Sunday thoughts: Are Labour right to drop their commitment to abolishing tuition fees?
It’s been a bad week for Sir Keir Starmer, with a slew of articles saying that he’s boring and uninspiring — including some fairly breathtaking anonymous briefing from his own Shadow Cabinet. (Remarkably, this is in some quarters getting more pick up than the PM’s ethics adviser resigning on the grounds that he can’t trust the Prime Minister to stick to his own Ministerial code. But I digress.)
These things go in cycles. At the moment, the narrative is that Starmer is boring, Next week, after two likely government by-election losses, we’ll be back to discussions of no confidence in the Prime Minister, the falling away of the ‘blue wall’ (even though Tiverton is no such thing), and the cost of living crisis.
I remain bullish in my prediction that Starmer will be the Prime Minister after the next General Election. Ignoring week to week froth, the underlying polling data is good for Labour. The aggregate of the polls suggests that if an election were tomorrow, Labour would have a 55% chance of forming a majority, and a further 33% chance of forming a minority government. I’m more to the minority government side of the ledger, but I don’t see any big fundamentals changing what is pretty consistent polling, absent a change of leader on either side.
And that’s why what matters for the education sector is policy, not whether the Labour leader is boring. And that’s why it matters that buried within one of the slew of ‘boring gate’ articles is a suggestion that Labour will announce it is dropping its commitment to free university tuition fees (covered initially in the FT here, and picked up further in the Mail here).
I think this is a bold commitment, but also the correct one. Here’s why.
Firstly, I’ve long been a supporter of the original premise of tuition fees, paid for by graduates, on an income contingent basis. In fact, I think it was one of the single best policies that New Labour introduced, and that the Coalition continued. It seems inconceivable to me that universities would have flourished without the additional revenue, and that such revenue would never have been forthcoming from the Treasury. Most importantly, it has demonstrably not had a negative impact on access and participation from disadvantaged communities, so far as first time, full time undergraduates go. (Part time and mature students is a different matter, was a big mistake, and needs fixing). I’ve never understood how advocates of a free system think that the general taxpayer either would or should make up this quantum of funding. And although a graduate tax sounds appealing, and is often the alternative of choice suggested by politicians, there’s a reason why every plan to study it leads to it quietly being dropped, which is that it is phenomenally complex to introduce and leads to a significant cash flow gap between universities needing money, and graduates paying it.
Secondly, though, the current system is a mess. I say so sadly, but it is. The interplay between fee levels frozen for a number of years, the lower than required level of maintenance loan which means students would be £1,000 a year richer working on minimum wage, the interest rate on loans (which is a progressive measure but deeply unpopular), the rising proportion of those who don’t pay back all their fees, the regular changing of thresholds for repayments and length of repayment terms — it’s all a mess. I can, and do, make wonky panel session contributions saying that this all makes internal sense, and students are still going to university in record numbers, but truth be told it’s got itself paralyzed by its own complexity. There’s space for Labour here to make big commitments to change it, but without being caught on the false promise of just getting rid of it all.
Thirdly, such a commitment is necessary to free up money to do other things which are more important to students. Labour’s commitment to free fees was costed in their manifesto in 2019 at £7bn — which, as experts like Jim Dickinson imply, was an underestimate. But even if they only have £7bn, there are much better commitments. The most important thing that students constantly ask for is an increase in maintenance (52% of those polled for the HEPI / Advance HE survey said this was their major cost concern, and only 23% said tuition fees). Student loan caps could be increased to support more money in students’ pockets every week and deal with inflation and housing costs. More students — part time, mature, but also full time — could have grants, not just loans. Nurses and teachers in training could not have to pay additional fees on top of their undergraduate fees. The incoming Lifelong Loan Entitlement could be widened. All of those things together would be more than £7bn. But it illustrates the ground on which Labour could — and should — be fighting, when it comes to tertiary education.
Fourthly, making this change allows Starmer to further demonstrate his electoral priorities. His team is probably delighted with coverage from the Mail showing him taking on the left. Free tuition is a flagship Corbyn commitment, made (he says, editorialising) with little sense as to the broader politics of it. My reading of polling data on this — most of which is quite old — is that the voting public and students themselves are split pretty evenly between support and opposition (THE poll of the public here, and YouGov poll of students here). I draw three conclusions from this. Firstly, if there’s only roughly even support for “making something free” vs “paying for it”, then those advocating making it free should take a look at whether their plan really is popular. Secondly, it’s low salience. Even among prospective students, as the THE data shows, it’s not a big priority. Thirdly, as HEPI and others have shown, what students (and parents) really want is a balance between the state and the individual contributing, and to know where fees go. Both of those things are entirely achievable, and should be the electoral focus of a Labour government spending taxpayers money wisely, demanding transparency, and sharing the costs of the system with those who benefit from it.
Some excitable commentary suggests that such a change would do as much damage as the infamous Lib Dem volte face in 2010. But these aren’t remotely comparable. The Lib Dems made abolition a flagship commitment in their manifesto, then were offered the chance to honour that or at least abstain, and chose instead (I think correctly, but whatever) to vote for a significant increase in fees. Starmer getting similar grief over changing what Labour’s manifesto would say in a future election is merely wishful thinking.
General consensus is that the continued freezing of tuition fees isn’t sustainable, and many have suggested (wearily) that an Augar v2 might be on the table after the next election. I’d expect — in concert with other expert Labour watchers — Starmer to commit to such a review, but making clear that free tuition isn’t a viable option. That would be a sensible, mature, government in waiting thing to do. And if and when he does so, universities should be quick to engage with it to make it work.
