NUS | ukwatch.net

Students face Worsening Conditions

tim — Wed, 21 May 2008 13:15:12 +0000

Recent studies reveal that students in the UK face higher fees and growing levels of debt, coupled with cutbacks in universities.

The Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have made far-reaching and historic attacks on higher education. In 1998, the Labour government legislated to allow universities to charge tuition fees. In 2006, it introduced “top-up fees” for English and Welsh students. Under this system, universities are able to charge students up to a maximum of £3,000 per year.

But even this is set to rise as the government has encouraged the “marketisation” of higher education, with universities increasingly being treated as businesses.

Asked whether universities should be allowed to charge whatever tuition fees they please just before he left office, Blair replied that the university system was “a global marketplace”—i.e., that the universities would always be able to find people somewhere in the world able and willing to pay the going rate.

Just months later, his successor Brown announced plans to remove £100 million of funding from 170,000 mostly part-time students studying for a second degree. The same month saw a private-sector firm granted the power to award degrees for the first time. BPP College of Professional studies, an offshoot of the education firm BPP, will offer truncated two-year post-graduate degrees in law and business-related subjects from the next academic year. The degrees will cost about £10,000 a year.

The principal of BPP said, “We don’t have the baggage of traditional research, so we’re focused on customer service” (emphasis added).

In April, the universities secretary, John Denham, announced a consultation paper with proposals for 30,000 new university places to be co-funded by business. Students on these courses, which will be partly designed by employers, will study “business-focused” degrees. Denham said in an interview with the Guardian, “If you look at the university system as a whole, and the way in which it engages with employers, it needs to be closer, more intensive, and part of what university offers has got to be tailored for the needs of a very different group of students and the people who are going to be paying for these courses.”

In 2009, the Brown government is to review the impact of implementing top-up fees, and vice chancellors at many universities, including those in the “Russell Group” of leading universities, are proposing they be allowed to charge far higher tuition fees than those currently in place.

Debt deters students from seeking university education

A study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published in September showed that in terms of young people entering university—as opposed to those actually finishing degree courses—the UK had fallen below the OECD average. Using the OECD’s definition, 52 percent of young people in the UK enter university, while in Australia, New Zealand and the Scandinavian nations, three quarters of young people enter university after leaving school.

Despite Labour’s much-vaunted expansion of higher education, the OECD found that there was less expansion of higher education in the UK than in South Korea, the Czech Republic and Hungary. The research also found that only 32 percent of 15-year-olds in the UK expect to go to university—one of the lowest figures throughout the whole OECD.

Research conducted by the Sutton Trust charity showed that “Nearly two-thirds (59 percent) of students who had decided not to pursue study in higher education reported that avoiding debt had affected their decision ‘much’ or ‘very much.’ ”

The spectre of debt is now also affecting where students intend to study. Nationally, students now pay an average of £9,000 a year in fees. Some 31 percent of those intending to go to university told the Sutton Trust survey that avoiding debt had “much” or “very much” affected their decisions about where to study.

The report found that 75 percent of those surveyed were planning or considering a local university and were intending to live with parents/guardians to keep costs down. The survey also found that 72 percent of prospective students intending to live at home cited a desire to minimise debt as “important” or “very important.”

Protests at universities.

The erosion of education access and campus services has led students at several universities to stage protests in the past few months.

On April 22, hundreds of students protested at the University of Manchester in the northwest of England. The university is the largest single campus in the UK, with some 40,000 students. Protesters gathered to oppose increased tuition fees, vastly reduced teaching hours and contact time, staff cuts, increases in rents, and the lack of library and IT resources and access to facilities.

The university has spiralling debts and has spent tens of millions of pounds on new buildings, whilst the most basic requirements of students and staff are not being met. More than 400 jobs have been shed throughout the university in the last year, and there are more to go.

The protest temporarily closed several roads near the university, including the main Oxford Road artery. Students later occupied the new £31 million Arthur Lewis complex, which has restricted access to undergraduates, who must book an appointment with the relevant member of staff in advance.

According to research conducted by the University of Manchester Students Union, politics students spend an average of just 86 hours per year in lectures and tutorials. Twenty years ago, politics students at the university received 200 hours of teaching a year.

Social Anthropology students were taught for 220 hours per year 20 years ago. This figure has fallen to as little as 120 hours. The survey also found that English Language students “can typically expect to receive between six and eight weekly hours of teaching this semester.”

One of those surveyed, a second-year history student, said she paid £3,070 a year in tuition fees and has only four hours’ tuition timetabled a week. This works out to her paying £28.43 per hour for her education.

At the University of Sussex, management has published restructuring plans that will mean cuts in established areas of study in favour of more lucrative areas such as business and management and international security. The creation of a “Sussex Innovation Centre,” oriented to the requirements of businesses such as American Express, is under way.

