditions.
Meanwhile the student cost-of-living crisis rages on. The rents we pay on average are more expensive than the average available loan – so how are we supposed to be able to live, especially considering inflation has pushed up the prices of food, travel, educational resources and other cost of living essentials?
But it doesn’t have to be like this. Socialist Students is fighting to build a mass movement to win the funding that our universities and students need – to reverse the cuts which have taken place on our campuses, replace inadequate loans with genuine living grants for students tied to the cost of living, and to scrap the broken tuition fee funding model altogether. Education should be free, fully publicly funded, with grants re-introduced.
When Jeremy Corbyn was Labour leader, the party’s manifesto estimated that scrapping fees and re-introducing grants would cost about £12bn. Starmer’s Labour government has made it absolutely clear that it does not intend to cough up the funding our universities need. That’s because, just like the Tories, Labour now represents the interests of the rich and powerful in society.
Why should education be run like a commercial business? Britain is the sixth wealthiest nation on the planet. The FTSE 100 biggest corporations have been paying around £85bn annually in dividends to their shareholders. The University and College Union (UCU) has called for a £17 billion “education levy” on “profiteering businesses”.
That’s a good start – but why leave so much wealth and power in the hands of big business, which puts profit before need? If the enormous wealth in society was democratically owned and controlled by the working-class majority, we could plan society to meet all our needs. That includes education – how it’s funded and how it’s run should be determined by education workers and students and the wider working class, not fat-cat vice-chancellors.
The recent strike wave showed how governments can be forced to pay more than they intended – and those lessons need to be built on. Mass organised action is needed to build the fight for free education. Building a student movement starts with getting organised on campus with democratic decision-making, linking up with campus trade unions and local college students.
But students also need a mass political voice to give expression to our campaigns and movements, as do working class and young people more generally. If the Tories and Labour both speak for the interests of the super-rich, then we need a new mass political voice to speak for what we’re fighting for – including against attacks on our education, against war internationally, and for a socialist world.
As part of our movement, at the upcoming ‘painful’ (in Starmer’s words) budget on October 30, Jeremy Corbyn and the four other independent MPs, as well as the suspended seven Labour MPs, could use their voice in Parliament to propose full public funding of education for all.
No to further fee increases – get organised on campus to fight for free education! Cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
No cuts and No closures! Build democratic student organisations to link up with campus trade unions and wider working class to fight the funding our universities need.
Kick big business off campus! End marketisation of our education. Open up university finances to democratic oversight and control including by elected students’ representatives and campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war and occupation and profiteering and exploitation while guaranteering jobs and funding.
Students need a political voice. Build a new mass workers party that will stand up for students and workers that fights for socialist policies.
Fight for socialist change – For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future.
Socialist Students campaigning against the student cost-of-living crisis
Studying at university has become even more unaffordable for less well-off students, a recent report published by the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) reveals.
The report calculates that the ‘Minimum Income Standard’ – the minimum income needed to study at university per year, including costs of living such as rent and groceries but excluding tuition fee costs – has risen to £18,632 for those studying outside of London, and £21,774 for those within London. Maintenance loans are able to cover less of these expenses year on year.
According to the National Union of Students, 69% of students are now employed alongside studying to afford their studies, up from 45% in 2022. Students have reported that balancing working, studying, and other commitments – alongside worrying about money – is having a negative impact on their academic achievement.
Access to higher education is further becoming the privilege of the wealthy few, deepening the economic inequality in the UK as working-class and poorer young people are forced to forego education and take low-paid jobs with little chance of long-term progression. Meanwhile, universities are being run like businesses: relying on inflated fees while simultaneously axing degree programmes, underpaying staff, and providing little support to students. Staff participating in the UCU strikes in 2022-23 spoke out on many of these deeply ingrained issues.
The long-term impact of the crisis in higher education is dire. Young people will have fewer opportunities, and industries dependent on qualified graduates will continue to face worker shortages.
The solution is obvious: stop treating education as big business and start treating it as an essential public service, free to use with grants, not debt, to enable people to study. It’s time for a democratically run and high-quality higher education system that is accessible to all and meets the needs of both students and staff.
Socialist Students says:
Fight for fully funded free education – scrap and refund tuition fees, cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
Take universities under the democratic control of elected bodies of campus trade unions, students and communities
Build democratic student organisations to link up with the campus trade unions and fight for what our universities need
Build a new mass party that will stand up for students and workers
Fight for socialist change – for democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
Nigerian international students are in a desperate situation.
