NUS President Wes Streeting stated today that removing the cap on tuition fees would give elite students and affluent students a great advantage, and would increase inequality.

Mr Streeting was speaking at a TUC Fringe entitled ‘Broke and Broken - Higher Education Funding’. He was joined by Alastair Hunter, UCU, Emma Lipscombe, TUC Academy Organiser and, chairing the meeting, John Walsh, TUC General Council and Chair of the Young Members’ Forum.

Opening the meeting, the NUS President outlined the findings of the recently published NUS report on student funding ‘Broke and Broken’. He described the report as a clear and cogent analysis of why this system is so destructive on higher education, especially in the area of equal access.

He remarked that there was a need for urgent action to ensure that the top-up fees system is not taken to its ‘logical conclusion’, with an end to the cap on annual fees.

Mr Streeting went on to explain that the NUS intended to target the 2009 consultation on higher education funding, and hoped that it would be able to prevent the removal of the £3,000 cap given that the Labour Government now had a much smaller Parliamentary majority than in 2004.

Later on in his speech, he accepted that the NUS faced some difficulty in the fact that the two main parties were both in favour of charging for higher education, while even the Liberal Democrats were reviewing this matter. Therefore, he insisted that there was a need for the NUS to engage with the wider public and challenge the idea that fees should be used to create a market in higher education.

Moving on, he criticised the Government, which he said had been too satisfied with merely incremental increases in applications to higher education and extensions to applications from working class students.

The NUS President also identified a ‘big problem’ in the area of student support. He stressed that a market in higher education had not emerged through fees, but stressed that one had emerged through access to bursaries.

He asserted that bursaries were not distributed according to financial need, but as a result of a wide range of factors. He argued that access to Britain’s ‘socially elite’ universities had not changed.

Referring to the findings of the NUS report, he noted that debts for some students could rise to a shocking £40,000. He stated that, with this level of debt, it was ‘inconceivable’ that students would not make choices on their courses based on the fees that were charged.

Mr Streeting argued that higher education funding needed to be organised so that it ‘did what it says on the tin’, namely ensure that debt related to earnings. He stressed that there were some arts students whose lifetime earnings premium from studying to degree level would not be higher than their debt.

Going further, he suggested that high student debts would affect career choices, and suggested that the debt may dissuade people from working in lower paid public sector and voluntary sector jobs.

Elite universities and affluent students would emerge as the winners from an end to the cap, he predicted. The NUS President insisted that universities that had wider participation but less access to research funding, endowments and alumni donations would not be able to provide as effective teaching and learning for their students, who often came from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Drawing his remarks to a close, he confirmed that the NUS would produce alternative proposals later in the year and would not allow Westminster to come to a cosy consensus on this issue without fully consulting students.

Mr Hunter, representing the UCU, confirmed that his union was fully in support of the NUS and endorsed the report. He remarked that this debate had been hijacked by the universities, and focused too much on the supposed costs of higher education rather than its benefits.

Furthermore, he stated that the ‘inadequate and confusing’ system of bursaries needed to be replaced by a national system.

He also remarked that the concept of university autonomy over funding seemed to amount to a blank cheque so that vice-chancellors could finance educational fads.

He argued that the impact of removing the cap on fees would be that the financial incentive to study would be marginal, and stated that this would do ‘irrevocable damage’ to the sector.

The debate on this matter must engage current and future students, as well as their parents, Mr Hunter insisted. He added that other trade unions should be engaged in this agenda, and saw this matter as the ‘potential theft of education by an elite class’.

The poorest students would no longer be able to buy the best education, and would be unable to afford the debt they would accrue. In addition, he highlighted the scandal of an 87 per cent rise in full time students having to work full time hours on top of their studies, describing this as a scandal.

Ms Lipscombe highlighted her activities as an organising assistant for working students. She noted that an increased number of students had been forced into employment as a result of fees, and especially as a result of the credit crunch.

She remarked that often students had been forced to work in order to buy food and pay rent, not just to fund socialising. In addition, she noted that many students had been forced to work more than 20 hours a work, hours that were classed as full time by the benefit system.

The meeting was then opened out to questions. The NUS President was pressed by several members on why he had chosen to replace the previous position in favour of free education with the views in this report.

He explained that he had decided that it would be better to engage in the ongoing debate, rather than promise students something that they certainly would not be able to receive from the 2009 consultation.

He stressed that the worst case would be for the market system to get worse, and hoped that the NUS would be able to influence the Government to produce a fair funding system that would involve businesses.

Mr Streeting was also asked about the impact of the removal of the cap on public finances. He stated that removing the cap would prove expensive to the Government, who would be obliged to provide larger up-front loans, but also suggested that this would allow loans to be offered at commercial rather than interest free rates.

Furthermore, he rejected the suggestion from some vice-chancellors that there were affluent students that had been able to invest their interest free loans, or use them to finance the purchase of luxury goods.

Asked by DeHavilland about the impact of tuition debts on postgraduate education, Mr Hunter stated that there was a wider problem with postgraduate study, for which almost all students were required to pay fees in full.

He stressed that undergraduate study was increasingly a starting point for many students, and remarked that the inequality in higher education had simply been pushed a stage on.

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