MEDICAL students will be left almost £70,000 in debt under Government plans to allow universities to charge up to £9,000 in tuition fees, the BMA warned yesterday.
Karin Purshouse, Chair of the BMA’s Medical Students Committee said: ‘The BMA estimates that if universities charge the £9,000 rate allowed under these plans, students will see their debts increase to around £70,000.’
he added a further health warning that: ‘This figure only includes debts incurred from student loans and does not take into account overdrafts, credit cards and professional loans which many students depend on for additional support.’
The statement concluded that: ‘The BMA will be supporting the National Union of Students rally on Wednesday 10th November, and encouraging its members to attend.’
For medical students and all students there has been a massive change since May 1997 when the newly elected Blair-Brown government, with the support of the NUS leaders, put an end to free state university education and brought in the first tuition fees.
Blair, Brown and the other Labour traitors, most of whom had not paid a penny to go to university started the privatisation of education which now sees becoming a doctor returning to being a career for the very rich!
The door has now been opened wide for the emergence of completely private universities, while the masses of working class and middle class youth see their ambitions and their futures tossed into the waste bin.
The Tory-LibDem coalition yesterday followed up the work pioneered by Blair and Brown to create the conditions where Universities can charge £9,000 a term, provided they take a token few of the poor onto their courses.
Fees will rise to £6,000 – with an upper tier of £9,000, if universities ensure access for poorer students, the hypocritical line goes.
Much of the proposed fee rise, up from the current £3,290 per year, is to replace funding cut from universities in last month’s Spending Review.
This will mean that many courses, particularly in arts and humanities, will almost entirely depend on income from students’ fees, and that a number of universities will close.
‘Essentially, it allows universities to replace a large part of the lost state funding for teaching by way of graduate contributions,’ said Steve Smith, president of the higher education body, Universities UK.
The proposals were also welcomed by the Russell Group of leading universities as ‘a life-saving cash transfusion’ which would be the ‘only way for the UK to remain a serious global player in higher education’.
The Million+ group of new universities warned the withdrawal of public funding will mean all universities will be forced to charge students the maximum £9,000.
The truth of the matter is yesterday’s announcement is the outcome of Labour’s 1997 introduction of fees.
All those who supported this action such as the NUS students leadership, and hundreds of Labour MPs who are now hollering about the raising of the cap to £9,000 also bear responsibility for the situation that has been reached.
On Wednesday November 10 the NUS leaders have called a demonstration with the demand to ‘Freeze the Fees’.
This is carrying on with the same approach that allowed the fees in in the first place.
Students, workers and youth must demand the abolition of fees, and that the trade unions call a general strike to restore free state education by bringing down the coalition and bringing in a workers government. This is the only way forward!
