Election: Young Voters Cop it Again as Fees Increase

After almost a decade of false promises and substantial changes to tuition fees, students have now received more bad news: from the next academic year many universities will lift their fees from £9,000 a year to £9,250.

Despite Liberal Democrat promises to cap tuition fees, the Conservative-Lib Dem Coalition of 2010-15 tripled the top fees from £3,000 to £9,000 and they’re set to rise again. The increase is already in place at many unis for the 2017-18 academic year and will apply to new and returning students.

The Tories, and more specifically former Chancellor George Osborne, also changed the maintenance grant, which supports living costs and did not need to be repaid, to a maintenance loan which must be repaid alongside the loan for tuition fees. That means the money students get each term will go on top of the loan repayments they have to make after graduation. The maintenance grants will be capped at £3,875 a year for those with wealthy parents,  while students from low income homes will be capped at £6,904 if they are living with their parents, £8,200 if they are living away from home and outside London, and £10,702 if they are living away from home and in London.

Value for money?

An irritation for many students, especially those on creative courses, is that the further you get into your degree the lower your contact hours with your course tutors and lecturers, so their tuition fees will be rising while their contact hours fall. Many courses require students to fill out a “unit evaluation” at the end of each term, pinpointing what they liked about the term, what they disliked and what they would change but many students are refusing to fill them out for fear that positive evaluations will simply encourage universities to lift their fees.

The increase in student tuition fees is linked to a 2.8% rise in inflation, meaning that fees are likely to keep rising and could even hit £10,000 at some point.  Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has proposed a complete shake-up of university funding which  would see an end to tuition loans and a reintroduction of the non-repayable maintenance grant. But the idea of totally scrapping fees for students has also been criticised by students and teachers. Many believe that an end to tuition loans would mean a fall in the quality of teaching and in the value that employers place on a university education.

The rising cost of studying means that a university education is becoming less attractive to many young people, who believe that having a student loan will mean they will never be able to afford a home of their own. Having to choose between a home or a degree isn’t a fair life choice for any young person.

 

by Ella Neish

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