TUITION fees must rise by 100 per cent to £6,000 a year if universities are to cover their teaching costs, is the main conclusion from a survey of university managers.
The managers also suggest that the fees for science subjects will have to be raised by over 200 per cent to a basic £10,000 a year.
A recent report said undergraduates were now paying £13,000 a year in fees and maintenance costs and that they could not manage their finances.
The Chancellors of the elite universities however, have their own ‘Ivy League’ target for fees of £18,000 a year.
The working class and the middle class are to be priced out of higher education, which is to be a preserve of the rich. To emphasise this point, one Russell Group manager suggested families should expect to save much more for their children’s education.
Families will be expected to save to finance their childrens’ university education, while at the same time they save to finance their own retirement, and while they may also be paying a big chunk of their own parents’ £500-a-week-plus fees for residential care homes. What is being proposed is massive indebtedness from the cradle to the grave for millions of families.
This is the state of affairs that both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have delivered to Britain over their 10 years of government.
Since the £3,000 top-up fees were introduced in September last year university entrants have fallen by three per cent, to 16,000 less enrolments. Doubling and trebling variable top up fees will see the number of enrolements fall by many tens of thousands. They will all have excellent grades, but not enough cash to purchase a university education.
Additionally, many of the university vice chancellors are advising that the Treasury must make student loans more expensive to cover the unpaid debts left by pauperised students. The Blair government is now writing off £1bn a year in outstanding student loans.
The £6,000 fee is due to make its appearance after the next review of fees in 2009.
Meanwhile, the privatisation of secondary education continues with the Academy schools where businessmen and the very rich are able to purchase the right to establish the school curriculum after a donation to the project.
A government report wants to see the same ‘successful’ men and women able to become school heads.
It will be a new type of school head, a non-teacher who has been a success in business. They are to be heads of adminstration. This is because the Blair-Brown regime wants modern schools to diversify and offer a multitude of services to the community.
It wants business ethics applied to teaching, the practical aspects of which will be overseen by a qualified teacher marshalling a small army of teaching assistants.
The teacher’s duty will be to set the lessons for the assistants, so that they remain one lesson ahead of those who they are teaching.
Schools Minister Jim Knight said that the report’s recommendations would be fully discussed with the teaching and support staff unions before any action was taken.
Steve Sinnott, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), said: ‘Moves to divorce the leadership of schools from teaching and learning and replacing heads with chief executives will make things worse.’
The privatisation of education must be stopped. Fees and student loans must be abolished in university education, and free state education and students’ grants restored. The Academy system must be abolished and a properly funded comprehensive system also restored.
This means bringing down the Blair government and bringing in a workers’ government that will carry out socialist policies.
