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.
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.
Staff at Liverpool Hope University are the most recent victims of the nationwide university funding crisis.
University management has confirmed that dozens of staff members will be made redundant across social sciences, humanities, education and creative arts. Not only this, but over a hundred staff members have been sent letters informing them that their job is at risk, meaning staff members will have to wait months with this threat dangling over their heads to even know if their job is secured or not.
In response to such a frontal attack on workers, two days after this announcement, over 200 students and staff protested at Hope University outside the vice-chancellor’s office, whose salary reportedly stands at £264,723.
The message of this demonstration couldn’t have been more clear. Students are appalled at this treatment of lecturers and staff.
Every worker or student who spoke was rightfully completely against these attacks. How can the university cite financial shortcomings when it has individuals on a quarter of a million pounds a year? The university claims these draconian attacks are necessary. It should open the books for its own workers and students to see where the money is going.
Regardless of the financial situation, this is not an isolated case. There is a funding crisis among many universities with hundreds of jobs at stake elsewhere. Hope University isn’t the first and it won’t be the last to be struck with cuts, with many universities actively running deficit budgets.
The only policy Labour has offered is increasing the burden on students with increased tuition fees for the first time since 2012.
The real solution is simply funding, not more fees. The Labour government must provide education with the adequate funding it so desperately needs. Despite what the Labour government has repeatedly stated, there is an abundance of wealth in society. With private energy companies alone making £120 billion in profit in the past years – five times as much as Rachel Reeves’s fiscal ‘black hole’ – the money workers need is clearly there. These companies should be nationalised under democratic workers’ control and their wealth used to protect workers and students. If the Labour government won’t do this then the trade unions should form a new party that will.
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.
Tom Porter-Brown, Socialist Students activist at Birmingham City University
The University and College Union (UCU) branch at Birmingham City University (BCU) has begun strike action in reaction to the attacks by the vice chancellor (VC). A planned ‘restructure’ includes 36 academic staff redundancies.
The VC claims that his changes are to benefit students, but how is it in students’ interests when staff suffer job cuts, students are crammed into lecture rooms, and courses are at risk of closure?
It’s no coincidence that the VC chose to announce his plans at the end of February, because the time it took for the union to jump through all the hoops of the Tory anti-trade union laws means the strike has begun during exam season. Members think this is a deliberate move to try to cut across students supporting staff. He’s even gone as far as sending a mass email to students, telling us that “only 9% of staff have voted to go on strike and it should have a minimal impact on lectures”.
He’s got that figure by counting all BCU staff, including, for example, caterers and cleaners, but has neglected to mention that not every staff member is part of UCU! Although the VC’s bending of the truth could come back to haunt him when students don’t get their grades back in time, and no doubt he’ll contradict himself and blame it on the striking lecturers.
UCU had a good first picket, staying for hours until the rally at lunchtime. At least 50 staff, students and supporters, including Socialist Students members, turned up.
Union members need student support, which several of them expressed, discussing with each other the best way to communicate the issue to their students. Socialist Students members are campaigning to help build that support.
Socialist Students members discussed anti-austerity and anti-war ideas with strikers. If Keir Starmer and his Labour government can afford massive military budgets, they can afford to plug the funding deficit in universities. We talked about how the unions need a political voice, a new workers’ party, to fight for that to happen, and that universities need staff and students in control of the funding and resources to run it for the sake of education instead of profit.
Students and workers protest against Cardiff uni job cuts. Photo: Cardiff Socialist Party
The vice chancellors have ramped up their offensive on university students and staff this year. More than 2,000 new redundancies have been planned since the start of 2025 alone. This figure will rise even higher in coming weeks, as a number of institutions are yet to confirm the scale of their announced cuts. At several universities the planned redundancies amount to 10% or more of the workforce.
For students, the threat of mass course closures comes on top of an ongoing cost-of-living crisis, as well as a tuition fee hike next year that will do nothing to resolve the crisis in higher education.
Socialist Students is serious about fighting to end the uni funding crisis, by mobilising students to demand no course cuts, no job losses, and for free, fully funded education.
