UK
Young Voices to Rally Against Tuition Fees and Build Call for Free Education
University students and young trades unionists will join former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell this week at a rally hosted by Arise Festival, to oppose a new rise in university tuition fees and to set out a vision of free education.
The ‘No Tuition Fees rise – Rally for Free Education!‘ was called in response to the announcement on 4th November, when the Labour Government’s Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson announced an increase in university tuition fees.
The move was just the latest in a long line of pledges made by Keir Starmer to secure the votes of party members to become Leader in 2020, when he promised to ‘support the abolition of tuition fees’.
The policy had been in Labour’s manifesto under Starmer he maintained it in 2020 as he sought Labour members’ votes but in 2023 said “We are likely to move on from that commitment because we do find ourselves in a different financial situation.”
The fee increase by £285 to a total of £9535 per year from next October 2025 was characterised by Phillipson as a move to ‘fix the foundations’ of the sector’s funding after years of falling real budgets for universities. Universities UK have identified a £5bn gap between the cost of doing research and how much funding universities get to do it.
Phillipson’s statement to the Commons however loaded the responsibility on students to fill the funding gap, when she identified the freezing of tuition fee levels over seven years of Conservative Government as the cause of underfunding – and not Conservative austerity and falling grants to institutions – as the cause of the gap.
The announcement is the latest in a long history of Labour Government’s being responsible for the introduction and increase in tuition fees. It was the Blair government in 1997 who introduced the first tuition fee of £1000 per year. The same government increased that through the introduction of top-up fees in 2004, proposed as a range of fees from £1125 to £3000 which ultimately saw almost all courses offered at the highest rate. The introduction of top-up fees, within a year of the Iraq war, contributed to New Labour’s growing unpopularity. It was the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition who increased fees to £9000 a year in 2012 which – alongside the establishment of the coalition – contributed to the Lib Dem loss of support as a progressive alternative to New Labour.
Labour’s fee increase announcement this week will further alienate young people and voters who had wanted to believe in the manifesto language of ‘change’. Instead, it commits the country’s university sector to continue down a road of US-style graduate debt which no other European country operates.
Former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said, “I opposed tuition fees from the start because it was inevitable they would be ratcheted up. If we had a fair taxation system we could scrap tuition fees and lift this burden from young people.”
Responding to the announcement, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said, “Universities should not be dependent just on student income to survive. Should we not be moving in the direction of lowering fees, or indeed removing them altogether, in order to make higher and further education genuinely open to all in our society?”
UCU leader Jo Grady said, “The proposed hike to tuition fees is both economically and morally wrong. Taking more money from debt ridden students and handing it to overpaid underperforming vice-chancellors is ill conceived and won’t come close to addressing the sector’s core issues.”
In her statement, Phillipson also said, “In the months ahead, we will publish our proposals, because in universities, as across our public services, investment can come only with the promise of major reform.”
It is vital the left now sets out the case for public investment and free education.
The Arise rally will hear from young voices including Mads Wainman, Disabled Students’ Officer, Warwick SU; Elliot Briffa, University of Manchester SU City & Community Officer; Niamh Iliff, youth rep on Labour’s Policy Forum; Hasan Patel, student campaigner; Fraser McGuire, Unite & TUC Young Members Forum and Coll McCail, Glasgow student.
They’ll also be joined by John McDonnell MP; Gawain Little, GFTU General Secretary; Anya Wilkinson, Young Socialist Educational Association and Myriam Kane, Black Liberation Alliance.
- “No tuition fees rise – rally for free education!” takes place online at 6.30pm Thursday 14th November. Register your place here.
- The rally is hosted by Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas. You can follow Arise Festival on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X; and listen to the Arise Festival podcast on Spotify.
- If you support Labour Outlook’s work amplifying the voices of left movements and struggles here and internationally, please consider becoming a supporter on Patreon.
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