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Top up fees - The facts
Last updated 20.02.04
Download the fact sheet (word)
What do students pay at the moment?
In 1997 New
Labour announced the introduction of tuition fees and the
abolition of the student grant.
The annual
tuition fee is currently £1,125 per student. Some students
with low parental income get this fee, or a proportion of it,
paid for by their local education authority.
Due to the
lack of a living grant many students have to take out loans to
survive and many have to take part-time work to get through
the living and studying costs of university. One in five
students drop-out of their courses mainly due to financial
hardship. Even now some students are leading university with
debts of over £15,000.
Tuition fees
and abolishing the student grant were an attack on the right
to a free education for all. By introducing tuition fees they
have tried to get people ‘used’ to the idea of paying for
education individually rather society providing for everyone.
And they have opened the doors for further cuts,
commercialisation and privatisation of education.
What
are top-up fees?
The government
is proposing that the current tuition fee, which is paid
upfront at the beginning of each academic year, is abolished
in 2006. This will be replaced by a ‘top-up’ fee of up to
£3,000 a year. This fee and any loans which students take out
during their course will be paid back in a form of graduation
tax by graduates at a rate of 9% of earnings once they are
earning over £15,000 a year. This would mean graduates ending
up paying a greater proportion of their income in tax than is
paid by millionaires!! There will be a cap on top-up
fees of £3,000. But it could be as soon as 2010 that
universities get away with charging even more. No one will be
exempt from owning top-up fees at the end of their course.
The government
don’t call these top-up fees, they refer to them as
‘differential fees’ because they want to allow universities to
vary the fees depending on the university and the course.
Why
are many people against this?
This is yet
another attack on the right to a free quality education for
all. Although the government is saying that the top-up fee
could be anything from £0 - £3,000 there is no indication that
any university will charge nothing. The government has already
estimated that at least three quarters of universities will
charge the full £3,000! The top universities such as Cambridge
and Oxford will be able to charge the full £3,000 because the
rich who dominate these universities will always be able to
pay.
Underfunded
universities with poorer students will be forced to either
charge the full £3,000 to try and make ends meet, thereby risk
losing students who are put off going. Or, if they charge less
than £3,000, they may be seen as offering only ‘cheap’
courses. For poorer students and universities top-up fees is a
no win situation.
But isn't the government saying that the poorest students
won’t have to pay the top-up fees and may even get a grant?
Due to the
huge anger which exists among many people across the country
against tuition fees the government has been forced to
introduce a small grant for the poorest students from
September 2004 which will be up to £3,000 depending on your
parental income. This is a step forward – but is nowhere near
what is needed to ensure working class students can survive at
university.
From 2006 the
poorest students will get up to £3,000 of help a year made up
of:
-
Up to £1,200
fees subsidy or means tested grant (still being discussed).
-
Up to £1,500
means tested grant
-
Up to £300
university bursaries
So
what is wrong with that?
The cost of
living and studying will mean that the poorest students will
have to take out the biggest loans to try and survive. This
will still put many working class young people off going to
university. Also there will be many students who won’t qualify
for the grants, have families who don’t have enough money to
live on themselves, and therefore will not be able to get
family help to go to university.
The bursary of
up to £300 from the university is also unfair. Again,
universities dominated by rich students won’t have to pay out
many bursaries as most of their students won’t qualify. But
universities such as the University of East London will have
around 44% of students who are poor enough to qualify for the
maximum support.
If this system
is introduced it is clear that it will not help poorer
students go to university. Students will still be left with
huge debts to pay back and this will continue to put many
young people off.
Richard Sykes,
Rector of Imperial College, London, has said that he should be
allowed to charge £10,000 or even £15,000 a year for courses
as this would more closely reflect the cost and market value
of a degree at his university. This could be the future for
students is the principle of top up fees goes through.
What about students whose families are on ‘middle’ incomes?
Top-up fees
will really hurt. Depending on the amount they earn, some
students will get some help, but they will still end up with
huge debts. Barclays bank estimates that the average student
debt will be £33,708 in 2010 due to tuition fees and increased
living costs.
But where will the money come from to pay for free education?
We need to
make it clear to the government that the campaign against fees
and for a living grant will continue to grow and we will fight
for as long as necessary. Everyone should have the right to a
properly funded education throughout their lives. Yet we are
told MPs such as Blair and Clarke (who didn’t have to pay
tuition fees!) that there isn’t enough money for this! But
Britain is the fourth richest country in the world – this
doesn’t add up.
Over £5
billion of public money has already been spent on the war and
occupation of Iraq. Big business have had huge tax cuts since
new Labour came to power. It's clear that there is plenty of
money to provide a quality education for all but it is a
question of where our money is spent.
Blair and Co
have shown they are only interested in keeping their big
business friends happy through offering them deals in the
privatisation of our education, health and other public
services. Education, health care etc should all be provided by
society – not down to you as an individual who may or may not
have the money to pay for basic services which everyone should
have access to.
For a socialist alternative
Under
capitalism, profit will always come before people. The gap
between the rich and poor has never been bigger. The 200
richest people in the world own more wealth than the poorest
2.4 billion.
Today more
than one fifth of the world’s population live in absolute
poverty. An estimated 1.4 billion people live without clean
drinking water, while 2.3 billion do not have access to proper
sanitation. Even in Britain, the 4th richest
country in the world, one third of children live below the
poverty line.
As long as
capitalism exists there will be no end to war, poverty, the
destruction of the environment and the other problems that
face humanity.
If this system
can’t afford to provide people with a decent education, pay us
a living wage, provide affordable homes or give young people a
decent future, we can’t afford this system. We are fighting
for a socialist society based on need and not profit and that
meets the needs of everyone.
If you would
like to know more about socialism, ISR, or any more about
top-up fees, please don’t hesitate in getting in touch with
us.
020 8558 7947
/ PO BOX 858, London, E11 1YG
anticapitalism@hotmail.co.uk
/ www.anticaptialism.org.uk |
