Why is Sir Keir Starmer going back on his university tuition fee pledge? - Jayne Dowle

My heart sinks when Sir Keir mulls. Like many other parents, I am going to be very interested to see what he comes up with.

I was morally opposed to tuition fees long before I had an A Level student for a daughter, currently weighing up where she might like to study for a degree, likely to be in law.

I’m pushing her to go and experience student life, but even with graduates for parents and lots of positive role models around her, she’s anxious over the cost. It makes me very sad.

I’m of the generation that benefited from free university education, and many of us born in the 1960s and 1970s also received at least some maintenance grant.

From personal experience, I know how transformative higher education can be. There is much that is wrong with the current system, and much of that can be traced to another Labour leader (sadly), Tony Blair. Under his own tenure in Downing Street, he oversaw a mass expansion of university places under his desire to get at least 50 per cent of people into higher education.

And he also introduced tuition fees; but these were tripled under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, with former Lib Dem leader, the then MP for Sheffield Hallam, Nick Clegg turning his back on his many student constituents, by breaking his promise not to raise fees and agreeing with the Tories to push ahead with the punishing rise.

All of this is ancient history to today’s teenagers, who have enough to complain about with default ‘virtual’ lessons and precious little contact time with teaching staff. Value for money? They definitely think not.

But it’s a bitter backdrop that parents and university lecturers remember all too well. The result was that universities became marketplaces, their leaders (all those Vice Principals on fat cat salaries and perks to match) assumed the mantle of blue chip CEOs, and esteemed teaching and research academics got treated like hired hands. This is when I made the difficult decision to stop teaching journalism and PR – I was a part-time senior lecturer at a Yorkshire university – because morally, it all felt so shabby.

I would agree that reform is needed. But does it really have to cost? Germany removed all tuition fees for undergraduates in 2014, arguing that the country needed well-educated workers. France and Scandinavian countries keep university education free or cheap, for the same reason, and perhaps because learning is valued and respected for its own sake in civilised societies.

Hitting students (and their parents) in the purse, and going back on a clear promise – whilst blaming the current ‘economic backdrop’ – is a wrong move from the Labour leader.

I’m really not sure who he thinks this is going to impress. Student leaders are – inevitably – apoplectic.

Labour's student wing voted two months ago to campaign to scrap tuition fees, so left-wing group Momentum says that this means Sir Keir’s stance would “fly in the face of party democracy,” and represents a “betrayal of millions of young people”. The National Union of Students has criticised the move as “truly disappointing”.

We’ve already had ‘the talk’; that my daughter will end up saddled with at least £27,000 of student debt, for her tuition fees alone, and that’s only for a basic three-year course of study at up to £9,250 per year. Unless they’re fortunate enough to have parents (or grandparents) in a position to pay the lot up front, all students in England and Wales (where fees are capped at £9,000) are in the same financially sinking boat.

Scottish undergraduates are eligible for free tuition, and those in Northern Ireland pay a maximum of £4,630, whilst arrivees from other UK nations can be charged up to £9,250.

I’ve told Lizzie that sadly, this debt is a fact of life and there’s just no point worrying about it, or allowing the prospect of how she’s going to pay it back to blight her excitement.

What Sir Keir says next on the situation will be crucial. If he can reverse his promise to future generations of well-educated, high-tax paying individuals, what kind of damage is he prepared to unleash on everyone else?