Michael Gove this week has been staunchly defending Tuition Fees, the environment minister stated that people “should pay something back” and that it is only ‘fair’ and repeatedly claims that it would be regressive to abolish tuition fees. Jo Johnson, MP for Orpington and Minister of State for Universities and Science, also stated it would be regressive and claims by the IFS say that abolition of tuition fees would only benefit the richest graduates. But that same IFS have also said that the poorest 40% will emerge from university with £57,000 debt.
The problem with their viewpoint is that they are looking at it from purely an economic angle.
They are forgetting the entirely human element to Education. They are also dismissing the issues with the education system and promote an elitist system.
What’s the point in tuition fees?
A study released this week shows that two-thirds of graduates will never pay back their student loan, to put this into perspective, a teacher on median earnings won’t fully pay their tuition fee back. This means upon retirement the government will have to pay the rest back. During the reign of Cameron and Osbourne, the government planned to sell off £12 billion of student loans to private companies and early this year Theresa May’s government began to reopen plans to sell it off again. Which means the interest rates would end up in the hands of private contractors rather than the government.
Furthermore, you must ask yourself what the point of a tuition fee if the government ends up paying for it in the end, along with interest? It would be cheaper in the long-term to subsidise university and offer more courses than just degrees, these would include vocational courses and apprenticeships plus more that cater to those who aren’t necessarily the strongest learners in a degree environment.
Plus, if the plans to sell of the student debt goes ahead then the repayments end up with private companies for profit, rather than the government who can reinvest it into the education system. Currently, UK universities contribute approximately £70 billion to the economy.
Human value of education
Moving away from statistics and economics, the human value of education is immeasurable and understanding why the Conservatives promote such an elitist system boils down to the ideology of elitism.
Their core belief that only the moneyed and privileged few should be allowed a decent education, along with those who can only benefit in traditional economic aspects, hence why they have attacked arts and humanities.
They understand a truly educated population would take their freedoms and people like them would never be elected. If you teach people about economics and politics from the younger age, people will grow up understanding that economics is just a means to gather wealth and politics to control people. But if you create overly technical terminology, you can create a sense of complexity that puts off most people. Economics is boring for a reason. If you teach about the importance of economics but line it with ideas that seem complex but, are simple, you can enslave a population to a system.
