£9,000 fee-dom the best way to freedom

**“Coalition government abolishes tuition fees.”**

This is what would be coming out of the mouths of every student had it not been for one of the biggest missed opportunities in PR in recent memory.

It may seem strange for somebody who receives a government grant and Warwick bursary to come out in defence of the way we pay for university.

However, having closely examined the details (at one point the way the media reported the tuition fee rise gave me concern for whether I could afford university), I have realised that university is funded in a surprisingly egalitarian way.

We do not get into debt by going to university. We do not have repayment pressures nor will it affect our credit rating. Instead, we effectively pay an extra tax to cover our tuition costs. It is simply set out on the government’s student finance website that one pays for their university education by having 9 percent of any income over £21,000 taken out of their pay packet.

Therefore, if somebody earns £25,000 a year they pay £30 a month, or if they earn £60,000 a year they pay £292 a month etc. Of course, once one has paid back the equivalent of £9,000 per year of university (and some interest), these repayments stop.

It is interesting that those who continue to express a faux-indignation over the change in university funding are the very same people who say we should pay for universities by raising taxes.

{{ quote The exact same policy could have been introduced under the guise of completely abolishing tuition fees. }}

And yet this system is far fairer than a general rise in taxation because it only taxes those who have benefitted from their university education and are earning more, rather than hitting the 50 percent of the population who do not go to university – and who are often the poorer in society.

Therefore, it is the way that the government presented the changes that is the real disaster. The exact same policy could have been introduced under the guise of completely abolishing tuition fees and instead having a graduate tax or a ‘further education contribution’, and there would have been none of the misguided fury that we see amongst students today.

It is malign for anybody to continue to propagate the idea that the change in university funding is an awful thing, or that it will prevent the poor from attending university. The opposite is true, as reflected in the generous grants that are an oft-forgotten part of the whole change.
To understand that students are not hit by a crippling debt would take about five minutes of basic research and analysis. If people are incapable of this, then maybe university isn’t for them after all.