Tuition fees - sustainable funding or cultural vandalism?

MPs will vote tomorrow on legislation that will completely transform the face of higher education in the UK. With journalists promising us a day of ferocious debate in the Commons, and students set to continue their protests, we are set for a day of unpredictable drama. But amid the anger, recriminations and drip feed of half-baked concessions, there’s a real danger that we’ve collectively lost sight of what we’re actually debating here.

If passed, the legislation will complete a remarkable turnaround in the way we fund our universities. When Tony Blair came to power just 13 years ago, a university education was free for anyone with the ability, inclination – and luck – to make it into higher education. This will be the third time that politicians have increased tuition fees since then – but the current hike in fees will be by far the most significant, because it has shifted university teaching decisively towards a free market.

The most important figure in this debate isn’t the £9,000 cap on tuition fees – it is £0. That is the amount that the government will contribute towards an undergraduate degree (except for science, technology, engineering and maths subjects, which will still receive a reduced government subsidy). The significance of that fact is hard to overstate: for the majority of students, their education will not be a matter for the state. That doesn’t quite make it a free market for higher education, but it isn’t too far off.

To put that another way, the government is cutting funding for university teaching by 80%. To my knowledge, that’s the biggest cut to any significant area of spending, and it makes the eye-watering cuts to other areas of public spending (defence springs to mind) look like rounding errors. To my mind, this is what we should be debating: why should the higher education budget be cut so dramatically while Helen Mirren continues to receive her winter fuel allowance, while we build two brand new aircraft carriers.

But before getting into that, let’s make something clear – there is an uncomfortable fact about higher education that both the students and the opposition would like to ignore. Our universities need more money. Like it or not, our livelihoods increasingly depend on a global knowledge economy, in which countries like ours can only compete through skills and innovation. This has created hysteria in some parts of the media (both left and right), but it is a cold, hard fact. At the latest count, 48% of jobs in the UK were in knowledge-intensive industries, while only 30% of us have degrees. Of course, the knowledge economy isn’t the exclusive domain of graduates, but degrees certainly help. We’re slipping down the international league tables in terms of graduates, and this slide will lead us to economic stagnation unless we can improve our universities.

Given this need for extra cash, and the strain on the public finances, it was always inevitable that students would have to contribute more towards their degrees. In many ways, raising fees to provide better degrees would be a good solution – and the mechanism for paying tuition fees out of your salary that Clegg, Cable and Cameron have pinned their argument on is essentially a sound one. But there’s one slight problem – the increase in tuition fees isn’t going to go towards an improved education, but (mostly) towards covering the funding the government is taking away. The consensus seems to be that universities will have to charge around £7,000 a year just to stand still under the new arrangements. This is all very well for the top institutions - although Oxford and Cambridge already face a shortfall of £8,000 per undergraduate, which they make up out of donations. But less glamorous institutions may not be able to attract students at £7,000 a year, which would mean fewer graduates and bad news for the economy.

So why is all the attention on the fees, and not the disproportionate cuts in government support for universities? There is (it seems) an unspoken consensus among political parties that taxpayers shouldn’t subsidise students through an education that will ultimately increase their salary. That this simplistic argument has become widely accepted is a fatal – and stupid – mistake.

First, look at a plain numbers argument. We have a progressive taxation system - so if graduates go on to earn higher salaries, they pay more in taxes, not just in absolute terms but as a proportion of their income. An investment in higher education now should pay off in ordinary tax returns later.

Second, an economic argument. Without enough graduates, our economy will struggle to grow. That doesn’t just affect potential graduates – it affects everyone, because jobs in high-tech industries generate jobs and economic activity for everyone else.

Third, a cultural and moral argument. An educated population is healthier, more resistant to political tyranny, and creates better collective cultural outcomes. Society as a whole benefits from sending people to university. That means that there is a case for subsidising university education – not the whole amount, but part of it – even after setting aside all financial and economic arguments.

How on earth could an advanced society have forgotten such basic principles? How could a legion of politicians, all of whom benefited from a free university education, be guilty of such a collective abdication of responsibility? And among all the talk of broken promises, does this amount to a betrayal of a whole generation of young people? I doubt very much that tomorrow’s debate will shed any light on this.

A Bigger Picture

Reading the news is a pretty bleak experience these days. As if the story at home wasn’t bad enough, things are even worse abroad: papers speculate about which Eurozone nation will be the next victim of the bond markets; terrorist plots and rogue states spring up as if we were in a James Bond film.


For all the talk of a new world order, the collapse of the Euro and even the occasional touch of anarchy in the UK, no-one is expecting very much to change. Make no mistake – these are harder times than we’ve seen in decades (unless you happen to be a Conservative Lord) – but we’re British, and we don’t do revolution. A watered-down reform of the voting system here, perhaps a step back from European integration there, but we have very little appetite for any fundamental change. If the combined force of the financial crisis and the MPs’ expenses scandal can’t shake the system, what can?


This line of thought may well be right – it almost certainly will be for the foreseeable future – but this type of complacent inertia is extremely dangerous. History is littered with tales of the rise and fall of empires. Nations and world orders have been built out of ingenuity and strife, through a series of ideas or on the back of a single figurehead. Just as species come and go in the evolutionary game, as corporations expand and collapse through a creative process of destruction, no single nation or way of life is invulnerable.