Workers in the University and College Union (UCU) have responded to attacks by balloting for strike action in at least a dozen university branches so far. And Unison is currently balloting tens of thousands of its members in higher education. Socialist Students groups will organise for the biggest-possible student attendance at picket lines, and build for solidarity action.
But students should not limit ourselves to an exclusively supporting role in the struggle. We can propose our own initiatives, within which we invite the trade unions on campus to play a leading role. That way we can show that students are serious about fighting and pro-active in our determination to fight shoulder to shoulder with staff. That is the most inspiring kind of solidarity that students can give in this fight for the future of higher education.
For Socialist Students groups, this means putting forward a plan of action that can organise staff, students and working-class people locally in a campaign to fight back as soon as any cuts are announced. We can build for mass meetings, hold protests, organise lobbies of MPs, collect signatures for an open letter or petition – there is no shortage of options.
A plan of activity can bring people together. But what transforms a series of gatherings into an effective movement is a clear political programme of demands to fight for. Socialist Students has launched the Funding Not Fees campaign as a way of putting forward the ideas we think are needed to build such a movement.
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
Cardiff Uni – pressure wins £19 million from Welsh government
Aris Prevost, Cardiff Socialist Students
On top of 400 jobs cut at Cardiff Uni, 200 job cuts have been announced at Bangor Uni and 90 at University South Wales. Having previously said that there is no more money, and under popular pressure and protests, the Welsh government has announced £19 million investment into higher education in Wales.
However, this does not mean a final victory. A one-time £19 million cash injection will only partially stem the tide of cuts. Cardiff University alone faces a £30 million deficit. It’s £15 million at Bangor and £20 million at USW (see below). But this additional money will not solve the funding crisis. In fact, it remains unclear where this money will go, and what strings are attached.
We demand an immediate end to all cuts, and that pressure is put on governments in Cardiff and London for adequate funding.
The fightback at Cardiff Uni is clearly working. The uni bosses’ position is growing weaker by the day. A unified student and staff pushback can force the university to halt all cuts.
As part of the fightback, there was a demo organised by music alumni on 22 February, where they played a public concert outside city hall. The concert loudly highlighted the cultural impact that music in Cardiff has. Cardiff has many independent music venues and cultural roots which have been under attack, including the closure of the beloved venue The Moon.
Other events are being planned, especially targeting uni open days as well as organising further marches and rallies.
Moving forward, we need to push for an alternative funding model to fix higher education. It is only by running education as a public good rather than a commodity to be sold that we will be able to end this crisis and save jobs. We need a new workers’ party that fights for free education, fully publicly funded by making the super-rich pay!
Uni South Wales students build cuts resistance
Suzie Matthews
Following in Cardiff University’s controversial footsteps, the University of South Wales (USW) announced on 17 February its plans to axe around 90 jobs, including entire courses.
In response, Rhondda Cynon Taf Socialist Party held a campaign stall in opposition, and student support was immense. Under the hypocritical shadow of a crane building a shiny new block, more than half of the students who passed by stopped to sign the petition.
There was the distinct sense that something ought to be done. Three students left their details to find out more about joining the Socialist Party, one suggested organising a protest. The atmosphere isn’t yet one of anger – though that can change when cuts to specific courses are announced.
We have been campaigning at USW for a while now. Staff and students have told us about cuts to Maths courses and professional services, fearing that what is happening at Cardiff would arrive at their doorsteps. It is difficult to view USW as an institution struggling for money whilst a new building is being thrown up. Students and staff are concerned about where these cuts will fall – many assumed that they will be primarily directed at the arts and humanities.
40% of students at USW are international students, a group that is hideously overcharged. Uni managements have blamed a drop off in international applicants for their budget deficits. But we can’t stand for cuts and job losses, we must fight for higher education fully funded by government.
Brunel Uni – workers strike against cuts
Ryan Leonard, Brunel Socialist Students
Staff at Brunel University were informed in October last year of a planned “significant academic resizing programme”. The plan was to make 130 redundancies of full-time academic staff and 79 profession service staff, a 14% reduction in staffing levels. It goes without saying that students were left in the dark, we were only informed of the university management’s plans by our lecturers.
