A rethink to our approach to university education is needed - Andy Brown

There are, however, some hard questions that need to be asked about university funding before extra money is provided.

One of the most urgent and most financially significant is the issue of overseas students. Much of the coverage in the press has presented the existence of overseas students as an immigration problem and given the impression that attracting more people to study here is a negative.

The basic economic facts are that Britain gains enormously from attracting these students and we’d be bonkers to restrict the numbers coming in. Every single overseas student who studies here brings in more foreign currency than we get if we export a luxury car.

If a student wishes to study a relatively low cost course such as business studies at York University they pay £23,700 for the fees. For a single year. Since the course lasts three years that means bringing into this country over £70,000 of foreign exchange just to pay the fees. If the subject is electronic engineering, then the total will be over £85,000.

The student then has to pay for rent and for living expenses which could easily double what is spent on fees. So, every single student who studies here provides a huge boost for our economy. They are also one of the key sources of income that has helped to enable many UK universities to expand the scale of their operations and become hugely influential contributors to Britain’s success in many of the more creative forms of business.

Our science industries, our health sector, our tech startups, our IT companies, and our creative industries have all been built on the back of research ideas and skilled people coming out of our universities.

Which makes it particularly strange that the last government decided to create something of a hostile and unwelcoming environment for overseas students and succeeded in discouraging many from applying to come here. A decline in applications has punched a hole in the finances of most universities and is one of the prime reasons that they have had to go to the government cap in hand asking for more money.

The obvious solution is to reverse the policy of being unwelcoming and to embrace the positivity of attracting talented young people to come and study in our country. The new government may lack the necessary political courage.

When it comes to putting up the fees for British students the government should take a much more cautious approach. The fees are already a huge burden to many and it is far from clear that we can as a society afford for so many of our young people to start life so badly in debt.

The total level of student debt has been allowed to reach £225bn. Much of it can never be repaid. How can it be right to even contemplate raising domestic fees because of the costs of an ideological fear over overseas students?

Behind those scary numbers on debt there are some personal histories of good value for money as the degree brings in the promised high earnings. There are also some experiences that are very different as it proves impossible to earn enough money to pay off that debt and cover the costs of a mortgage and raising a young family.

Before any increase in fees is even considered there needs to be a serious rethink of how higher education is organised in Britain and how we expect to keep our young people up to speed with a rapidly changing world. The idea that close to half the population studies full time for three years and that it is possible for them to acquire the bulk of the knowledge they will need for the rest of their career is seriously outdated.

Technology is changing at an incredible pace and so there is a real need to focus scarce resources on retraining and updating people throughout their lives. It would surely be better if significantly fewer young people spent three years on full time study before starting professional work and significantly more adults were supported to attend a university or a college part time at regular points in their career.

Clearly employers have a major role to play in training their staff, but it is strange in the extreme that we focus so much of the incredible resources of our universities on initial training and so little on lifelong learning.

The universities need a change in attitude from the government that frees up the full scale of the opportunity that comes from welcoming overseas students. The government needs a change in approach from the Universities so that they become much more flexible. It is time for a serious rethink about how our universities function, not a simple increase in domestic fees in return for business as normal.

Andy Brown is the Green Party councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.