Students have held numerous protest meetings and demonstrations, including the staging of a mock outdoor exam on May 2. Some 150 students participated in the protest in opposition to 30 overseas students being banned from taking tests because they had fallen behind on tuition fee payments. The international students have also had their university library and e-mail accounts cut off until they agree to pay their fees. The protest was followed by students marching to university financial offices, where a petition with 300 signatures was delivered. Up to 50 students from the University of Sussex occupied a business centre on the University campus.

On May 2, students at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland protested against the closure of Fife Park, one of the university’s two accommodation halls. The university has decided to replace it with new accommodation, with rents being raised from £52 to between £110 and £130 per week.

A report published last year by the Higher Education Policy Institute found that more than one fifth of UK students at English universities felt they were receiving “poor” or “very poor” value for money. The previous year, before top-up fees were introduced, the number dissatisfied was 15 percent. More than a quarter of students (27 percent) from outside the European Union, who pay up to £12,000 per annum to study in Britain, reported that they received poor or very poor value.

Research by the NUS found that when living costs such as rent, textbooks, utility bills and travel are added, the average cost of a three-year university degree comes to more than £45,000 in London and £39,000 elsewhere. Graduates are often saddled with massive debts and usually find themselves in low-paying jobs, with no relevance to their field of study and expertise.

NUS officially abandons free education policy

The numerous protests against rising tuition fees, attacks on campus services and facilities, and the wholesale privatisation of university education express a growing undercurrent of anger against the Labour government and a political shift to the left among a section of students and youth.

In contrast, the Labour-controlled National Union of Students has gone ever further to the right. Its previous commitment to free education, as a right, was formally abandoned at its April conference when NUS delegates voted down a motion calling for a campaign for “Free Education.” NUS President-elect Wes Streeting, a member of Labour Students, recently wrote a letter to all NUS members in England.

Acknowledging the developing student opposition to the privatisation of education, he wrote that the NUS “still believe that higher education should be free for students. It isn’t ludicrous, it isn’t offensive and it isn’t selfish.”

But, he continued, “sadly, for students in England it isn’t realistic, or credible, and it doesn’t have any chance of being endorsed by any British government under Gordon Brown or David Cameron.”

To emphasise the point, Streeting added, “Let me be clear: we are prepared to accept the notion of a graduate contribution to the costs of higher education.”

It was not possible to have a free education system and at the same time have quality, well-resourced education, he continued. Hailing the decision at the NUS conference, he wrote, “Delegates at our conference voted to stop simply arguing for ‘free education’ in England, and decided instead to consult with our members and bring to the table some radical, imaginative solutions that will be better and fairer for students than regressive and damaging market forces. Only if we do this can we sit down at the same table with the vice-chancellors and the captains of industry, and have our policy taken seriously by the government.”

Despite Streeting’s ridiculous claim to oppose “market forces” while sitting down with the “captains of industry,” the NUS has made clear it is in full agreement with the Brown government that students must pay for their education.

Such a perspective must be rejected.

The assault on free public education is a product of the subordination of every aspect of economic and social life, in Britain and around the world, to the dictates of the “free market.”

The International Students for Social Equality is for a free and universally accessible education system for all who wish to study. This is critical for the development of a truly democratic and egalitarian society, in which the requirements of society as a whole have priority over private profit.

Students must be allowed and encouraged to concentrate on their studies and engage fully in all aspects of campus life, without either being forced to work and/or accumulating massive debts. The ISSE calls for the abolition of the Student Loans system and for students to be freed of all debt obligations and for the re-introduction of grants to be paid for by taxing business.

Students must also have access to the latest Information Technology, textbooks, university libraries, library databases and online resources as part of a high-quality education. Teaching hours and timetables must be re-organised so that lecturers are able to spend the necessary time with their students. Cutbacks at universities and the shedding of staff must be ended and reversed.

Such a programme cannot and will not be implemented by New Labour, its backers in the National Union of Students leadership, or any of the political representatives of the super-rich. The right to education was won by the working class and the socialist movement in decades of struggle. We call on students and all young people to take forward the building of the ISSE at your campus. This is an integral part of the fight for an alternative, international socialist perspective—one that begins from the needs and rights of the vast majority of ordinary working and young people, not the profits of a tiny minority.

Why is the National Union of Students planning a vote to abolish itself?

JamieSW — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:32:32 +0000

A key vote at next week’s annual conference of the National Union of Students (NUS) could see the organisation transformed from a campaigning body into a “professional lobbying group”.

Over 1,000 delegates will vote on whether to ratify a “governance review” that will abolish the union’s annual conference and national executive – replacing them with a congress that “celebrates the year” and a senate that will rarely meet.