The longest period of sustained peace in recorded human history – the Pax Romana – began 2,000 years ago, after one of the bloodiest civil wars the ancient world had known. The Roman empire was advanced, all-powerful and ruthlessly efficient. To historians of the time, it must have seemed inconceivable that this Roman global hegemony could ever be broken. And yet, it was not some advanced force that brought down the world’s greatest empire, but a series of backward barbarian hordes. Rome succumbed to complacency, a pathogen bred by centuries of success and stability.


Of course, this time things are different. Democracy, we presume, is different to the litany of empires that decorate the annals of history. Empires are fixed in their values and aims; democracies can change their spots to match their surroundings. Once democracy has taken hold, it is the only game in town. There’s no going back – not for long, at least.
When Francis Fukuyama heralded the fall of the Berlin Wall as the end of history, his claim was given a certain plausibility even at a time of unbounded optimism.


Like so many people, I would like to think that democracy can last forever – albeit with a fairer voting system, and a more reliable link between people and power brokers. But that kind of wishful thinking cannot be taken for granted. The very nature of democracy should preclude complacency in favour of continuous progress, but somehow that doesn’t seem to be the case. The threats to the democratic world are greater now than they have been since World War 2: China’s model of governance in the national interest appears far more practicable than any Marxist ideology; religious extremism breeds off ignorance and apathy in a way not seen since the Nazis.


A Chinese friend used to laugh at me when I defended the rights of the preachers of hate. I’m fairly sure that a fair number of extremists were also appreciating the joke, in more sinister fashion. I still believe I was right about this – but we can afford to show clemency to self-avowed enemies of democracy only if we are consistent about it. There is either a war on extremism, played out within the reasonable norms of conflict, or we meet hatred with unstinting tolerance and reason. The moment we start compromising our ideals – launching rockets with one hand while upholding the scales of justice with the other – we are at our most vulnerable. We may have learnt about the perils of complacency in international warfare, but we are a long way from discovering the courage of our convictions.

A Liberal Cacophony

I did something I haven't done for a long time last night - I watched Question Time on the BBC. I say watched, but that suggests I meant to do it - in truth,  it just caught my attention, despite my best efforts. I'd given up on Question Time around the time of the MPs expenses scandal, when it ceased to be a place for airing arguments and holding leaders to account, and became an outlet valve for the nation's angst. It was also around the time of Nick Griffin's infamous appearance on the show, soundtracked by a cacophony of ineffectual and slightly self-conscious affirmations of liberal values. Watching a room full of people unleash their moderated fury at Britain's premier racist was a bit like trying to make a phonecall at a rock and roll show.

Events this week have thrown this soft core of liberalism back into the spotlight. The week started with the latest installment in the Wikileaks saga, continued with another series of heated student protests, and climaxed with a farcical exhibition of global "politics" in Zurich.

My instinctive reaction to the unprecedented leak of US diplomatic cables was one of disappointment and some distress. We tend to accept that governments need the freedom to operate in secrecy, in a world of uncertainty and competition - and this is true to a large extent. But as far as I could make out (and don't think our government doesn't have a similar stash of information on file), very few of the revelations were in the least bit surprising: Russia is a mafia state; Saudi Arabia doesn't like Iran; Berlusconi is a bit shady. Well spotted folks. The revelation I found most interesting was actually the most comforting - China, it turns out, has noticed that Kim-Jong Il is a bit mental. Why should all this information be classified? Don't tell the world where our nuclear submarines are, but equally don't sit on a vast pile of fairly benign information. The more I reflect on the Wikileaks revelation, the more I start to wonder whether it might actually be a good thing for the world's secret squirrels to open up a bit.

There's no excuse for the secrecy surrounding FIFA's betrayal of world football on Thursday. Nor is there any justification for England's representatives (and a number of other nations') feigning ignorance of the blatant corruption until after they'd lost the vote. Liberal nations should seriously reconsider their membership and tacit endorsement of Sepp Blatter and his consortium. Politics and sport shouldn't mix, but football is already infected by the politics bug.

In short, I think the liberal majority needs to toughen up a bit - and by liberal, i mean conservatives and socialists, as well as most of the western world. The world isn't unipolar (or even bipolar) anymore. There are a lot of different ways of thinking out there, and we would write them off at our peril. But those of us who think we're right to champion tolerance, freedom and moderation need to let people know how right we are. Our short term future has been set out by a coalition agreement that no-one voted for, and yet we find it too inconvenient to do anything about it. Just like Nick Griffin, we make a lot of noise, but not a lot of worthwhile points.

So imagine my surprise when, from the floor of Britain's flagship talking shop, came one of the most solid liberal punches I have heard in a long time. Step forward John Sergeant (fast forward to 3.25), the old BBC heavyweight now best known for his dancefloor antics. As Danny Alexander warbles away, weaving an  incoherent argument about minor details while the big picture is gaping, Sergeant patiently waits his turn. Finally, given his cue by the self-important host, he pounces. "This is a pathetic position." If you can't come up with the right policy, "leave the government." Exactly. It's a parliamentary democracy, not some national PR front.