Working class students are squeezed out
As the new university term starts, students are fearing for their degree prospects in the face of a massive attack on higher education. And they are the lucky ones – up to 200,000 would-be students have been left without any university place at all this year. Overwhelmingly, as always, it is working class students who are bearing the brunt of higher education cuts, and far more is to come.
In May, Chancellor George Osborne and Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws detailed planned cuts of £200m to higher education. £449m in cuts to the budget of the Higher Education Funding Council of England had already been announced by the previous Labour government earlier in the year.
How then are universities to be funded? In June, Business Secretary Vince Cable suggested a cut to university numbers, a call enthusiastically taken up by Provost of University College London (UCL) Malcolm Grant, who wants student numbers cut in order to maintain the reputation and high standards of Britain’s elite Russell Group Universities, including UCL. This was followed by a proposal by Cable for a graduate tax. However, ConDem policy seemed to find its feet when Universities Secretary David Willetts hinted in June at lifting the cap on tuition fees. This proposal would double current fee levels to a staggering £7,000.
All these suggestions are likely to coalesce in the Browne report on higher education in October. Lord Browne, former chief executive of BP, has been asked to find new ways to make up the cuts in funding by reassessing tuition fees, loans, grants and bursaries. The report is expected to support raising tuition fees and to encourage a market in higher education by relaxing rules on establishing private universities and fostering competition with state-funded universities.
The move towards private universities was foreshadowed in August when BPP, a for-profit private institution owned by the Apollo Group, was awarded ‘university college’ status by the government – the first time since 1976 that a private institution has been given such status.
Private involvement in universities has become an increasingly important source of research funding in higher education institutions over the last decade. For instance, many British universities play a key role in military research and development, with UCL having received funding for research and degree programmes over recent years from BAE Systems and QinetiQ.
This new strategy of marketing higher education, promoting competition, maximising profits and minimising costs differs little from that of the previous Labour government. These measures will make university even more inaccessible to working class youth in Britain. A recent survey has shown that 47% of graduates receive financial help from family and friends. Of these, 60% would be unable to complete their degrees without such assistance. More than two thirds of the 443,000 students who started at university this term expect to have to fund their studies through part-time work. Unsurprisingly, 70% of students say £7,000 fees would deter them from applying to university. Already the chances of going to university for the most privileged 20% of young people is 57%; for the most deprived 20%, that chance falls to 19%. As for attending one of the elite Russell Group universities championed by Malcolm Grant, the chances of the poorest have already declined; soon they will be effectively non-existent.
Cuts in funding coupled with the raising of fees will ensure that the best academic centres are reserved for those who can pay for their privileges, with working class youth increasingly squeezed out of higher education altogether.
Murray Andrews and Robert Barrie
FRFI 217 October/November 2010
