Higher education funding 'is broken'

Wednesday, September 03, 2008

The system of funding higher education is broken and the government shouldn’t try to ignore that fact, the National Union of Students has said in a report.

National president Wes Streeting said that while some may want to kick the issue "into the political long grass" until after the next general election, "we must ensure this does not happen".

He went on: "Students will feel betrayed if their concerns are relegated in a cosy Westminster deal. I expect ministers to be brave by launching a full and comprehensive review … so that students can hold them to account for the outcome."

Streeting said the report’s aim was to "show how the higher education funding system we have today is so socially regressive and so harmful to learning", adding: "Many have witnessed with mounting dismay the growing consumerisation of education. They know instinctively that dividing up our limited resources through a market mechanism is wrong. They can see that higher education, like the society around it, is unequal and unfair."

The NUS report said the system as designed – based on the principle that the market better delivers what students pay for – is faulty and has a range of unintended and negative consequences. Also, the system ensures the richest institutions financially benefit most from poor performance in widening participation – and vice versa.

"As a result, rather than act as an engine of social mobility, the current system’s ‘diversity’ acts to reinforce existing social inequality in both opportunity and outcome," the report said. "The system fails to ensure that those who enjoy the greatest financial benefit from higher education will contribute more to its costs."

The director general of the Russell Group, Dr Wendy Piatt, argued that the current system of student support in England is one of the most generous – and expensive – in the world. Students pay no up-front fees, grants and bursaries are given to students from poor backgrounds, and there is no real interest rate on loans, she said, adding that taxpayers pay a relatively high subsidy to provide interest-free loans for all students no matter what they or their parents earn.

"Reports like this must ensure they separate the idea of student ‘debt’ from commercial private debt," Piatt stressed. "Low-earning graduates are protected by generous terms [because] they do not pay anything until they earn over £15,000 and have their loan wiped after 25 years. There is absolutely no evidence that a national bursary system would widen participation – in fact it is more likely to hamper all the efforts Russell Group universities are making to encourage students from non-traditional backgrounds to apply."

Calling some of the NUS claims "profoundly misguided", she added: "One could understand the call for a national bursary scheme if there were no assistance available for students in need. But this is just not the case."