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In the first of a series on world leaders, Miles Deverson takes a look at Nicholas Sarkozy
The protest outside the Conservative HQ in London lit the fires of controversy because of the violence and damage to property, but what I personally found far more depressing was the blatant lack of education on show from people who were campaigning from its very corner.
One protester, interviewed by Radio 5 Live, gave the following insightful review: "There are so many people here that they, like, have to listen to us? And if they don't they'll be just, like, ignoring us?" Others banged on and on about how the people making the cuts got free education themselves, as if what happened forty years ago should have a bearing on what happens today. I know that the entire protest should not be tarred by the actions and views of a minority, and it is of course perfectly possible to oppose the proposed rises in a sane and rational manner. But it seems that many of the protestors have scant background knowledge, or indeed, common sense.
They’ve had the “£9,000” figure for starters, moved onto a fat slice of “Tory scum” for the main course, and now they don’t want dessert because they’re, like, really pissed off, you know? What they don’t seem to have bothered to find out is that £9,000 is a maximum – only to be applied in “exceptional circumstances” – and to get anywhere near that figure, institutions will have to undertake an agenda of outreach programs, grants and bursaries designed specifically for students from poorer backgrounds. In fact, as Nick Clegg keeps valiantly repeating in the face of the catcalls and jeers, students from the poorest backgrounds will actually end up owing lessunder the new system.
Are protestors really concerned about “education for all”? Or are they concerned about “cheaper education for me”? “University isn’t for everyone” is a much touted maxim of the elitist, but is a system in which everyone with a positive IQ goes to university really working, or is it simply flooding the market with graduates and devaluing degrees? Would a system where prospective students have to think carefully about whether university would be a sound investment for their future, rather than a place to drink and shag for three years while they decide what they want to do with the rest of their life really be such a terrible thing?
The threshold for paying back the fees will rise to £21,000, with graduates paying back 9% of their income after that figure. If you don’t believe that your degree will improve your eventual salary to the point where you can sustain that, then why are you getting it at all? One protestor announced angrily that “our generation didn’t cause this recession, so why should we have to shoulder the burden”, conveniently forgetting that cuts are affecting everyone in Britain. It is all too easy for someone to rail against a particular cut (strangely enough always one that affects them directly) while completely missing the bigger picture. The money has to come from somewhere. Protestors can focus on just one issue – the government doesn’t have that luxury.
So let’s riot. But don’t think you’re making a difference…
Sir, I could not agree more with you! Absolutely spot on. The Yorker needs more writers like this!!!!
The scrapping of the EMA seems portentious with regards to grants for students from lower income families. As to the protest itself, the much-repeated argument that those marching were only seeking to benefit themselves is undercut by the number of those marching who were in their last years/ post-grad and so will not be directly affected. Protests are necessarily selective because it is nigh-on impossible to mobilise 'everyone'... how would those from the public sector communicate collectively to organise a protest, when the field is so diverse? An education cuts protest has the advantage of being able to involve whole coach loads of students being shipped out to London, many of whom will have found out through facebook and twitter. I protested as a post-grad waiting to graduate, but did so to express my feelings of frustration for my younger sister who will suffer from the fees increase, and my mum who works for Sure Start and so, along with many, lost her job - another cut affecting those in deprived areas who cannot afford to pay for counselling. As for where the cuts should fall *cough* Trident *cough* :-p
I really liked this article, because I also felt incredibly depressed to see supposed advocates of education behaving like the worst kind of yobs - in effect being so moronic as to undermine their own cause, let alone having no grasp of the details of the situation.
However, I oppose any cuts to education when Trident and the foreign aid budget remain safe and sound. I say go back to the grant system and turn many of the worst "universities" back into polytechnics, which is what they should have stayed as to begin with.
I thought this article well reasoned, carefully written and sensible. Also it's good to see something other than "No Cuts" repeated over and over again in different ways.
Except that to be quite honest, publishing an article like this in a student-publication is tantamount to saying "look at me, I'm trolling!"
I wonder how many poor and lower-middle-class students are in favour of upping the limits?
Oh, and while the £9,000 figure is a maximum, so too is our current one, but everyone rubs right up against it...
Unfortunately many things have been overlooked in this article.