Lecturers in UCU have announced a calendar of 16 strike days, escalating over a period of six weeks, beginning on 28 February. Socialist Students will be building student support for the strikes.
The vice chancellor of Brunel is Andrew Jones, a Labour councillor. He lists on his LinkedIn page “business planning” and “strategic thinking” as skills he’s gained from his role at Brunel. Just last year the university hired 139 academic staff… incredibly strategic.
For the last five years, Brunel has exploited international students, who can be charged far higher fees, as a source of income and despite being warned consistently over the last two years that the law around student visas would change, senior leadership continued on this path.
Students are rightly frustrated. Some of the people I study with have lost their tutors during their dissertations, which is terrifying. Planned redundancies don’t include the 69 members of the executive team, all earning over £100k. Nor the vice chancellor, earning £267k a year.
Our uni is not the assorted renovations that Brunel has carried out, totalling five times the savings made by sacking staff. Our uni is the educators, the students and the relationships between us. All of which will suffer if Brunel’s redundancy plan goes ahead.
Liverpool Uni – standing in SU elections to fight cuts
Hannah Ponting, Liverpool Socialist Students
After the numerous job cuts announced at universities across the country, lots of us were worried about similar cuts occurring in Liverpool.
The University of Liverpool has followed other unis and enacted a plan of ‘voluntary redundancies’ of staff. However, uni bosses are being extremely vague about the number of job cuts, despite pressure from the UCU for transparency.
This news comes only 17 weeks after the Labour government’s tuition fees hike. Job losses will have a negative impact on students as well as staff, emphasising the importance of uniting Socialist Students work with the demands of the trade unions.
Students Union officer elections are coming up. We are taking this as an opportunity to stand a socialist candidate in order to give a platform to our ideas. I am very proud to be that candidate, and to stand on an anti-cuts platform, aiming to build the Funding Not Fees campaign, as well as amplifying the voices of the uni workers.
In these times of increasing cuts at universities throughout the UK, it is increasingly important to keep socialist ideas visible on our campuses and to build the Funding Not Fees campaign, as part of our work as Socialist Students.
Coventry Uni bosses threaten ‘fire and rehire’
Frank Hammond, Coventry Socialist Students
Over 90 full-time staff members are set to be cut at Coventry University, with a further 200 staff re-enrolled under a subsidiary called Peoples Future Limited (PFL). A familiar fire-and-rehire fiasco is underway with whole courses set to terminated along with lecturers’ jobs.
Uni bosses argue the recent tuition fees rise will still not cover the uplift of National Insurance contribution rates, and that their contributions to the Teachers’ Pension Scheme is ‘unaffordable’. The bosses’ solution? Fire and rehire to remove staff from the scheme.
It should be noted that Vice Chancellor and CEO of Coventry University, John Latham, was reported to have received an £80,768 bonus on top of his £312,617 salary during the financial year ending March 2023. Furthermore, only five days after this decision was announced from the university in December 2024, Latham was named as a non-executive director of the Labour government’s Department for Business and Trade.
A lecturer within the university has personally expressed fear for their living situation to me as a result of the unacceptable decision; not originally from the UK and coming from a country that’s fought a war throughout the last few years, redundancy is one of the scariest words to throw around. Workers are once again being exploited, threatened and neglected. And yet, we receive nothing but silence or excuses from the ones in charge. Another example of “desperate times calling for desperate measures”, as per the standard under Keir Starmer’s Labour government.
Opposing the decision, Coventry Socialist Students has called a public meeting, working to spread the word to students, lecturers and unionists alike, in the interest of exposing unjust cuts. It will hear from a UCU trade union rep. We want to open a discussion of what can be done and ultimately making a shout to the bosses that this decision is not being accepted.
Hard-working people are currently at risk of being punished with seemingly no remorse from the staff at the top. Students kicking up a fuss is a warning to the higher-ups to heed as we continue with the Funding nor Fees campaign.
