Simon Hughes MP, the government's Advocate for Access to Education, writes on the need for everyone to be honest, and not to put people off higher education.
Simon Hughes MP (Liberal Democrats, Bermondsey and Old Southwark) is HM Government’s Advocate for Access to Education
This week a poll conducted by the Sutton Trust revealed more than a fifth of 11-16 year olds believe their families will have to pay for the cost of university tuition. A further 10 per cent believed students paid for university with money they earned before and during their studies.
A recent report by Virgin Money revealed that one in four parents have started saving to pay for their children’s university fees.
This situation is clearly unacceptable. And now as we start a month where higher education is again back on the agenda, with today’s publication of the White Paper on higher education, and the decision of the Director of Fair Access on university access agreements due soon, there must be a concerted effort once and for all to destroy the myths around the new student finance system.
The negative politics surrounding student finance must end.
All too often in the recent past, politicians and others have given greater priority to attacking the government, rather than advancing the interests of young people and students. Politicians of all parties, student leaders, trade unionists and all others with a public platform and who are listened to on these issues must now make sure that they know the facts and do everything to make sure young people and their parents also understand the facts and are not misled.
I know that many people in the Labour Party and others have seen a political advantage in spreading the myth that university will now become unaffordable. To misrepresent the costs and payment methods for student tuition is not in the interests of any young person who this year or next will be making crucial decisions about their future.
This is the decision I made last year when I was asked to be the government’s Advocate for Access to Education. Despite not voting for the policy on student finance, and having campaigned for years against student fees, I decided that it was much more important, now that the decision had been made, to make sure that we got out there and did all we can to make sure that young people were not put off by many of the misunderstandings which had come out of the heated debate on higher education policies.
Let me be clear where we are. No university student studying for their first degree either full time or part time will be obliged to pay any fees starting in 2012. No university student has to pay anything to their university for tuition during their studies and no graduate will be obliged to pay anything back until they are paying at least £21,000 a year. After that, they pay back a proportion of their income through the tax system.
Whatever our thoughts on the politics of university finance, no one should say that anything that the government has done will make university tuition unaffordable. And no one should pretend that the system as introduced is not very similar to the graduate tax proposed by the National Union of Students.
The policy also includes part time students for the first time which means they will no longer have to pay up front fees, repayments are made starting at a higher income, and there is now a mechanism for making very high paid graduates contribute more to the financing of the higher education system than lower paid graduates. These changes make the new system of student finance much fairer and more progressive than the one this government inherited.
Young people between the ages of 11-16, the subject of the Sutton Trust’s study, are making crucial decisions on which courses to take and at which school or college. These decisions can have a major impact on their options after they leave school, and they should not be based on an idea of the university system which is simply not true.
There are also many people who will soon start applying to university to begin in 2012, the first year of the new student finance system.
Over the last six months I have been travelling around the country to meet students, parents and teachers to discuss the higher education reforms and what it means for them, as well as collecting their views on what government and others can do to promote access to education. I have found that, when the facts of the student finance system are made clear, young people and their parents are almost all far more comfortable with the idea of going to university.
I will shortly be sending my report to ministers which will outline how the country and the government can do better in the future to improve access to education for young people, and in particular how we can improve the information, advice and guidance which young people are provided with when they have to make key decisions about their future.
I have already made recommendations to the prime minister and deputy prime minister on how the government can do more to communicate with young people who might be applying in 2012.
However, many of these efforts will be in vain if people in all walks of life do not challenge the misconceptions which surround student finance.
We now all have a duty to make sure we go out into our communities and into the media and make sure that young people know the facts. Whatever our views on the reforms of higher education, we cannot any longer let party politics get in the way of the aspirations and futures of our young people.
36 Responses to “We need to make sure all young people know the true facts about higher education”
Elijah
@13eastie
Sorry i feel like a bit of a troll replying to your post but i feel you have completely missed my point.
I am glad you acknowledge the point that these fees will have an impact on peoples decisions whether or not to go to university or what course they should take, that i supposed is pretty much a given. My point was however that this being the case, the people who will be put in this situation are those people who’s parents cannot afford to fund them and it will have little bearing on the choices of those people who’s parents are already funding them debt free. Are you seriously saying that certain subjects such as the arts should be the sole domain of the privileged few and that poorer student should not have as much of a decision on their university choice?
I would also like to take issue with your stance on worthless degrees, university is an experience that isn’t sole about your C.V. it is an experience that broadens you as a person and that is always useful. We may well have skills shortages in certain areas and a surplus in areas but i don’t think that is something that should be solved by forcing people into degrees by prohibitively high fees. Further to that society in general would be far less diverse and cultured if we all went into academic high earning careers.