This would leave power solely in the hands of full-time “professionals”.

The review is being promoted by NUS national executive members who describe themselves as “organised independents”.

It is also backed by the Labour Students organisation.

They believe that in order to influence government policy and future reviews of higher education funding, the NUS must drop its campaigning and become something more akin to a think-tank.

Many among the organised independents and Labour Students feel that demonstrations and protests are old fashioned and that they present “unrealistic demands” upon the government.

Unattainable

The NUS has even declared that the demand for free education is unattainable, and therefore must be dropped.

They argue that all that has to go in order for the NUS to be taken seriously by the heads of Britain’s universities and top politicians.

Conferences involving elected delegates and an executive that includes a few left activists are regarded as an obstacle to the transformation.

In case the proposed changes fail to put a stop to the left, the review will create a new NUS board empowered to veto any decision passed at the congress or senate that could “put the organisation in legal or financial peril”.

Though the board is supposed to be student-led, 40 percent of its members will be appointed rather than elected.

Some supporters of the review believe that these changes to the NUS’s structure are just the first step.

For them the final goal should be the eradication of politics from student unions, turning them into multi-million pound businesses.

The governance review will face opposition at NUS conference from those who are determined that the union should be transformed into an organisation that coordinates student struggles against rising tuition fees, racism and Islamophobia, the “war on terror” and climate change.

Reflection

“The stakes are incredibly high,” says Rob Owen, a Student Respect supporter on the NUS national executive.

“If these changes go through, the ability of student activists in colleges to have an impact on the policy of their union will be so curtailed that democracy will be almost non-existent in the NUS.”

Rob sees the attempt to change NUS as a reflection of the depoliticised way in which many local student unions are being run.

He says, “A student union should be a place where people can come together and find resources that will help them campaign, that informs and educates people, and is somewhere good to socialise.

“But many student unions are now just a commercial venture.

“In many ways the unions are travelling in the opposite direction to students themselves.

“Growing radicalism is leading to healthy activism on a lot of campuses – particularly in opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Where student unions attempt to situate themselves in that activism, they become popular and democratic institutions.

“In these places people think of the student union as ‘their’ union, not just a bar.”

Student Debt: Selling Out the Next Generation

eddie — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 21:35:49 +0000

With student debt spiralling and higher education being reduced to a commodity, Laurie Penny calls for a change of course

University used to be about getting yourself educated. Now, if you’re lucky, it’s about getting in, grabbing the biggest, most career-oriented degree you can lay hands on, and getting out again – hopefully with your sanity intact and a few weeks’ holiday before you don a suit and start paying back your loan. Macro-capitalism has sold us out, turning education into a consumable – a privilege to be bought rather than a right to be aspired to.

Discussion of macro-capitalist policy making has to involve a considered look at where the money is and where it’s going, so let’s start there. Gordon Brown’s cabinet has recently, amid much public fanfare, pledged an extra £14 billion to be spent on primary and secondary education over the next three years, bringing the total education budget to £74 billion by 2010. This represents an annual increase of 2.5 per cent in real terms, compared with 4.4 per cent in recent years. Yes, that’s right – despite all the fuss, the rate of increased spending on education is actually slowing.

Moreover, it must be understood that £14 billion over three years, while it might sound like incredible riches, is in fact a paltry sum. Compare it to, say, the arbitrary figure of £28 billion conjured out of thin air to float Northern Rock last November. Next to this, or to the £128 billion (US$255 billion) made annually in legal tax evasion by the world’s super-rich, £14 billion is peanuts. And yet, how is this paltry sum being afforded?

It’s being afforded at the expense of a higher education system that is now almost entirely funded by its students, via top-up fees and, most recently, by Brown’s auction of the student loans book. That’s right, £6 billion – one third of the total owed by students and graduates – is to be sold to private investors. The NUS has been assured that the sale of the loans ’should not affect’ the low interest rate currently set on graduate repayments; however, the government has provided no details of what subsidies it has planned to counter commercial rates of interest. Students have every reason to worry.

As such, not only do all but the very poorest have to personally finance their higher education but the ’effectively interest-free’ loans that brought this about are now in jeopardy. All so that Brown can move some money around the already under-funded education budget rather than actually implementing any radical changes in public spending. And let’s not forget: students starting university this year are set to graduate with an average of over £15,000 worth of debt, and in some cases much more – not all of which is borrowed from the Student Loans company. To finance the increasing costs of higher education, students are becoming beholden to parents, banks and private loan providers, and working themselves into the ground outside of university hours merely to stay afloat. The net effect of this is that education has now become a commodity, and students have been transformed into consumers, entrenching social division and negating aspiration.

Recent efforts to redress the balance have been too little, too late.