Socialist Students conference
Over 100 students came together for the Socialist Students national conference on 8 February. We discussed motions proposed by the national steering committee and different groups, and voted on whether or not these match the common consensus of those attending for us to put in the action in the coming year. My first year attending, as a delegate, has allowed me and many more another opportunity to see light at the end of the dark tunnel of austerity.
Students travelled from north, south and all about to have their say in where we go as a movement next, to share concerns and opinions, and ultimately lend their hand in the fight for a fairer system.
To witness a strong crowd of young people who weren’t afraid to speak up, defend their morals and intelligently respond to ignorant criticism is rejuvenating and should strike worry in the hearts of the capitalists and ruling class. Support for the cause is indeed rising, people are seeing the petrifying portrait being painted by Starmer’s Labour government and want better. The experience has gifted me hope and strength to continue fighting for a socialist future.
Alongside many issues, a consistent offender echoed in the anecdotes of students were job cuts in universities across the country. I was able to use one of my contributions to give my own account of seeing cuts in higher education.
We remain determined to defend teachers and students, to fight for free education, and for socialist change.
Resist Bradford uni course and nursery closure
Tom Gibson, Bradford Socialist Party
Bradford university is laying off 300 staff, shutting down chemistry and media courses, and also shutting the university nursery. These are deep cuts that will take away the livelihoods of hundreds of hardworking people, who are either educating students or looking after children. These cuts will lock out many potential students who need the nursery to look after their children while they study, reducing access to education for those with young children.
Our campaign stall was warmly received by students and staff who were very concerned about these cuts. This is part of a wider effort by the Socialist Party in Bradford to combat cuts.
Unis being run as if they are profit-seeking companies has led to this funding crisis, downgrading of the quality of education. We will fight alongside staff and students for a publicly funded and free university system that is fair and accessible.
Cardiff students rally against job cuts. Photo: Rhydian Witts
Aris Prevost, Cardiff Socialist Students
Cardiff Students Against Cuts hosted a rally outside of the Main Building at the Cathays Campus on 12 February to demand that Cardiff uni vice-chancellor Wendy Larner and the University Executive Board stop the 400 proposed job cuts.
Preceding the rally was a town hall meeting between students and the vice-chancellor, which was predictably a farce. Larner over run in her initial speech, dodging every single question that was asked, and left 15 minutes early.
While Larner showed the cowardice of the higher-ups in the Cardiff uni management, the rally showed the resilience and solidarity that the students, staff, and trade unions have. While it was a cold and slightly wet affair, over 100 people turned up, with several speakers including students and staff from courses being cut completely. It also heard from the Vice President of the Cardiff University and College Union (UCU) branch, as well as representatives from Unite and the Trades Union Council, who are both Socialist Party members. A strong theme running throughout the rally was how vital the cut courses were for Cardiff, especially music in the Wales, the ‘Land of Song’.
Staff-student solidarity
Socialist Party member Dave Reid rounded off the speeches. He urged students to fight back against the cuts through solidarity between the students and the workers, backed by the trade council.
Cardiff UCU is balloting for industrial action. It is vital that if and when they go on strike, that us students stand on the picket line with staff. It is only through class solidarity that we can mount a fightback and stop these cuts.
Only the beginning
This rally is only the beginning, we are having weekly meetings hosted by Cardiff Socialist Students to decide our next steps campaigning.
We demand that Cardiff University stops the 400 job cuts, for the vice-chancellor and executive board to be sacked and replaced with workers who understand the day-to-day workings of the University. We call on the Labour governments in Cardiff and Westminster to treat education like a public good and to fully fund higher education.
We demand:
No job losses, no course closures at Cardiff University
The university board to use available reserves to plug the current gap and demand sufficient funding from the UK government to maintain courses and departments at Cardiff University
Open the books at Cardiff University to see where the income is being spent and the investments made
End the commercialisation of university education – return it to a public service rather than a profit-making business
Democratise the university. For a board to be elected by university workers, students, the local community and trade unions. And for the vice-chancellor to be on the same wage as a head of department.
Proper funding for all universities, take the wealth off the super-rich
Eliminate tuition fees, and reintroduce maintenance grants for all
End low pay, job cuts, and ‘casualisation’ of higher education workers
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.
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.”
Socialist Students 