As for people paying nothing, i really would like to see the figures on how many graduates do actually go on to earn less than this threshold and how many of them stay below that threshold for their whole life, because i imagine it is a very small amount. I do agree that we should have a system whereby the ideals which you are proposing occur, however this seems to be a very cack handed way of approaching that. The other thing to note is that as far as i understand it, the figure of £21,000 is not £21,000 in todays money which will then be adjusted for inflation and such but it is £21,000 in 4 years when the first lot of people starting on this system graduate and so is actually not worth as much as it sounds.
Leon Wolfson
13eastie – Because selling your house is entirely rational. The commercial rates being charged on student loans mean downsizing your house when the kids move out to go to University, and paying the University fees with it, is a VERY reasonable response. You have fewer people living in the house, and can use your equity to avoid your kid paying again and again through much of their working life!
I understand you have no problem with crushing poorer people with debt, but they’re not the sheep you’re looking for, they understand the consequences of these reforms *all too well*. The spite is yours, and only your side’s.
Very very few british university degrees are, afaik, worth the 27k, when there are good degrees in other EU countries, taught in English, which are FAR cheaper. It’s *your* propaganda which is saying that they are, and confusing the issue.
Graduation rates are VERY clearly linked to a country’s economic success, and we’re going to see our top talent go elsewhere, and EU graduates take the increasing number of graduate-only jobs here. This is the Tory plan, nothing else.
(Students should be paying no more than 1k, at best, with living grants as well and expanded participation. It’s called investing in the future, which the Tories are in denial about, again.)
13eastie
@25 Elijah,
Nothing troll-like about your response.
There will be plenty of people who will repay little of their loan fees. Graduates who quickly become parents and make the choice not to go back to work, for instance.
I’m sorry, but I’m afraid your idealistic talk about university being an “experience” does not pass muster. As a tax-payer, I am not in the business of providing free “experiences”. You can be fairly sure teenaged tax-payers working in Helmand would not put it so politely. If school-leavers want a three-year-long “Red Letter Day”, they can pay for it themselves. I have no idea how you can suppose loans should be taken out by the govt in my little girl’s name to spare others from paying their way.
@26 Leon,
Indebting the unborn is not investing in the future. It is investing (for want of a better word) in the past.
Leon Wolfson
Typical Tory move, since the Boys Who Matter will still get to go to University from their private schools, you don’t care about the rest.
Debt taken on to expand the economy, causing a strong net positive effect, should be seriously considered, not dismissed with a wave of a hand because it doesn’t benefit the upper classes.
Again, University graduate percentages VERY clearly map, historically, to economic success of the countries hosting them. This is not coincidence.
John Smith
I am a Liberal, a former Lib Dem Councillor and great supporter of Simon Hughes as I generally respect his views. But the Student Loans issue Simon will have to admit if he is truly being honest with himself has been a deal clincher for the Lib Dems.This issue should go to the very core, and soul of being a Lib Dem and they should all ask themselves the current Student Loan policy is a bad one, and could cause a genuine split amongst Liberal (not just Economic Liberal thinkers)
The Student Loan issue is a deal breaker because it encapusalates what type of society do we in Britain want to live in. Yes we must recognise that we are in Global Meltdown for public finances, and economic recovery, and competitiveness have got to be addressed country by country. But the British Public need to know the truth about how quickly our public finances need to be turned round.Is it 5 years, or 6 years or even 10years as this makes a big difference to Govet thinking. We cannot have the Global Money men especially the Credit Reference Agencies making all these decisions for us and overide the sovereignty and right of Self Determination of individual nations on all economic decisions.
Having acknowledged this economic context neither can our decisions about the future of our Higher Education be determined by those who currently ideologically (not intellectually) despise Higher Education, and especially its funding. Libertarians, and Working Class Tories who have no intention of going into Higher Education don’t have the answers either.
In the cold light of day we must recognise that Higher Education now in the future is going to need to satisfy a wide array of needs. Yes one of them is about the immature 18 year old needing the time and space to grow up (the University experience despised by some in your comments. But lets remember these 18 years old are paying for that experience with debt, and for some they need that time to grow otherwise they will not be ready for some employers to employ.
Higher Education should also be for the future captains of industry,budding entrepreneurs, and the Self Employed who could derive some economic benefit from further educational study. Many of these students could well be from Working Class backgrounds. In this area i feel our Higher Education system is badly lacking in comparison to other countries.
But for the Health and economic prosperity of our nation Higher Education also has to be for the future generations of artists, comics, scholars, and thinkers.
Access to Higher Education must continually be about assessing the “quality” of courses and being able to pay back the cost of these course at the time and choosing of the students not the banks, or Government. That is where the Lib Dems in particular and the Govt in general have failed , and continue to fail our students if we are to continue with Student Loans.