Universities should double fees to help poor students

This week a quarter of a million A-level students will discover whether they have won a university place.

Conor Ryan, a former adviser to Education Secretary David Blunkett, argues that many of those who succeed should pay more for tuition

TONY Blair reportedly wants a rethink of student funding, after complaints that tuition fees put the nation's 600,000 university students off voting Labour. But if there is to be a review, the Government should double the current 1,075 fee - and use the money raised to fund a huge expansion of bursaries for poorer students.

This would be deeply unpopular in some quarters.

Each year, we hear hardship stories about students having to work part-time to pay rent or fees. We should not be too concerned: part- time jobs can be valuable experience.

True, more could be done to develop useful paid work, such as being classroom assistants, where the experience could encourage more undergraduates to become teachers. But so long as the jobs don't unduly interfere with studies, a part-time job is a better use of time than watching Countdown or Neighbours.

And, of course, students must have enough to live on while studying, though in most countries living at home is not so unusual. Student loans should properly cover such costs, especially where specialist study is on offer away from a local university.

Tuition fees are another matter. There is little evidence to sustain claims that fees have increased university dropouts. In fact, this year's full fee will be paid by only a third of students (those whose parents earn more than 29,784 a year).

One in six will make a partial contribution. Half won't pay a penny.

And the fee covers only a quarter of the average cost of tuition. The taxpayer still stumps up nearly 90 per cent of the average cost of educating a university student. It is odd that parents who willingly pay 6,000 or 7,000 annual fees for private schools should moan when they are asked to pay a sixth of that for a university education. Even with fees, higher education remains the last great middleclass tax perk since mortgage tax relief has been scrapped.

MY concern is with the proportion of children from poorer backgrounds going to university. This has shifted little over the past decade.

Tuition fees have not put off such students: they don't pay them. The change from grants to interest-free loans has not reduced their participation. But it has done nothing to increase it.

Some 48 per cent of children from families with professional or white-collar backgrounds go to university, compared with just 18 per cent of those with blue-collar or unskilled parents. That is why we need to look again at tuition fees.

And, far from scrapping the fee (or delaying payment until students graduate, as the Scots have done), the maximum should double to at least 2,000 a year.

Because Labour has ruled out differential "top-up" fees for leading universities, the same fee would apply to every university. In most cases, parents could afford it.

For some families just above the 29,784 threshold (after which the full fee must be paid), it might mean further sacrifice. To counter this - and to avoid parents paying more upfront - loans could be increased by a further 1,000, as happened when fees were first introduced.

Students would be no worse off while studying.

After graduation, some students would, of course, have to pay more back.

Graduates currently repay their loans at nine pence in every pound that they earn over 10,000 a year when they start work.

But the average graduate starting salary is a healthy 18,000, so society is right to expect graduates to contribute to the cost of their education, though there may be a case for lifting the minimum income at which it is collected.

The extra revenue from doubling tuition fees must be put to good purpose.

Most of the extra 390 million raised should be used to expand bursaries for the brightest students from lower-income families. "Opportunity Bursaries" are available for the first time this year. Some 7,000 disadvantaged bright students will get 1,000 to help them settle in at university, pay for books or cover a rent deposit. They remain eligible for a full 3,815 loan (4,700 in London). The bursary is worth 500 in their second and third years at university.

The numbers helped will rise to 10,000 in 2003 but this 7-million- a-year scheme will barely scratch the surface of what could be done. Doubling tuition fees would allow a bursary of 3,000 a year to be made available to an average of 200 new students a year in every local education authority area in England and Wales.

Students could continue to get the full loan to cover living costs (which should be increased in places like London, where living costs have risen in recent years). But poorer students need not fear substantial debt - and could cover their full costs without having to take unsuitable jobs.

THIS scheme could meet all the Prime Minister's concerns. Because the bursary would be merit- based (and not, therefore, a return to grants), it could help to get more state pupils into our leading universities, including Oxford and Cambridge.

Even though fees would rise, middleclass families would have access to extra loans so their immediate costs need not increase.

And, above all, by rewarding real achievement and attracting more bright but disadvantaged students to university, extra bursaries would do more to develop a genuine meritocracy than any other single measure.

Conor Ryan was David Blunkett's special adviser 1997-2001.

Copyright 2001
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