A REVIEW of university student fees in England has been launched by Business Secretary Mandelson. The object of the review is to increase, perhaps even double, current student fees. Some university chancellors are demanding the right to charge fees of £20,000.
The shock news of how much fees are to be raised will not be released until after the next general election – another cynical move by the Brown government.
Mandelson yesterday pledged that he will consult ‘all who would be affected by any changes’, while the UCU trade union said that the political parties must come clean on just how much they will raise fees if they win the expected May general election.
They will never do this since they would lose millions of votes, as the vast majority of the electorate consider fees should be abolished and free state higher education restored along with living grants.
Despite the world economy being mired in slump and debt, the notion is being put about that the review body and the government will require supplementary contributions from banks and big business to take the strain off students’ families. This is simply nonsense, and complete misinformation.
It is the students’ families who will have to cough up the cash and bear the pain and nobody else.
Lord Browne, the former BP chief executive, is no stranger to making super profits. He heads the inquiry. Serving with him are Sir Michael Barber, Diane Coyle, David Eastwood, Julia King, Rajay Naik and Peter Sands.
Barber was the head of former prime minister Tony Blair’s delivery unit; Coyle is a member of the Competition Commission and BBC Trustee; Eastwood is vice-chancellor of the University of Birmingham; King is vice-chancellor of Aston University; Rajay Naik is on the board of the Big Lottery Fund and Peter Sands is chief executive of Standard Chartered Bank.
This gathering of bankers, bosses and their political sympathisers will not have the slightest problem with hiking student fees as most of the universities are demanding.
The UCU trade union is opposed to fees in principle and wants a return to free university education, but does nothing about it.
The NUS student leaders historically are distinguished by the fact that they accepted the abolition of the grant system without a fight, support the fees system, and are now limiting themselves to demanding that the cap on fees must not be lifted.
The National Union of Students admits that raising fees ‘would be a disaster for UK higher education and must not be allowed to happen’.
However the ‘disaster’ is about to happen and the Russell Group of leading University Chancellors is leading the charge.
Wendy Piatt, head of the Russell Group said that the current levels of funding were not adequate if universities wanted to remain internationally competitive.
She added that ‘As universities are facing severe economic conditions and ferocious global competition, it is clear that the status quo is not viable.’
Among the options ‘An increase in tuition fees is clearly one of the most effective. . .’
In fact, two thirds of University Vice-Chancellors have said they need to raise fees, suggesting levels of between £4,000 and £20,000 per year!
With governments poised to bring in savage spending cuts, rapidly raising fees is the only bourgeois business way out for the University Chancellors.
Students need to sack the opportunist NUS leaders who use their positions as stepping stones to becoming MPs. The NUS and the UCU must fight to mobilise the trade unions for a general strike to demand the abolition of fees and the restoration of free state university education with living grants for all.