Two Penn’orth: Come on, David Willetts – bin the spin already

Governments are prone to producing propaganda to manoeuvre their way out of sticky situations. However I am not convinced by the claims that David Willetts, the universities minister, makes to justify raising tuition fees. Let us tackle two arguments that Willets, a former PPE student at Oxford, set out last week in the Guardian.

Firstly, there is his suggestion that we should look upon our debt as more of sort of “higher income tax.” This is a fundamentally flawed argument. For one, it assumes that as graduates, we will benefit from higher-paid jobs as a result of a university education. While this may be the case for a large group of people, especially those studying law or business, there is a large minority of university-leavers who will struggle to find a job in the next few years. With the number of jobless graduates on the rise, it is strange notion to be ‘taxing’ them for the financial benefits of university when they are yet to receive any.

Another problem with the argument, is that it is fundamentally bollocks. If I buy a car on credit and end up paying 25 percent interest over five years, can I somehow transform that into a sort of tax? No, I cannot. It is a debt. If I take out a bank loan and get a call asking for the money back, I cannot in actuality, twist it and tell my friends, “Ooh, I’d love to go to the cinema, but I’m up to my eyeballs in taxes.” What gives the government the right to play mix and match with the dictionary? A debt is a debt, a tax is a tax. Fact. No amount of Conservative rebranding is going to change this.

Secondly, there is the charge that university students are a tax burden on the country. This is a really rather insulting allegation which would not be put against other social groups. Imagine the furore if the Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, held an interview which lamented the burden of old people on society. Children cost the taxpayer billions per year to school – are they also a burden? Students, falling to a new low in the echelons of public discourse, have joined the smokers and drinkers of the NHS and now have to fight for their right to be looked after by the state.

It also neglects the fact that students are learning skills that are immeasurably useful, like engineering and medicine. It is this is expertise that a developed society like Britain needs. Even the groups who do on the surface, socially useless subjects, still contain the next generation of researchers that are highly valued by the country. University graduates also go on to undertake vital jobs to society, such as teachers, civil servants social workers.

They are not a burden. But populist rhetoric, slamming university students, certainly is.