Whilst it is true that the soft cap starts at £6000, many universities have already said they will have to charge more. Many have cited fees of £7000-£8000 (the Times Higher Education supplement is excellent for updates on university's positions with regards to the cuts). So I think the main concern is that fees will be much higher than they are now, and £9000 is a figure that is the worst case scenario, but a possibility nonetheless.
Secondly, I am appalled at the cynicism (and lack of logic) in the claim that many students were protesting for "cheaper education for me" rather than "free education for all." The rise in fees will not affect most people on degree courses at the moment, so personally seeing so many fighting not only for their own benefit but for that of future students is heartening.
Thirdly, the same assumption is made in this article as the Browne report, namely that degrees are only worth their weight in the job market. This is Higher Education, not Higher Training-for-the-Workplace. Despite the fact some students may come to university "to drink and shag for three years while they decide what they want to do with the rest of their life," the point of a degree is to challenge, progress and develop yourself as an individual. This is why we are angry: the government is prioritising subjects they see as beneficial to the economy rather than recognising the true nature of Higher Education. On the issue of devaluing Arts and Humanities degrees, I won't digress here but I recommend Ernst Fischer's "The Necessity of Art."
Finally, the right to protest is not pointless, it is not self-indulgent, it is not wortheless. How else can we engage in the political process? Perhaps nothing will change (I can't see the cuts not going through). But we are showing that we are frustrated and upset by the government's devaluation of Higher Education. The way to do this isn't to violently riot as a tiny majority did, but to continue to exercise our right to protest. So don't contemptuously dismiss our efforts in a patronising sign-off.
I love the open assertion that people willing to protest non-democratic government decisions that will directly and adversely affect their livelihood and that of their children are actually just rabble-rousing drug addicts looking for a good time. Surely anyone who cares enough about something to march in protest about it is some kind of social defective! There are real grounds for offense here, and for those of us who voted for the Lib Dems - who promised initially to remove tuition fees and later that they would instead reduce them significantly - this is a real and obvious betrayal of democracy. It's the highest echelon making a major decision without any input from the people that decision affects, and in direct opposition to what they promised they would use the votes of those very people to do. This measure deincentivises higher education, will hamstring those who want to be upwardly mobile, and as mentioned is taking precedence over cuts from Trident, the oh-so-valuable program we keep paying for literally in case of a Cold War-era Doomsday Clock scenario. When a country prefers Red Scare-derived nuclear submarines to the education and financial welfare of its future inhabitants, that country has a problem.
You make some good points, but on the whole your tone is supercilious, dismissive and, yes, elitist - double whiskey and a tab of acid indeed. As if every one of the thousands of people who marched travelled down to London for a chance to do LSD in the cold and kick things.
I don't want to de-rail the comment thread too much, just wanted to drop in a couple of things about keeping Trident. The point about keeping an effective nuclear deterrant isn't a cold-war mentality clinging on, nor is it solely about the actual physical threat of a WMD.
It allows Britain it's seat 'at the top table' in international negociations: assuring our UN security council veto, assuring Britain can't easily be side-lined in treaty organisations etc. It's not pretty, but I'm personally glad the UK has it's influence.
And yes, pragmatically having a nuclear deterrant is an investment against unforseeable future threats. Certainly the world isn't going to be free of nuclear weapons for the forseeable future, I'm glad we have that deterrant behind us. It's certainly not worth scrapping over relativly temporary, if fairly nasty effects of cutting services.
Hi Adam, #3 here.
Speaking only for myself, I wasn't talking about a nuclear deterrant per se (which, I agree with you, are better to have than not) but the Trident delivery system and funding thereof, which I think should certainly be reviewed.
Nuclear issues aside, the article has some errors:
1. Universities will have to take part in widening participation activities if they wish to charge more than £6000, but there is no requirement - as yet - for them to actually recruit disadvantaged students.
2. It isn't being said that poor students will OWE less but pay less per month than they curently do, though as the payment term has increased to 30 years this will probably balance out.
A couple of other things about the scheme - as it will be necessary to earn £40,000p.a. just to cover the interest, many people will carry the full debt for 30 years, until it is written off. Goodness knows how the capital from all these loans is going to be recouped - seems like just stocking up debt for the future!
