Liam Burns, President, NUS Scotland
(Contact NUS Scotland on 0131 556 6598 for information on reprinting this article)
I wonder what type of student you are?
Are you someone who comes from a privileged background, whose parents fully pay your living and study costs? Whose parents both went to university and could give first-hand advice and support?
Or are you a different type of student? One who has to work over 20 hours a week, is forced to take out thousands of pounds of commercial debt in credit cards and overdrafts. Maybe you were forced to go part-time and now pay fees? Or maybe, just maybe, you are actually a mature student who found your way into education late because you never had the advice or support in the past.
Over the last few months, commentators and media have built a narrative of an “impending” crisis in education. For us students, there is nothing impending about it. Our most recent report on student funding, Still in the Red, found that regardless of public spending cuts or economic recessions, change in how we support students is long overdue. Our flawed funding system leaves students far below the poverty line, relying on jobs or parental support that often doesn’t exist.
"Education is not free and it is certainly not fair."
We often talk about our education being ‘free' because we don’t pay fees. When one in three students know someone who has dropped out because of financial strains, education is not free and it is certainly not fair.
Of course, it would be naive to ignore the external climate of cuts and ‘austerity’ measures, and over the next two months that will become blatantly clear. We face numerous calls for a return to tuition fees, the slashing of student numbers and the restriction of student support.
And the cliff edge of how universities will be funded post-2012 is well within sight. Over the next two months the scale of the challenges we are facing will become clear. We need to fight cuts as hard as we can but we must accept that we can’t hide from them or wish them away, and we can’t pretend that students across Scotland will somehow escape without being affected.
Government and business must step up first
Compared to most economically developed countries, Scotland spends some of the lowest amounts of public money on post-secondary education. Decision makers must realise that there is not a single solution that would produce the upfront funding they are so desperately seeking. Protecting current levels of public spending is actually a necessity, not simply an option.
Equally, businesses in Scotland benefit greatly from access to Scotland’s world class graduates. While students are paying through the nose to study in Scotland in terms of commercial credit, overdrafts, working too many hours, and even drop out, businesses currently have no structured way to contribute to higher education at all. For too long has business made all the demands while taking none of the responsibility.
The graduate contribution option
But there is another option in how we increase student support to levels where financial background genuinely stops making an impact on access to education. I can confidently argue that the benefits to society of college and university graduates far outweigh the benefit to the individual… up to a point. When we start talking about earnings of £25,000, £30,000 – I genuinely start to feel uncomfortable arguing that point, especially when I know such wages will have been earned off the back of families that never sent their children to university at all, for all the reasons I discussed earlier.
Should the nurse, teacher or social worker who is unlikely to exceed the average wage in society pay for the privilege of serving the public good? No. But should the doctor, lawyer or banker, who also serve society - but certainly exceed the average wage - give back to ensure that others have the same chance? That becomes a lot trickier.
Let me be clear. Students will never accept a price tag hanging over their heads before they even arrive on campus. Tuition fees are tuition fees. I don’t care if a charge is upfront or deferred, they will never be welcomed North of the border. Not by students, not by gradates, and not by the current Scottish Government.
But since 2009, your students’ associations have been asking us to consider how a progressive graduate contribution, paid only when and if you see a genuine financial benefit, could put more money back in current students’ pockets.
We have always been clear that any contribution must be connected to the financial benefit seen, not the cost of the course studied or the university attended, as both the Scottish Conservatives and Principal of Glasgow University have suggested in proposals for tuition fees by any other name.
Two principles
We are in for hugely testing times, and over the next couple of months we face some of the most extreme challenges we’ve seen for many decades. In facing up to these challenges there are two very different principles we are trying to reconcile.
The first principle is that society as a whole sees a huge benefit from higher and further education. These benefits come in all sorts of ways, but not least the type of successful economy that relies on high-end skills, such as the economies of Scotland and the UK. The second principle is that graduates as individuals see a huge benefit from higher education. I could list all the ways in which this is true, but no one would argue that for some graduates, this benefit is financial.
Students will not pretend that politicians, and certainly not the tax payer, are going to forget about the latter. However we need to make sure that nobody is so disingenuous as to ask us to forget about the former.
Addressing the "free education" argument
I asked at the start of this article what type of student you are. I ask this because I truly challenge those that advocate completely “free” education: who are you trying to protect?
When Scotland has the worst record in the UK at getting students from poorer backgrounds through our lecture theatre doors, charges fees to anyone who isn’t a full-time undergraduate and forces 40% into crippling commercial debt – don’t dare tell me it’s those from poorer backgrounds. It’s not. It’s enshrining university as the preserve of those lucky enough to come from the right background.