As a result of the severe economic crisis in Nigeria, and drastic devaluation of the Nigerian currency, the naira, many students are unable to cover the eye-watering costs of living and studying in the UK.
This crisis was set in motion by the disastrous policies of the Nigerian president Bola Tinubu, whose government last year decided to ‘float’ the naira – essentially allowing the currency’s value to be determined by market forces for the first time in years. This policy instantly led to the biggest-ever collapse in the value of the naira.
300% increase
The naira has lost two-thirds of its value against the pound in less than a year. For Nigerian students in the UK, this means a 300% increase in the cost of tuition fees, rent, and other living costs.
Disgracefully, universities across the UK are moving to exclude Nigerian students who can no longer pay their tuition fees. This would effectively mean deportation, as students would no longer have a sponsoring institution for their visas.
In response to this threat, Socialist Students members at the University of Surrey approached the university’s Nigerian Society, and helped launch a campaign to stop the expulsions.
The campaign began with a joint meeting, which agreed a set of demands aimed at university management:
Ensure no exclusions for Nigerian students who are unable to pay their tuition fees
Extend the payment period for Nigerian students struggling to pay their tuition fees
Allow students to pay their tuition fees at the pre-floatation naira rate of N584.20
As a way to galvanise support for these demands, and put pressure on management, the meeting also agreed an emergency protest for the following week. We decided to march through campus on 22 April, and deliver a joint letter to the vice-chancellor’s office, to put forward our demands, and request an in-person meeting between the vice-chancellor and representatives of the campaign.
Joint meeting hosted by Socialist Students and the UoS Nigerian Society
Protesting works
Our campaign has shown that protesting wins! The university management has now said that it will allow Nigerian students to stay on at the university, if they pay 50% of their originally agreed fee instalment for this term. This is a welcome concession, and importantly gives us time to regroup, and plan the next steps for the campaign.
However, for any student who cannot afford 50% of their instalment, we must continue to demand no exclusions, while also continuing to raise the demand for students to pay fees at the old rate of naira. If necessary, we will organise future protests to back up these demands.
Spread to other unis
Another crucial way to strengthen our campaign at the University of Surrey is to spread these demands to other campuses. This crisis is affecting Nigerian students at universities around the UK. That’s why Socialist Students groups will be reaching out to Nigerian societies around the country to initiate similar campaigns on their campus.
As part of our campaign, Socialist Students members in Surrey have also contacted campus trade unions which, like students, are in battle against management – in their case, over the threat of up to 140 job cuts.
Vice-chancellors cut jobs for the same reason that they charge international students ridiculously high tuition fees – to make up for a broken higher education funding model. That’s why Socialist Students calls for a united movement of students and staff nationally to win fully funded, free education for all.
Behind closed doors, a major university policy change is being discussed and, typically, its not good news! Vivienne Stern, the CEO of employers’ organisation, Universities UK, insists that students finance the gap in university budgets yet again, through ever-higher tuition fees. This is off the back of a broad financial report, which outlines the very real mess that university managements have found itself in, where issues such as an exodus of international students, whose higher tuition than domestic students many universities rely on, have been compounded by unprecedented inflation.
Yet there are no illusions about the popularity of such a move: “Political suicide”, Stern describes it – very hot in Westminster right now. She urges whoever is in power to implement it that they “act quickly” before an inevitable wave of student outrage. Yes, ‘before anyone notices’ seems to be the strategy they’re going for here!
And no doubt such outrage would be fierce: students are already bearing the brunt of major systemic failings. With the confidence built during the continuing wave of agitation for Palestinian liberation, no doubt we would be on the streets in our thousands, as students did over a decade ago the last time tuition fees were tripled.
But why wait for things to get worse? We students don’t need permission to organise and fight to make university life bearable. Stern says raise tuition fees, we say: ‘Abolish them!’ And secure ample student maintenance grants in turn. Keir Starmer, likely future prime minister, U-turned on Jeremy Corbyn’s free education policy. We need a new mass party that will stand up for students and workers.
Socialist Students says:
Fight for fully funded free education – scrap and refund tuition fees, cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
Take universities under the democratic control of elected bodies of campus trade unions, students and communities
Build democratic student organisations to link up with the campus trade unions and fight for what our universities need
Build a new mass party that will stand up for students and workers
Fight for socialist change – for democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future
Socialist Students 