In addition, as central funding is going to be cut from arts and humanities courses, the fees will need to be set to cover the loss of the current student and Govt. contibutions - an average of £7,200 p.a.
Good to see a student approaching this issue from the right side of the debate - even if a little erroneously as pointed out above.
I agree with posters above about the rise in the foreign aid budget - it's a disgrace that it goes up when many development economists think the whole thing is couter productive. But it isn't an either or thing - we should cut that too as well as higher education. Don't get me started on raising the NHS budget...
I can't stand people being annoyed with the Lib Dems - you haven't been betrayed at all. They are a MINORITY in the coalition and therefore can;t push though everything. Everyone knows Clegg always beleived in raising the tuition fee - he argued against it at his first Lib Dem conference as leader. This is why hung parliaments are so rubbish, parties cannot deliver all their programs.
The tuition fee rise is inevitable. Higher education is losing money left right and centre under the ridiculouse notion of sending 50% of people to university. Too many rubbish degrees like media studies which are necessary for jobs or furthering one's knoweldge or logic and too many poly's. Now students will be forced to judge whether the debt is worth it - poor students that are good enough will still think it is. The fee rise is beneficial in this sense as it will stop the person with 3 ds at A level going to Thames Valley to do film studies and plunging themselves into massive debt.
Anyone who lives in the real world knows this has to happen and the British Left is in a fantasy world.
P.S. if students want to make a difference they should try voting at elections and not have by far the worse turnout figures of any group
#11, You seem to have a real downer about 'rubbish' media studies and film studies degrees. Care to elaborate?
Also what do you mean 'too many polys'? Polytechnics don't exist anymore.
Everyone has a right to peacefully protest and campaign. No-one has a right to 'damage a few windows' (the airy metaphor for the violent and illegal Millbank invasion that keeps being trotted out lately).
There are some truly awful courses at awful institutions of higher education in the UK. And, sad to say, some pretty dismal undergraduates attending them. Why were we lavishing so much public money on these at the expense of decent universities and genuinely bright young people? If the people had wanted to continue to subsidise this mediocrity, I guess they would have voted Labour back in?
The idea that 50% of young people (or anywhere near that figure) should be shoved into third-rate undergraduate education is morally and philosophically laughable. But let's not get airy-fairy about it...it is ruinously expensive and whatever policy minutiae Lib Dem and Tory voters did or didn't think they were voting for, they were all agreed that they were voting for huge cuts in state spending. Here they are. Don't like them? Vote Labour and hope that enough people outside the bubble of higher education find your conduct and thinking attractive enough to follow suit.
Gillian I will elaborate -THEY ARE A WASTE OF TIME. Companies can train you themselves you need experience not a three year degree. Plus universities offer great ways to get involved in extra curricular film or media stuff - York is a fine example.
Poly's may have been turned into uni's by thatcher but we all know them (York st john/ thames valley/ southbank/ nottingham trent... They should all be extinguished and the money spent should be hypothecated towards proper apprenticeships that actually help people who have other, and equally reputable, skills outside academia
What this debate seems to be coming down to is whether the knowledge gained at university it of merit in and of itself or whether this knowledge only gains merit through practical application.
#14 If a person doesn't go to university but instead does job training how can they benefit from the extra curricular film and media stuff you suggest they take up instead of their 'waste of time' degrees? Also, while I agree that York does have an excellent array of societies, despite having great fun attending world cinema soc. for most of my time at uni, it was the library and academic tutorage that helped me write my MA film dissertation.
Nice article. I agree with the rise in tuition fees, the contention that rising them will push groups out of education is rubbish. It's as affordable as it was before. All these protesters have done is just help to prove right the common impression that students are brats. Now we're not all brats, obviously, but those few throwing a wobbly and behaving like louts have cast a negative impression over the rest of us.
Thanks for that!
I was already against this increase in tuition fees, and now with the proposed cap on foreign students I'm starting to think this government is just as bloody clueless as the last one.
comment deleted by the author I know of one very large county council that is blacklisting every trainee teacher that appears on the various Facebook petitions in support of the Millbank rioters. You can overdo this stuff. You may feel you have the right to 'direct action', but employers have the right to choose not to employ those that participate in it or cheerlead it. Especially if, like an idiot, you advertise the fact all over the internet.
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