Free us from fees
Politics has always had obsessive debates that are confined in time and place. Outside of those contexts, they sound alien to us — but at the time, they are critical sections of the national conversation, an area on which everyone clearly states an opinion, and that opinion is seen by a large section of the electorate as a key indicator of how politicians and others fit into the spectrum of politics as it is held at that time. Tuition fees has become one of those obsessive debates.
The result of the 2017 general election revived the debate with a great intensity, as politicians and policy makers seek to understands Labour’s strong performance among young voters. Tuition fees have been even more of a left-wing shibboleth since the 2010 vote to allow fees to increase to £9,000 a year destroyed many peoples’ faith in the Liberal Democrats. To be truly progressive, for this section of the electorate, you have to be opposed to tuition fees — university should be “free” to students progressing through it, instead funded out of wider taxation. Others argue that the fees system -is- progressive, in and of itself, and that the alternatives reward wealthy graduates and would fail to provide additional social mobility.
My objection to this debate is — by converting a position on tuition fees into a symbol of your wider politics, politicians and commentators fail to engage with the more important question; what are universities for? Unless we engage with that question, then any funding settlement for universities is going to be bereft of meaning beyond immediate political gain, and that is a troubling place to be in.
In support of this, I’d first like to note the contents of the Conservative and Labour manifestos from 2017. There are 20 mentions of “university/universities” in the Conservative manifesto, and 7 in the Labour manifesto. In the Conservative manifesto, these are paced out across the document, and refer to a variety of policies — university investment funds, technology institutes (sponsored by universities), and new local schools (also sponsored by universities). All 7 of the mentions of universities in the Labour manifesto are found on a single page, which advances two policies — the abolition of tuition fees, and the restoration of maintenance grants.
Among wider commentators, such as Jonn Elledge, Abi Wilks, and Jon Stone, (to choose just 3 random examples), the debate is again entirely focused on the issue of tuition fees in and of themselves*. These commentators are far from alone in this — it seems every argument about tuition fees carries on a step removed from a debate over universities, their purpose, and how to achieve that. Commentators generally get closest when they discuss, as Abi does, when they discuss a need for more graduates in the modern economy, or note that they believe a more educated population is a social good. But, with the exception of such forays as this from Professor Ford, the debate generally stays away from universities, and focuses on students.
This is a troubling place to find oneself, because a funding system cannot be designed in isolation from what it is created to fund. Even on a symbolic level, if tuition fees are a symbolic or practical barrier to participation in the modern economy, or a better society, then we need to understand what role universities have in generating that economy and society; to do so, again, we need to begin by stating what we think universities are for. Here, the Labour and Conservative manifestos are totally silent — they are far more guilty documents, in this sense, than the commentators cited above. Labour exclusively talks about funding, and nothing else. The Conservatives avoid that as well, and indeed avoid any discussion of universities in and of themselves. This, surely, is more alarming than any particular position on tuition fees.
Therefore, let’s engage with the fundamental question at play here, that we’ve been dancing around for some time, instead obsessing over fees. What is a university for? There have been many efforts to try and answer that. For example, the 1963 Robbins Report argued that Higher Education should have 4 objectives:
“instruction in skills […] the promotion of the general powers of the mind so as to produce not mere specialists but rather cultivated men and women […] to maintain research in balance with teaching, since teaching should not be separated from the advancement of learning and the search for truth […] and to transmit a common culture and common standards of citizenship.”
For what it is worth, I would focus in on the third objective as the central tentpost of what universities are for — they are there to generate and to share knowledge (research and teaching). They do this in order to drive forwards the other three objectives — to provide specific skills to future employees and employers, to equip people to think critically about themselves and their world, and to transmit a set of cultural values to people about how we imagine ourselves and the world around us. We are best able to do so, as universities, when our research and teaching is properly supported by outsiders — the government, business, local communities, and so on. These functions are, from my perspective, critical to the development of a modern society — the growth in universities has been key in driving the rise of the world we see around us, for better and for worse.
That is, to me, the beginning of the debate. There are those with different perspectives — but they need to begin with those perspectives. If we argue, for example, that universities should be funded from the Treasury, rather than tuition fees, we need to respond to the difficulties that places on us. We have long since passed the level of student numbers, and indeed numbers of institutions, that were supported under a system with no tuition fees. If we are to argue, as some commentators in favour of replacing tuition fees with general taxation, and so Treasury funding, that universities are to the good of all, and that a modern economy needs more graduates, then we need to design a funding system that will allow the system to not merely survive at its current size, but to have room to grow further. As Professor Ford argues, a no-fees system is directly antithetical to that; if the funding is not directly tied to students, then the incentive is to restrain student numbers, raising the amount that can be spent per student, rather than growing student intake to grow your teaching-related income. Further, what many miss — the Labour manifesto, for example, utterly misses this — is that universities are also there to generate knowledge through research. What future is there for research funding — public or private — under such a regime? Would that be expanded, or would it be restricted?
We should then also bring into consideration the support for academic staff, many of whom start their careers on hugely insecure terms of employment, and are facing rising external examination and pressure through systems like REF and TEF. As they are the ones who are generating and sharing the knowledge, what support will we put in place to help them succeed? I would suspect that any centrally-funded system would not see a decrease in workload, as the government demands universities provide data to show they are providing “value for money” — the same data currently provided to help universities compete for students in the marketplace. This is by no means an exhaustive exploration of the topics that have to be discussed, but are utterly missing from most of the debate.
Flatly, the current debate is utterly inadequate for the ends we need it to serve. We have become obsessed with a symbol, rather than exploring the deeper, and more difficult issues, that underlie it. I do not expect the debate to shift; all politics involves a strong element of symbolism, and that will continue for a very great time to come. But I do hope that commentators will shift their focus away from purely a discussion about fees, to a proper meaningful debate about what universities are, and how the funding system they desire can deliver that. They will need to recognise that every funding system has trade-offs — that, for example, a Treasury-funded system will require universities to compete against schools, hospitals, and other public services for money, which may well reduce their ability to take more students as they are squeezed. If they feel those trade-offs are worthwhile, they will need to justify it in terms of the central mission they have identified for universities.
It is perhaps too high a hope in an age where the politics of easy seems to be grabbing everyone’s attention. Where simple, briefly-explained policies are held up as a panacea to all the ills we face, and where those who argue for nuance, moderation, or the like, are reviled as enemies of progress. But without this sort of consideration, any policy on university funding — fees, bloc grants, whatever — will fall flat, if it is not connected to a serious appraisal of what universities are for, why we value them, and therefore how our proposed funding system will help deliver that. If we are agreed universities are a good thing — and it seems that everyone cited above does agree on that — then we need to design a funding system that will develop that, in and of itself, rather than one based on a reflection of the need for symbolic changes. Otherwise, we risk letting this good thing go — and that would be tragic.
*To be fair to Jonn, his argument is that they are a symbol, and that the politics should reflect that, an argument I am sympathetic too. But, on the other hand, he is quiet on the issue I’m discussing.
