There is something that the Tory Boys who run the government at the moment don’t get about charging people for their tertiary education. And I include Nick Clegg in the definition of “Tory Boys”; Tony Blair and Miliband minor are also in the club, since Labour thinks capping fees at £6,000 a year will do the trick!
Back in the sixties there was a significant expansion of higher education; everybody had their first degree paid for by the local education authority (LEA) and there was a means-tested maintenance grant available too, so even less well-off students could go to the university of their choice, whether it was Aberdeen or Exeter or anywhere in between. The reason for this largesse was that the government thought it a good idea for the country to have as many well-educated people as possible.
As time went on, there was further higher education expansion; cynically, I thought that it was just to keep young people off the dole queue, but perhaps the expansion was for the same reason that it had been done in the sixties – in some way better educated people are of greater value to society than poorly educated ones, in some way the nation as a whole benefits. If that’s so, what better thing for a government to do than to make sure that the intellectual, economic and social capital of the nation is increased by the simple expedient of getting them to learn stuff and think a bit?
Now, I can see the argument that says in the past, free higher education was a subsidy to the middle class, and therefore they should be made to pay. I can also see the argument that says people with a degree earn more than people without, and they shouldn’t be getting an advantage paid for by those not similarly advantaged. I see the arguments, and I could shoot holes in both if I wanted, but that’s not the point; neither is it the reason that they want to charge increasing amounts for tertiary education. The reason for this policy is that our Tory Boy politicians are just old fashioned class warriors in cuddly clothing, who have the absolute (and quite erroneous) conviction that cutting public expenditure is the way to deliver happiness to the nation. It’s not their fault – it’s the fault of the silver spoon in their mouths. (If you think this is harsh, you should have read the first draft!)
Why do I care? Well, I wasn’t always middle class; I was brought up poor; very poor. My father (a drinker and a gambler) left home when I was six and my brother was one. Life was a grinding, humiliating struggle, with my Mother trying to live on inadequate benefits. For me, education was the ladder out of poverty, or so it seemed. There was no other ladder on offer, and frankly, being poor was crap (I imagine it hasn’t got better in the 40-odd years since).
I had the luck to be born just at the right time. I was a beneficiary of the golden age of state education in England brought about by the 1944 Butler Education Act and the expansion of the universities in the sixties. I passed the 11+ exam and went to a recently built grammar school that was well equipped and well staffed by teachers who actually seemed to care about the development of the pupils (all boys, by the way; I also went to an all boys primary school, which was unusual even then). I knew university would be paid for by the LEA, which would also give me a grant for maintenance.
But, it still wasn’t easy to get to the starting line of university. After I left school (four A-levels, place at my first choice university, grant for the course and maintenance all sorted out), I dithered – university was wonderfully attractive, daunting and something I thought was for others, not for me; I didn’t need much to put me off. Had I had to face the prospect of an unimaginably large debt (whatever the soft options there may have been for paying it back), I would have had an even better excuse for not going. And, in the end I didn’t immediately go to university, I got a job instead.
How could I be so daft? There is a reason for this perverse decision. I want you to understand (what the millionaire Tory Boys never will) that I was the first person in my extended family to seriously face the prospect of higher education (as it happens, my cousin did eventually get herself a really good education and now teaches at a university). No-one that I knew had ever been to university. We were in uncharted waters, and I was the navigator, helmsman, and cargo – and I was 18; there was no-one to steady the ship and put all this into a proper context for me. It was too much, and I bottled it.
And that’s why I care – not because my sons will have debts (they’ll get sorted out by them or by me in the course of time) but because of those children who will not take the opportunity of higher education through fear, uncertainty and doubt, and who certainly don’t need the prospect of a £50,000+ debt to start their working lives with!
There will be lots of young people put off by the debt because they and their families are frightened by the headline figure, and don’t understand the soft options for paying it off. They will be put off, and that’s the point. They’ll be put off which will mean that their life chances, longevity and health and the well-being of their children will be harmed relative to those who do go on to higher education. And they should, absolutely, go. Think of it this way: if it were a bad idea, rich people wouldn’t do it!