’Stagnation, stagnation, stagnation’

Blair’s much-hyped goal of ‘50 per cent in higher education’ is now near to realisation. It has consistently been mistaken for a step towards higher aspirations for all; in fact, the way it has been managed makes it precisely the opposite, entrenching the stagnation of social mobility since 1970, as was recently reported by the Sutton Tust. Quite simply, the socio-economic goalposts have been moved for a generation of young people entering the workplace.

Over the past 15 years, a higher degree has become more than just a useful qualification. In the words of that noted socio-political analyst, Joe Strummer, one can no longer expect even to make tea at the BBC without a BA. A degree is increasingly a necessary entrance ticket to a certain level of employment and fiscal stability, effectively extending the mandatory education period for a large and specifically privileged social demographic: the middle classes.

After 10 years of Labour government, there is still only a 20 per cent likelihood of bright children from the poorest quarter of families going to university, a figure that rises to 80 per cent among the middle and upper-middle classes. Recent efforts to redress the balance have fallen pitifully short. According to the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), the new initiative to provide limited grants of up to £2,800 per year to the very poorest students will benefit very few of those actually in need. Only the very poorest are eligible, and for those that do make it to university from households with an income under £17,500, the money is usually insufficient.

In what was billed as an effort to increase social mobility, New Labour has in fact managed to entrench the social stagnation of the Thatcher years by creating a system of mandatory, effectively self-funded higher education as an entry requirement for the middle classes. Well-meant fob-off politics – such as this year’s limited grant-scheme – have been too little, too late.

Education as a consumable

Perhaps the most damaging aspect of the escalating loans system of financing higher education is the fact that university education is seen as something that should, first and foremost, provide ’value for money’. As Albert Einstein noted in his 1949 treatise ‘On Education’, an erosion of personhood and negation of rounded education occurs when ‘an exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career. There is only one way to eliminate these grave evils … namely, a socially-funded educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.’

Students are now aware, from the moment they enter university, that they will have to earn money to pay back their borrowings for the very education that will finance those borrowings. As such, education becomes judged purely in terms of the monetary rewards it will eventually deliver. Even official press releases and loans company documents refer to a student’s degree as little more than an exciting form of ISA – an investment purely in one’s financial future, rather than in one’s personal or social future.

This, in fact, is the root of the problem. Education is not a product. It’s a process. You can pay people to teach you, yes, but you cannot pop down to your local high street and buy yourself an education. Fifty years ago, Einstein recognised that an acquisitional, fiscally-minded higher education system was a contributing factor to ‘the crippling of individuals, [which] I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil’. Students in the 21st century are increasingly treated as consumers, buying on credit their ticket into a system that will, if they’re lucky, squeeze them out the other end as products themselves, boxed up with identical gleaming CVs and desperate smiles: tagged, bagged and shipped out from the warehouse onto the screeching shop-floor of life.

Sold out by student politicians?

What’s worrying is that our own official representatives are more interested in playing the system than in challenging it. The NUS, a deeply divided but influential union, has allowed the government cumulatively to chip away at the rights of students for one reason only – namely, that the union has, for the past decade, been run by Labour-affiliated students with one eye constantly on their own futures in government. As such, the main NUS delegates have been reluctant to make waves to secure the educational rights of the next generation of British citizens. The 2006 NUS conference, for example, responding to the controversial introduction of top-up-fees, concluded that a small increase in means-tested grants would solve the problem – but this has already proven to be vastly insufficient.

There remains, however, a dedicated radical faction amongst student representatives who have continued to contest the increasing shift of higher education towards the status of an unequal service industry. One such sub-group is the student organisation Education Not for Sale (ENS).
ENS, like many on the student left, has come to the conclusion that a fully subsidised higher education system, with living grants available to all, is the only way to turn around the social stagnation brought about by the financial and schematic management of the UK university system. Sophie Buckland, ENS women’s officer and a spokesperson for the organisation, tells us: ’[Our organisation] fights for a grant high enough to live on for all students in post-16 education as part of a fully free education system – at least £120 a week. Even a minimal increase in taxation of the rich and of business would create enough funds to make this possible.’

Radical change is needed

Brown’s government has an opportunity to make university a plane of true social levelling and real educational and personal endeavour. But only if the prime minister has the courage to radically re-think his policy on education spending right across the board. Robbing University Peter to pay Primary Paul is a pitiful attempt at instigating the sort of systemic change needed.

Brown could provide the kind of higher education every young person has a right to quite easily, but only by rolling back the tax windfalls Labour has given the rich will enough public funds be generated to do so. He must invest not only in the country’s financial future, but in the social and educational legacies his government will leave to the next generation. Only radical, systemic change of the UK’s attitude towards education spending will give my young sisters’ generation the choices, in learning and in life, that every youth facing an uncertain 21st-century future deserves.