Cardiff Philosophers Urge Jenny Willott MP To Vote Against The Proposed Rise In Tuition Fees

The following members of Cardiff University's academic staff in Philosophy wish to urge Jenny Willott, MP for Cardiff Central, to honour the NUS pledge that she signed before the general election to vote against the Government’s proposal to cut drastically the teaching grant to universities and raise student tuition fees to make up the shortfall.

Higher education is a public good. It increases democratic political engagement, enriches collective culture, and renders more effective the workings of all the public and private endeavours that employ graduates. The present proposal mitigates against these outcomes by treating higher education as something that benefits only, and so should primarily be funded by, the students themselves. The proposal is thereby likely to limit the number entering higher education, reduce the diversity of their social backgrounds, and distort their distribution across the disciplines.

Statistics available from the UCAS website suggest that the proposal is already affecting university applications, with a very significant shift away from humanities degree courses towards those subjects perceived as more directly vocational. Study of the humanities brings distinct social and economic benefits, including openness to new ideas and cultural difference, the ability to interpret what others are saying, however complex and unfamiliar it might at first seem, and the capacity to analyse a problem incisively, to articulate a range of possible solutions, and to evaluate the merits of each in a judicious manner.

These are precisely the skills that the UK economy needs if it is to flourish in a rapidly changing and largely post-industrial environment. They are also those that society needs if it is to confront the most difficult challenges facing it in the coming years. It is for the good of everyone in the UK that more, rather than fewer, members of society have those skills. It is for the good of all that those skills are spread as widely across the social spectrum as possible.

Finally, two independent studies, one by the Higher Education Policy Institute and one by Million Plus, have concluded that the proposal is not likely to save the taxpayer any significant amount of money and might even cost more than the current funding system. The Government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility’s November forecast predicted that the plan to increase fees would add up to £13 billion to public sector net debt by 2015-16, even after the related education funding cuts have been taken into account.