Scrap Tuition Fees Fight For Free Education-Build For Budget Day Walkouts

Tuition fees can be beaten. Chancellor Phillip Hammond’s announcement that he will consider lowering them in the next Tory budget is an indication of his government’s enormous weakness. This vulnerability is clear both in a general sense and on the specific issue of fees.

- Clare Laker-Mansfield

The move by the DUP to back a Labour motion aimed at blocking the increases planned under the Higher Education Act indicated the huge fissures that could open up on the issue. It highlighted the potential for a mass movement to break this government.

The 8 June general election represented a revolt of working class people, but particularly youth and students. If on autumn budget day (22 November) Hammond does what he has suggested and moves to reduce university fees, it will be as a concession to that electoral revolt. But it will not be enough.

Under the current system, students beginning university this year face half a lifetime of debt. With interest rates on student loans now set at a staggering 6%, and with huge fees being combined with the abolition of what remained of maintenance grants, the amounts owed by today’s students are at record levels.

‘Debt time-bomb’

No wonder some commentators are talking about a ‘debt time-bomb’. Estimates indicate that a young person beginning their studies in 2017 will have to earn over £50,000 a year before they begin paying back the capital on their loan.

In austerity Britain, with its gig economy and low wages, this means most graduates will never come anywhere close to paying off their debts. In fact most will find that, despite handing hundreds of pounds over to the loans company, the amount they owe will continue to grow year on-year.

This underlines the importance of us demanding the complete abolition of fees and the reintroduction of grants for students. The promise to reintroduce free education was among the most popular in Corbyn’s manifesto. But this should also be combined with a pledge to write off student debt. Such a possibility was hinted at by Corbyn in an interview he gave in the lead up to the election, though he subsequently appears to have stepped back from it.