Bradley Escorcio: Step in right direction on student debt

The current tuition fees system is broken. The fees are too high, the model is unsustainable for the Government and yet it somehow allows universities to profit from the financial hardships of their students. Top it off with an increasingly competitive graduate jobs market, a sprinkling of extortionately high levels of both personal and national debt and you have a recipe for disaster.

As an elected student representative, the day-to-day realities of this regime are all too apparent. Our Student Advice Centre has seen a 500 per cent increase in financial enquires over the past four years. Money worries are causing academic pressures, stress and mental health issues. The uncertainty of tomorrow raises but one question: “Is the £9,000-a-year cost of higher education really worth it?”

Our education is becoming commercialised and we’re seeing an unhealthy shift in the attitudes of our students. Gone are the days where students would support their lecturers striking for fair pay. Instead we see them calling on the university to refund a day’s worth of their tuition fees, as if they were unhappy with a supermarket purchase.

On the shelves today is Ed Miliband’s latest promotion – a pledge that a Labour government would cap fees at £6,000 in a bid to entice student voters into the party’s superstore.

Is the objective to save students £3,000 a year? Or is it to make higher education more attractive and encourage students to invest in their futures? While £18,000 worth of tuition debt alone is marginally more palatable than £27,000 for a standard three-year course, it’s far from ideal. It still remains an inconceivable amount of debt to be saddled with at the age of 21 and one many graduates will never be able to pay off. And then there’s talk that it will bring more students from a lower socio-economic background to university. I’m going to have to disagree. Yes, some students are put off by fees, 
but £6,000-a-year is still a hefty amount to consider.

Many young people have not even considered the option of further study because the primary and secondary education system has failed to provide them with basic academic skills. Simply put: if you can’t get the grades, you can’t get in. Perhaps this £3,000 per student would be better invested in early years education.

We’ll have to wait until May to see if Labour get their desired stampede of student voters. Most I have spoken to at the University of Leeds are supportive of the lower fees pledge. But those who had to pay the £9,000 in the first year it was introduced, and will miss out on the potential for lower fees, are feeling pretty bruised – even if they support low to no-fee education.

Our policy at Leeds University Union is to campaign for free education at the point of use, recognising universities as a public good that creates benefits for wider society. Students contribute an enormous amount to university cities, regions and the country as a whole. It 
is in our interests to do everything we can to recruit more and retain them here after their studies.

With one in seven people in Leeds a student, our generation has helped the city thrive – through volunteering, renting accommodation, spending money and forming part of the workforce. Ask any local restaurant owner, taxi driver or landlord how much their activity falls out of term time. Yorkshire has a wealth of successful universities providing a high level of research income, as well as the doctors, dentists, nurses and well-trained graduates who stay on in the region and contribute to our economy.

Ed Miliband’s speech in Leeds last week has done students a lot of favours. It has, quite rightly, put university funding back into the General Election debate. But although the pledge for £6,000 fees is a step in the right direction, it is not enough.

This year, the student vote in Leeds is powerful. However, expecting students to be swing voters on a single issue is no way to engage our generation. Tuition fees are just one on a long list of issues which politicians have a responsibility to address in the run up to May 7.

Bradley Escorcio is Union Affairs Officer at Leeds University Union.