Cut out the inequality, not the cashflow

_“If it ain’t broke, use it as an outlet for private capital” _

If I had to sum up the Government’s attitude to higher education in this country in 12 words, they would be those above. The Warwick Higher Education Summit gave Warwick students the chance to learn more about the issues facing higher education, and we learnt a lot of fun facts, like the fact that Denmark has no tuition fees, and gives its Home and EU students a maintenance grant of £500 per month to live on. We also learnt that Britain now has one of the most expensive higher education systems in the world, as well as (totally unrelated, of course) some of the highest levels of social inequality in Europe.

The recent mass restructuring of universities is a particularly bad idea when we consider the fact that the higher education sector (along with the NHS and the BBC – can you spot a pattern?) is one of the few areas in which Britain remains world-class. In May 2010, the Coalition Government inherited a higher education sector that out-performed its equivalents across the world. Britain spends 0.7 per cent of its GDP on higher education when the OECD average is 1.5 per cent and this outlay of £13 billion per year on higher education is estimated to generate £59 billion annually for the economy, and trains the next generation of professionals, from academics and architects, to midwives and primary school teachers, vital for any developed country.

We attract international students from all over the world who contribute financially to the higher education sector as well as often staying in the UK after graduation to contribute their skills and tax payments to the UK economy. This publicly-funded model has obviously worked extremely well for the last century, and it is now under attack from our ideologically motivated Government.

Here’s another fun fact: the creative industries generate 6 per cent of Britain’s GDP, and yet the Coalition government has just cut all state funding for the arts and humanities, despite the fact that it is these graduates who overwhelmingly contribute to those industries. In contrast, the financial services sector makes up 9 per cent of our annual GDP and any threat to their existence is treated as synonymous with a threat to Britain’s economy as a whole.

As for the social sciences, let’s see what happens to the calibre of our diplomats and politicians now that the punitive fees regime has come in. My guess is that these courses will become something of a finishing school for the rich, making entry to our political class even more dependent on privilege rather than merit (I know, hard to believe) than it currently is.

The main failing of British higher education is the fact that its elite institutions remain dominated by those with professional backgrounds. This is partly due to the inequality of the state education system overall, but schemes such as AimHigher and Connexions gave impartial advice to sixth formers who couldn’t get it anywhere else, and EMA payments made staying on at school a viable option for low-income teenagers. It goes without saying that these drops in the ocean of public expenditure have all been cut.

So David Willetts, who calls himself a Conservative but knows how to conserve nothing of value, has instead cut all funding for the arts and humanities, and gone a long way towards their stated goal of ‘shifting the burden of payment from the state to the student’. This has translated into fees of up to £9,000, and perhaps even worse, interest to be paid on all the loans given out by the Student Loans Company, which is already discouraging applicants from applying. This has not saved the Treasury any money in the short term, because it is an ideological move.

George Osborne’s two stated goals are to halve the deficit by 2014, and to improve GDP growth. The rise in tuition fees will do neither, as the vast amounts of money being loaned out now won’t be paid back for decades, if at all. Also, investment in higher education promotes growth in itself. The only two EU countries not investing in higher education to promote growth are the UK and Spain, the latter which currently has 50 per cent youth unemployment.

So the next time one of your Conservative friends tells you there was no alternative to cutting higher education funding, you’ve got a whole host of fun facts to throw in their faces.