Did the students have a point?

This was written in November 2010, following the student protests, but again, I think it still has some relevance for today.

Do the Students Have a Point?

The recent student demonstrations against fees increases had a depressingly familiar feel for me.  They were not depressing simply because they happened - students have a right to be concerned about issues which affect them and to show this concern to the wider public.  They were not depressing either for the numbers who turned up - indeed, the turnout was in excess of the expectations of the organisers.  For me they were depressing because of the implications of the fees increase they gathered to protest about; because they reminded me of my own student days twenty years ago when we tried to make a difference over issues which were set to affect us and found ourselves ignored and vilified; but most of all because, as so often, a small and totally unrepresentative group acted in a destructive and irresponsible way which distracted attention away from the issues they had come to protest about.  Their stupid and reprehensible actions will undoubtedly damage the public's sympathy for the genuine concerns of the fifty thousand or so students who acted responsibly.

My own student years were spent at the University of Otago in New Zealand in the early 1990s, a period when the New Zealand government, with very little warning imposed hitherto unannounced tuition fees on students who were not financially prepared for such a thing.  I was picking apricots when I heard the news, trying to earn money which I expected to be spending on rent, books, photocopying, food and of course the occasional drunken party.  Having to pay tuition fees with this same money meant I was a regular figure in the offices of Student Job Search for much of the rest of my student years, taking any and every bit of casual work going in order to make up for the money I had lost in tuition fees.  Fruit picking no longer paid the bills and, like so many others, I found myself balancing my studies with the need to go out and earn money.  How much that affected my final results I will probably never know.

The students did not take this lying down of course.  In the face of the threat of steady annual increases in the level of fees being charged, a campaign of protest marches and representations to parliament was set in motion.  A university is home to many different groups however and its population is rarely completely free of the intensity and enthusiasm which tend to diminish in us as we grow older.  This all too often meant that when thousands of us went on a march to try to raise public awareness of the issues we were faced with, holding placards aloft and chanting slogans, members of the Student Anarchist Society (never a group with more than a couple of dozen members) would force their way into an office building and intimidate those working there in a misguided attempt to draw more attention to the demonstration.  The result, of course, much like the result of the thoughtless actions of a small minority last week, was to distract the news media away from the marchers and the issues we were trying to put across and to concentrate instead on the stupid and criminal actions of the Anarchist Society, who were then repeatedly presented in the media as the true face of student protest.  Inevitably, public support for the student's concerns dropped away, as did much of the goodwill of the parliamentary opposition.   The next generation of students seemed to take the message that legitimate protest was pointless.  Apathy replaced concern and fees did indeed increase year on year, by an annual factor of 12%.

Now that was twenty years ago of course and the concerns of British students of the present day will not be completely identical to our concerns in the early 90s.  Many issues will be found to be the same though, particularly the underlying issue of underfunding, and the students, many of whom will be the leaders of the future, deserve to have their voices heard without being compromised by the thoughtless actions of a few who have lost sight of the real issues.

Much of the students' anger has been directed towards the Liberal Democrats and in particular Nick Clegg.  Fair enough, it could be said.  Before the election Mr Clegg went on record saying that he would oppose any increase in tuition fees.   Large numbers of student votes would have been attracted by this promise and many now feel either that they were duped into voting for a lie or that their votes were compromised by a coalition government which has decided to drive a steam roller over the policies of its junior partner.   Students have a right to feel that they have been betrayed in this respect.  They also have a right to be concerned about the effects of a threefold increase in tuition fees which will undoubtedly mean that many will choose to give up their studies in favour of paying work.  They are also acutely aware that while many of them will earn high salaries in the future, many will not.  Such a high level of fees would be hard to justify for someone who ended up earning little more than someone who had not gone to university.

Of course, the Liberal Democrats' U-turn on tuition fees, which has so angered students, needs to be seen in the context of being in government.  When you are the third party and have no realistic expectation of becoming government, you can make afford to make generous promises.  When you find yourself in government this is not so easy.  Added to this, as the government rarely tires of telling us, it faces the massive task of repairing the nation's economy, in the face of the highest level of interest hungry debt that any government has faced since Clement Attlee's time.  This debt must be reduced as quickly as possible.   The government is seeking to cut its spending on as many fronts as it can in an attempt to raise as much money as possible to pay off the debt.  Not all students of course, in common with many other elements of the population, see this the same way as the government, many choosing instead to see it as an assault on them rather than something done for the future of the economy.

Has the government got it right?  Is allowing universities to increase tuition fees by so much in order to make up for forthcoming cuts in government funding really a good idea?  Certainly, money needs to be freed up to pay the debts off, but is this the right way?  It will certainly result in a reduction in student numbers, although it should be admitted that this is not necessarily a bad thing in itself.  Tony Blair's wish for fifty percent of young people to go to university is clearly unsustainable and there are many other legitimate options that young people should be encouraged to consider.  However, by effectively increasing the cost of going to university, the government risks scaring away poorer, yet talented, members of society, as well as saddling graduates with even greater levels of debt, which is likely to affect their ability to spend on housing and other important drivers of the economy.  What effect will these things have on the shape of the next generation of business, social and political leaders?  Do we want our next generation of doctors, advocates and politicians to be those with the most talent or those who could find the money to train?

Is this, then, a case of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs?  Can we afford to saddle our graduates with the equivalent of a mortgage which will further reduce their ability to actually get a mortgage or which will cause them to consider moving overseas to avoid having to pay back their debts?  No-one condones the stupid acts of a few dozen student radicals, along with a few hundred more who got carried away by the atmosphere, but we must not let those actions distract us form reflecting that in the long run, there might be better things to cut than government funding for universities.