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James O’Leary responds to questions about the government’s plans for education and how it will effect us.

The Government is set to pass legislation that will implement the reforms proposed in the recently published Browne report.*

It proposes a complete overhaul to the way in which Higher Education is funded. The cap is either going to be abolished or seriously raised so students fund more of their courses to plug the gap the government has left, with its £4.2bn cut to higher education funding.
It will work to turn higher education into a market based system similar to the system they’ve got in America at the moment. The more prestigious universities (e.g. those in the Russell Group) will be able to charge more for their courses ,up to whatever the market will bear, whilst the less prestigious such as former polytechnics (MMU etc.) will have to charge less to compete. So it is predicted that whilst Cambridge will be charging between £7000 and £14000 or even higher, MMU will be charging between £3000 to £6000. Students will therefore be choosing their degrees not on quality of teaching but on cost. As a consequence those with the better degrees from the institutions charging more that they could afford to will be able to command a much higher wage in the job market. The reforms are only going to work to exasperate class divisions in our society. Poorer students will also be put off going to university by the sheer level of debt they’d be saddled with.
It is also going to lead the less prestigious universities with some serious funding gaps with some even in fear of closure. The Government has made an 80% cut to the teaching block grant which funds the teaching of courses, which at present are mostly subsided in bands C and D. These courses are mostly the arts and humanities such as my own course history which the government doesn’t see as having any function in the economy or utilitarian value. Therefore universities such as MMU will no longer be able to fund the teaching of these courses and they will become the preserve of a small group of institutions where there will always be demand. The future of the teaching of History at MMU for future students is severely under threat which is why I’m so unconsolably angry about these particular measures.

This government measures the price of everything but the value of nothing and they are demonstrating this with this attack on education.

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*Recently, groups like the SWP seem to have forgotten that the Browne review was a Labour government initiative.

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