John Roberts: Coalition to blame as tuition fee fury escalates

The question of how the country pays for so many young people to go through university is a difficult one for all political parties. Any plan to increase the amount students pay will never be popular.

However, the latest mess enveloping the coalition is almost entirely of its own making.

When MPs voted through the controversial tuition fee increase last year, there were riots on the streets of London and claims that a generation of young people would be priced out of university life.

Six months on, and these fears are being realised. The only difference is the voices of dissent against top-level fees are no longer coming from student protesters, but from the very Ministers who drew up these reforms.

Here’s why. When MPs gave universities the powers to raise fees to £9,000, they hoped many institutions would not actually use it. This top-end charge, they said, would be the exception, with the average annual levy for students being around £7,500.

Now it seems the majority of universities regard themselves as a special case.

In our region, four universities – Bradford, Hull, Leeds and Sheffield – have indicated that they plan to charge the full £9,000. The cheapest fee being proposed is just £50 short of £8,000, at Huddersfield.

This was entirely predictable. Under the coalition plan, there was no incentive for universities to charge any less than £9,000.

Furthermore, every vice-chancellor warned that a huge cut in state funding for teaching degrees would mean tuition fees rising above £7,000 to help universities recover lost income.

This situation creates several problems for the Government. The critics who warned this would happen are, understandably, having a field day ahead of the local elections, but a bigger dilemma is the extent to which Ministers now contradict their own spin.

When increased fees were approved, the message from the Government was clear – university education remained free at the point of charge, the threshold at which graduates needed to start repaying their loans was being lifted and there would be even more support for students from the poorest backgrounds.

Although the fees were going up, the way in which graduates were being asked to pay them off was fairer and more progressive. This message may not have won over student protesters, but it was, at least, a coherent argument.

Now the Government’s position is less clear. Vince Cable has told vice-chancellors that students may snub £9,000-a-year courses.

The Business Secretary has also criticised the higher education sector for the lack of creative thinking on redesigning courses to create “higher quality but lower-cost teaching”.

The problem is that the Government has done nothing to achieve this goal. Instead, it has given universities the opportunity to operate in a market economy and then complained when these institutions attempted to maximise their income.

Now Ministers are in danger of looking desperate as they come to terms with the consequence of having to borrow even more money – in this age of austerity – to pay for fees upfront before recouping the outlay at a later date. This is why they are calling for the higher education sector to reinvent itself. It is not because they have developed a long-term strategy, but because their sums do not add up – and the Treasury has no money to bail out Ministers.

Furthermore, Mr Cable now says that the coalition will look at reducing student numbers or making further cuts if the overall fee level set by English universities does not come down. This threat may be necessary, but it also locks the country’s higher education sector into a cycle of rising fees and funding cuts.

University bosses find themselves in the bizarre position of being asked to collectively bring down the cost of fees – effectively to collude – when they do not yet know how much state funding they will receive, on top of their fee income, in future.

This means universities are setting higher fees because they fear further funding cuts, while Ministers need to cut public spending because they cannot afford to cover the fees that universities are charging.

When the trebling of fees was announced, the biggest problem for the Government was the embarrassment and potential electoral damage it would cause the coalition’s junior partner.

Having reneged upon its pre-election pledge to oppose fee increases, the volte-face on the part of the Liberal Democrats could be interpreted as an act of courage by a party facing up to the financial responsibilities of government.

What was less courageous, however, was they way in which these reforms were bundled through in haste to minimise the negative publicity for the Government. As a result, the country has been left with a system which is unfit for purpose – and which both students leaders and Ministers are both saying is unaffordable.

A scenario fit for a Yes Prime Minister script, it would be almost amusing if the consequences were not so serious.

John roberts is the Yorkshire Post’s education correspondent.