Why tuition fees were raised

It was the policy which caused the Liberal Democrats more political pain than any other: tripling tuition fees, after pledging to abolish them entirely. Seems impossible? To sweeten the pill of fees — and make it possible for cash-strapped students to pay them — a student loan system was introduced. In theory, at least, this is meant to ensure that every student can afford their repayments.

The system when the coalition came in to power worked like this. After a given period or if a graduate dies , the remaining debt would be written off. The most obvious change as fees tripled was that the total amount owed by a typical student increases dramatically. There were considerable variations. Throughout Great Britain, fees hardly ever exceeded half of university income; more commonly they accounted for between a quarter and a third.

Since the bulk of university expenditure was on teaching, these figures represent the proportion of the true cost of their education paid by students.

By the viability of the British university system, outside the elite-patronised Oxbridge, already depended on public financial support. Between and , state spending on universities doubled from one to two million pounds , but the balance of funding established before hardly changed, as the bar chart shows. The extent of state aid before is worth stressing because it is often supposed that this only began with the creation of the University Grants Committee in The UGC held a conservative ideal of university education, and severely restricted new admissions to the grant list, which from included Oxford and Cambridge.

UGC grants normally covered only current expenditure, and universities had to seek extra funding, often from charitable trusts and wealthy philanthropists, for new buildings, professorships, equipment, and student facilities. But long before that, it was widely admired externally as a uniquely British solution to the problem of balancing academic freedom with public accountability. This helps to explain why, in a form of institutional amnesia, the extent of state aid before has been forgotten: it suited the universities to associate its beginnings with the creation of a body which respected their independence and embedded their autonomy institutionally.

A further 20th-century development was the expansion of public aid to students. There had always been college scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge, and bursaries for poor students in Scotland, and from the s local authorities also offered university scholarships.

Grants for prospective schoolteachers were another important form of state assistance, though in return students had to pledge themselves to a period working in schools. Surveys in the s found that about half of all university students received public support of some kind. As in other European countries though a generation after the United States , the years after saw a shift from elite towards mass higher education.

The Second World War, even more than the First, underlined the importance of science, national planning and social welfare, and gave a strong impulse to the democratisation of education. The Cold War and international economic competition reinforced these trends. The state now became the main source of university funds, and this came to seem both natural and irreversible. Post-war expansion is popularly associated with the Robbins report of , but though the report was vital in creating a political consensus which lasted for a generation, it only endorsed what was already happening.

Unlike the earlier civic universities, or the dozen less glamorous technical colleges which were given university status in the s, these were not based on existing local colleges, and depended on state finance from the start. Free higher education also predated Robbins, being introduced in following the report of the Anderson committee.

This was intended to simplify what had become a jungle of grants and scholarships, and had two aspects. First, though fees were not formally abolished, full-time domestic students now had them paid by the state. Second, students were entitled to a maintenance grant, whether at their local university or away from home. The maintenance grants were means tested dependent on parental income , as were fee grants until , but both were outright payments, not loans.

Provided parents paid their share if any , students were free of financial burdens. The Robbins committee took these changes as given. They were seen as a logical extension of free secondary schooling, introduced in England and Wales in It is often forgotten that the Robbins report preceded the introduction of comprehensive education. Without something like the changes made in , expansion beyond a limited social base would have been impossible.

Most European countries met the same demand by abolishing fees or keeping them at a nominal level, but the British model was uniquely expensive. Furthermore, the prestige of the residential model, as shown by the campus universities, meant that universities not only had to pay for a great expansion of university staff, and for expensive laboratories and libraries, but also for student accommodation and social, welfare and sporting facilities.

As many critics have pointed out, this was a luxury version of the mass university, reflecting the image and prestige of Oxford and Cambridge. Despite new foundations, universities could still be seen as a single national system committed to common values and fundable on a uniform basis. If the government was to increase tuition fees it would have the obvious effect of deterring less well-off people from attending higher education.

Counter argument: Discrimination is not only one rule for one but another for the rest it also includes diverse access for example if I was to say one of you can go to university whoever reaches the top of the stairs first is in and one of the competitors is in a wheel chair that is obvious discrimination.

The Debts could be crippling to a working class family but not to a wealthy family as they have extra money to help out their child. Due to the fact that the newly increased tuition fees would apply to everyone within the country, whether they are rich or poor, ensures equality.

If the government was to reduce the fees for the poor or increase the fees for the rich only, that would be discrimination. Therefore, the government is not discriminating but ensuring equality and doing what it feels is best for the country.

If the government were to increase tuition fees they may well find that they have left themselves in a bit of a hole. Considering the government needs bright and intellectual people to fill the gaps within the various systems of the country e. If more people were able to get a higher education, it would leave the government with more choice and more intellectual candidates to choose from. Aside from the government, discouraging people to get a higher education through increasing tuition fees would have an effect on the whole country as people will not be as trained or qualified to do their jobs as they would have been if they had obtained a degree.

The selection process for jobs would be made a lot easier if there were fewer candidates to choose from. It would also make things easier and decrease the competition for the fewer candidates that were qualified for the job. Furthermore, a higher education is not required for many jobs and careers and so it unlikely that by discouraging people from getting a higher education it will have a significant impact on the country.

There is no evidence to back up this claim. Since tuition fees were introduced the number of applicants has gone up on average, despite the fees increasing yearly. There are reasons for wanting to go to university other than to earn more money, for example access to more interesting, specialised jobs and for the university experience. In fact, before there were no such things as tuition fees for universities — higher education was free! And now, to want to increase tuitions fees by more thousands of pounds is absurd, not to mention unfair!

Copyright University World News. Allow me to elaborate. The proposals were passed after weeks of student protests that saw Liberal Democrat MPs' offices and university buildings occupied and violence erupt at Conservative Party headquarters.

There were running clashes with the police. To disgruntled students, Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem leader and deputy prime minister, said: "In an ideal world, no graduate would have to contribute more for their degree.

But our economic reality is far from ideal. The real decision is not if we reform university funding but how we reform it. And how we help the people who need it most. To disgruntled Liberal Democrat voters, Clegg argued that supporting the bill was a necessary compromise allowing the junior coalition partners to secure in return an increase in spending on child care and extra support for the school system via a pupil premium, despite the context of the austerity programme.

This at a time when young people were already priced out of the housing market. Students, alarmed at the prospect of leaving university with massive debt and faint hopes of ever securing a mortgage, saw it as a sell-out enabling the Liberal Democrats to taste power for the first time since the Lib-Lab pact of the s and be part of the government for the first time since the First World War.