Colin D Gordon

 “Only the curious will learn and only the resolute overcome the obstacles to learning”. So once said Eugene S. Wilson, former Dean of Admissions at Amherst College, Massachusetts. These days, however (asserts the USA’s “International Education Finance Corporation”), a more appropriate sentiment would be that “only the wealthy will learn” and that it is now the ever-increasing cost of tuition which constitutes the main hurdle for anyone with limited financial means wishing to obtain “ further education experience” and thereby enhance their career prospects. Prior to the start of the current UK Academic Year, the “This Is Money” journalist Harry Glass declared that university students embarking on degree courses in September 2012 (but not those already enrolled before that date) would “be saddled with an astonishing £53,330 of debts” by the time they emerged three years later into the jobs market. He also noted that – due to the tuition fees limit having gone up to £9,000 pa – an “average student” would be paying £8,770 pa to their university, nearly £12,500 for their accommodation, more than £4,300 on food” and that the higher prices of essentials such as household bills, books and travel expenses would “dramatically escalate the total cost of attending university”. 

This figure contrasted sharply with the amount (“around £23,000”) owed by students graduating in July 2012, when the maximum annual tuition fee was still only £3,375. A survey conducted by the Sutton Trust / Ipsos MORI organization & published on May 30^th has revealed that 67% of the 11-16 year-olds questioned have “significant concerns about university finance”: 28% are worried about tuition fees, 19% about student living costs and 18% about “lack of earnings while studying”. Despite such preoccupations, 86% of them nevertheless consider that going to university “helps people do well and get on in life” – especially, it seems, students from the black & minority ethnic communities, 49% of whom say they are “very likely to go to university”, whereas only 35% of white students anticipate they will do so. Following the report, Sir Peter Lampl (Chairman of the Sutton Trust & the Education Endowment Foundation) noted that “Graduates face debts of over £40,000 with the higher fees & many will be paying for their university studies into their fifties” and urged the Government to introduce an arrangement whereby students from “low and middle income families” would pay less for their tuition.

In an article for “The Independent” in January, David Willetts (Conservative Minister for Universities & Science) predicted that the total income (derived from “taxpayer-supported student loans”) for higher education institutions teaching UK-resident & European Union (EU) students would “increase from £8 billion in 2012/13 to £9.1bn in 2014” and also confirmed that tuition loans would become available for part-time students “on the same basis as full-time ones”. On 21^st February, the “Daily Mail Online” reported that he had “removed the upper age limit for taking out student loans to cover tuition fees” so as “to enable the over-‘60’s to go back to university”. However – as Chris Parr pointed out in the “Times Higher Education Supplement” on 17^th May – the Minister has been criticised for being somewhat optimistic regarding the “RAB (Resource Accounting & Budgeting) Charge” – namely, how much of the loans would ever be recovered. On  20^th May, “StudentLoans.co.uk” quoted statistics from a “Mail On Sunday” investigation that suggested “Around 85% of graduates in England will never pay back their student loans” – completely contradicting Government claims that “60% of students will honour their loan debts during their working lives”. The Daily Telegraph’s Education Editor, Graeme Paton, has referred to figures implying that “up to 13,000 students from mainland Europe could be withholding cash after finishing degree courses in the UK”, many have “disappeared”, others are “struggling to keep up with repayments or have failed to submit vital information to British Government officials” – all of which means “they could effectively gain a degree for free”.

Even the Minister himself has acknowledged (to Parliament’s Business, Skills & Innovation Committee) that 34% of student loans may never be repaid. He has also been accused (since becoming a Minister) of reneging on views expressed in his book “How The Baby Boomers (those born at the end of World War Two) Stole Their Children’s Future” in 2010 when the Conservative Party was still in opposition. “They have squandered their wealth (he wrote), created a burden which has broken society and left a mess for the next generation to sort out”. Many media commentators agreed with him. Laurie Penny in the “New Statesman” advocated levying “a fee on all working-age graduates, including those aged 30 and above who have used the benefits of free higher education to carve out high-paying careers for themselves”. Likewise, Sunday Times columnist Jenni Russell: “Let’s tax all those with free degrees. People who did well out of being graduates should start paying back”; Sir Tim Brighouse (former London Schools Commissioner) in the TES: “Yes, there should be a ‘Graduate Tax’ – but just for the ‘charmed generations’ aged between 45-70”. His proposals would “catch almost all members of the cabinet” and those currently running the country’s industries, thus fulfilling the “important principle” whereby each generation “should try to improve the situation of the next one”.

According to “This Is Money”, students who graduate in June 2015 and then get a job with (for example) a salary of £25,000 pa, will have to start their repayments in April 2016.  A “MoneySavingsExpert” chart estimates that a salary of £22,000 pa will incur an annual repayment of £90 (£7.50 per month); £30,000 pa (£810 pa / £67.50 pm); £40,000 pa (£1,710 pa / £142.50 pm); £50,000 pa (£2,610 pa / £217.50 pm). Students stop owing “either when they’ve cleared the debt or when 30 years (from the April after graduation) have passed, whichever comes first”. If you never get a job earning over the threshold of £16,365, “you’ll never have to repay anything”. The “Student Loan Company” emphasises that “customers” who drop out of their course “may have to repay all or part of their loan immediately depending on their entitlement for that year”. Non-EU students applying to them for finance must have “acquired settled status, refugee status or been granted humanitarian protection in the UK (or be a family member of someone in that category) and have lived in the country for three years or more”.

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