It is welcome that the Government has belatedly accepted that the abolition of student grants was a mistake (and went against the Dearing recommendations) but the £1000 grant proposed for the poorest students is grossly inadequate and does not even achieve the level of grant available when the Tories left office.  A means-tested grant equivalent to the maximum student loan is necessary to overcome the attraction of paid employment to those from backgrounds with no tradition of higher education.  We cannot possibly be maximising the potential of all our young people if only 14% from the poorest groups go to university when the comparable figure for those from professional backgrounds is over 70%.

I am one of 156 Labour MPS who have signed Early Day Motion 2 opposed to top up fees and I have made my position clear to ministers at several meetings.   The Government is attempting to modify their original proposals in an effort to persuade these colleagues to support top-up fees.  The current proposals would, however, result in a diversion of the extra income raised from top-up fees into providing bursaries to the poorest students, thus defeating the original aim of providing sufficient additional income to universities.

An article I wrote for Tribune in 1997 still expresses my views.  Higher education could be financed by a 50% income tax band for those on higher incomes.  The Government says that there is a graduate premium over a lifetime of £400,000 which justifies the policy of requiring students to pay back a proportion of the cost of their education once they earn more than £15,000 but this is based on historical data that are not relevant for today’s graduates.  This is especially the case for women and those from ethnic minorities, whose earnings potential is not on average greater than that of white, male non-graduates.  A tax on high earnings would also ensure that past beneficiaries of higher education would also contribute and it would be a better way for richer parents to contribute to the education of their children.

Whilst the Tories are also criticising the Govt on HE, they don't provide an alternative way of maintaining and increasing investment in our universities and in students. Instead they would impose an immediate cut of the £430 million in universities' income that is derived from the curent level of tuition fees and they would chop a further £193 million by reducing support for disadvantaged students, whose fees are paid by the Government. This is equivalent to 6,500 lecturers. The Government's proposals on variable fees would provide the sector with additional income of £740 million. In simply opposing this proposal, without providing for alternative means of raising the cash, the Tories are merely perpetuating the policies of past Conservative governments - starving our universities of the funding they desperately need to remain world class.

Academic salaries

Click here for recommendations on academic salaries and PhD bursaries from reports produced by the Science and Technology Select Committee (of which I was a member from 1993 to 2001).

Government higher education policy

Information on the Government's higher education policy is available at the Department for Education and Skills website.