Welcome to the Tea Room

Education should be for all, and it should be a meritocracy that stresses the best and brightest. The gluttony of degree education, whereby Labour targets over 50% of the population should have graduated from a Higher Education institution means an increasingly competitive graduate employment sector and the problem of too many students being under-resourced, a problem Labour is currently trying to amend with by a recent drive to push apprenticeships and blue-collar employment opportunities. [1] That is not my main concern, instead it is with the inequality in funding of Higher Education. Whether you agree with tuition fees or not, (I do not) they must be applied equally, such that a student from Scotland should pay the same rate for study in England, as an English person in Scotland, surely that is the basis of reciprocity that has existed since the ‘Union of the Crowns’ nearly four-hundred years ago. Under Labour’s watch, Scottish students from my graduation year of 2007, would pay an end of course fee of £2300, whilst an English student attending the same course would pay £1175 a year, over a four year course this amounts to £3525 [2] -- a difference of £1225 more to pay for the same quality of education as a Scottish student – this is unfair. There are only three options to this quandary either English students are reimbursed the difference, or Scottish students are charged at the same rate as the English, or lastly that both English and Scots are reimbursed. Now with SNP proposing a scrap on the graduate endowment for higher education students in Scotland this will heighten the funding gap between Scottish and English students further, as English students now pay in 2008 £1700 a year or £5100 over the course of their studies, meaning a Scottish student with no graduate endowment to pay will be £5100 richer. [3] As Murdo Fraser said, by ‘merely abolishing the graduate endowment in isolation is not enough -- this will not solve the problems.’ [4] The top-up fees are also another silent discriminator, widening the gap in quality of life and purchasing power between English and Scots, Labour have clearly passed this discriminatory mantle to the SNP who are fixated upon heightening the cleavage between our nations through any populist means, The Conservatives should seize this opportunity to stress not only the unity between our nations but look to the logical step of removing tuition fees, by tightening the numbers studying at University, Conservative popularity amongst students would increase, it would also increase prospective employers confidence in graduates for being higher calibre, and by restoring faith in the principles of University education standing for quality learning, not for debt-addled spending. In this light the Conservatives should review their 2003-04 policies on scrapping tuition fees altogether, [5] advanced by Tim Yeo and the Tory platform for the 2005 General Election, the idea was repulsed by David Cameron ‘as the money had to come from somewhere’. [6] Indeed the future government does need to find funding for the £11-13bn shortfall our institutions require. So far, since 2003 £7.4bn has been spent on the mire of Iraq, further savings could be made on the inefficiencies of the NHS and throughout Whitehall bureaucracy. Whilst obviously such a shortfall could not be covered overnight such savings would go a long way in improving our institutions and by making them once more the finest in the world. The Conservatives can be a party for parity once more, parity for our common good, by removing the disincentives to education beyond debt, but in the ebbing quality of our institutions. All universities from Aberdeen to Plymouth need to be adequately funded, students need to be treated equally once there, but meritocratically selected to remove the necessity for growing costs.

In sum,

The Tories should vehemently attack the artificial divisions seeded by the SNP and Labour between Scotland and England that have occurred over the past ten years.
The Tories if they followed their Yeo / 2005 platform would certainly persuade some of the 300000 that graduate each year that there is an alterative, that instead of fiscal debt, one has a debt to one’s country.
Like a social contract (five years or less) this would stop the high numbers of highly qualified students deciding that high house prices, high student debt, high cost of living coupled with violent crime and disorder are too much, deciding to flee to Australia, Canada or the EU.
The Tories are sitting on a mine of votes if they follow such actions, as well as stopping the Balkanisation of our country with a strong Thatcherite ‘one nationism’ !

[1] http://www.edge.co.uk/docs/home/

[2] Final year (or fourth year) fees are wavered, in recognition that the same degree could be completed in three years in England. The same rule applies to contemporary fees.

[3] Anon, ‘Graduate endowment vote for MSPs’ BBC 28^th Feb. 2008 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7268101.stm>

[4] Anon, ‘Graduate endowment vote for MSPs’ BBC 28^th Feb. 2008, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7268101.stm>

[5] Anon, ‘Tories Stick to Scrapping Fees’ BBC 22^nd Dec. 2003 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/3340405.stm>

[6] Anon, ‘Tories Plan to Keep Student Fees’ BBC 9^th January 2006 <http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4594836.stm>

Thanks! Welcome to you too!

Submitted by mikerouse on Wed, 01/08/2007 - 4:55am.

Education - A call for Parity between Nations!

Submitted by KK (not verified) on Fri, 29/02/2008 - 10:04am.