Page 480-7 - Tuition Fees

'We had a manifesto commitment not to allow top-up fees, it was true, but frankly it would have been absurd to postpone the decisions necessary for the country because of it.'

No, it's not Cable and Spineless, ditching yet another manifesto promise. It is Tony Blair justifying his own about-turn on tuition fees following the 2001 election.

The 2001 Labour manifesto stated that, 'We will not introduce 'top-up' fees and have legislated to prevent them.' That is about as clear a declaration as you ever get in politics, but, as Blair explains, the promise had only been put into the manifesto because 'worries that we were planning to do this [introduce tuition fees] had been circulating among the PLP and NEC and, David [Blunkett] felt that we had to kill the story.' Quite right too, it would have been extremely inconvenient for Labour supporters to know the truth that they were planning to introduce tuition fees. So, what we are being told is that Blair was considering introducing fees but it would have been extremely awkward to admit it with an election coming up.  After all, they didn't want to upset the membership because somebody needed to deliver the leaflets and it wasn't going to be Tony.

Remarkably, considering the excellent economic conditions during the time, 'shortly after the election the challenge for our universities became clear.' I must have missed this sudden and inexplicable 'run' on our universities, but, following the Labour victory, Blair started formally exploring the introduction of fees. He argued that the success of American universities was 'due to their system of fees...their bursary system allowed them to help poorer students and their financial flexibility meant that they could attract the best academics.' For Blair, our economic well-being relied on world-class universities producing a competitive level of 'human-capital.' This may be true, but, while fees might produce a few institutions that can attract the best in the world, it is not entirely relevant to the largely parochial aims of most of our universities.
 
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with churning out over-qualified admin staff. Education should not all be about career opportunities and all education enhances our life and in turn our society. If you have read Ulysses you may want to punch James Joyce but you are not likely to go around punching old ladies. However, with 59% of graduates in the last two years failing to find a job in a field related to their degree and with graduate unemployment hitting 44%, one must question the wisdom of encouraging young people to begin their adult lives with debts up to £30,000 that will take up to 30 years to pay off. Inevitably, it will encourage students to consider the job prospects of their degree courses, but what a grubby country we will have when the arts and humanities have disappeared from out universities and we are left with only sensible vocational degrees. Who knows, old ladies beware, perhaps gangs of literature students will soon be roaming our inner-cities with an eye to feeding their modernist literature habit.