Leave a Commenton Higher Education is Broken, Tuition Fee Rises Won’t Fix It
“At a time when more and more students are feeling politically disillusioned, out of touch policies like tuition fee increases will only push more young people towards apathy or even radicalisation into the far right.”

By Fraser McGuire

The announcement that students in Higher Education are set to be hit with an increase to their tuition fees to £10,500 by 2029 is both unfair and economically short sighted. The funding model for our universities is broken at a structural level. Raising tuition fees (and therefore student debt) at a time when the number of students unable to pay their loan increases each year is like trying to bail water out of a sinking ship with a teaspoon.

A report from the IFS stated that the government could expect to make a loss on all student loans, regardless of whether they were repaid in full or not, and current total student debt stands at over £220 billion.

It is vital that the government adopt progressive policies to tackle the financial issues plaguing our marketised Higher Education system. Richard Burgon MP recently introduced a petition to Parliament detailing how a 2% Wealth Tax on assets over £10 million would raise up to £24 billion annually and provide the money desperately needed to fix many of our public services. Combined with other policies like the equalisation of Capital Gains Tax with Income Tax rates, and measures to end loopholes in the oil and gas windfall tax and stop state subsidies to fossil fuel giants, the government could raise £45 billion.

There is a clear inequality even between different universities, which further evidences the anarchy of the funding model. Some, like the University of Manchester have unrestricted reserves of over £1 billion, and see an annual operating surplus of over £119 million, while many others are on the brink of bankruptcy and almost half of UK vice-chancellors expect their university to run at a loss this year.

The marketisation of our education system isn’t just unsustainable, it’s leading to an increase in casualisation and insecure working conditions for staff. Roughly a third of university staff are on fixed term contracts, 41 per cent are paid hourly wages, and over 3000 employees are on zero hours contracts nationally. Furthermore, many universities have cracked down on student activism and protests, in 2022, the University of Sheffield informed two student activists that they had hired private investigators to investigate them for their alleged involvement in a peaceful occupation. Just five months later, the University of Manchester employed the National Eviction Team to remove twenty student occupiers from another peaceful protest over the rising cost of living. Both students and staff are being punished by marketisation.

Another example of a progressive solution to the broken Higher Education funding model would be the adoption of an ‘education levy’ on graduate employers. Research from London Economics for UCU, shows that the government could afford to abolish UK student fees through either a 3 per cent increase to corporation tax, or a levy of around 1% on employer National Insurance contributions for graduates. It seems that the decision to increase tuition fees is merely a political choice, and one that avoids tackling the root of inequality in our society and taking on the super-rich.

Young members of the Labour Party will remember Keir Starmer pledging his support for the abolition of tuition fees during his campaign to be Labour leader in 2020. At a time when more and more students are feeling politically disillusioned, out of touch policies like tuition fee increases will only push more young people towards apathy or even radicalisation into the far right.