A Graduate Tax?

As promised in my last blog here is a piece about the graduate tax.

When Vince Cable stopped supporting a graduate tax, 

he failed to get a compromise

For those of us who believe in free and fair education there has always been a problem. Most people consider Higher Education as not being a necessity; therefore a common consensus is that students should make a contribution to their education.

The argument for a graduate tax has to take into account the arguments for and against the marketisation of the university system. So I’ll talk about this first. Marketising a University system promotes the idea that education is a commodity rather than a right. Many say that this will mean that students would be able to demand more from their university, indeed; it is likely that many universities will improve contact time and will likely produce a more school-like approach to teaching students.

The problems about this are three-fold; for a start this will change the very nature of university, academia is about more than simply being taught something new (even school isn’t like this! http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/22/university-students-degrees-david-mitchell); it’s about learning to work independently to deadlines and using your initiative to go out, do the research, form an opinion about it and effectively present it. These are skills that are important for the (relevant) workplace and absolutely essential for academia. Turning university into a school-like atmosphere will reduce this value. Secondly, this is likely to produce the appearance that students are facing less pressure with much the same effect as the appearance that GCSE’s and A-levels are “getting easier” their value will diminish destroying the very point of marketising universities! The final problem here is that not every university will want to go the school-based approach: many already get significant revenue from research and spin-off businesses, so diverting funds into a school-like approach will not be worthwhile. What will happen? The ‘lower’ classed universities will go the school route, and top Universities in the Russell group will simply refuse to go a more student-orientated approach as they won’t have to as they’ll still have the prestige, the money and the research opportunities for serious academics.

If we look at the USA, this two-tier system already exists on a far more extreme level; it simply isn’t plausible for a bright and talented student to get to go to Harvard (for example) because they can’t afford the tuition fees & living costs which can be around $78,681* (£51,038). Yet Universities like Harvard are so affluent that the university has an endowment of $27.4 billion (£17.4 bn almost as large as the entirety of the UK university budgets). This hasn’t given power to students; rather it has given the power to the wealthy!

Admittedly my arguments for/against the marketisation of universities here have been very brief, but they must be tackled in order to establish part of the advantages of a ‘graduate tax’.

                As I have already alluded to, a graduate tax is not my ideal choice; but the way that a graduate tax may avoid the same effects as putting big figures like £36,000 on the cost of a university education are important to the reasons why I would be willing to advocate it. Don’t get me wrong a graduate tax would require stringent laws to ensure that it is protected from governments who want to spend the money on “other things” but the idea that over a set period of time someone pays an extra 3% in income tax over a 20 year period once they start earning over a certain wage isn’t a horrible scenario and allows us to look at simply putting a blanket set grant to all students for their living costs and they effectively pay back a significant proportion of what they get out of it over a long term period. Indeed, even the idea of the money being spent on ‘other things’ is not all unattractive as long as universities are getting the money that they need. It would defeat the argument of “why should I pay for someone else’s education”.

When looking at a graduate tax, however, we have to pay close attention to detail on what it actually costs an individual who comes out of university. It is important to bring in rules like putting a lower cap on when an individual has to start making graduate tax payments (say £21,000/year), if the average wage for graduates is £25,000/year then each students will ‘pay back’ their tuition within 25 years at a cost of £750 per year 1/3 of the cost being put forward in the current system! Putting a time limit on the graduate payments also means that there is an outright time when you will no longer have to keep paying for your education, ensuring that those who are from wealthy backgrounds cannot benefit from paying off their loans early (and avoid inflation) nor do those from lower income backgrounds loose out because of mitigating circumstances.

There are more things to take into account here, the idea that business should start making more of a contribution into higher education is an important one; but this should be considered as part of a far wider set of reforms for higher education (which you can read about here!) The important thing I find about the graduate tax, however, is that it gives the opportunity to eliminate the need for “means testing” or the up-front worry of how much debt you’re going to have over your head. The graduate tax simplifies things for the student, the tax payer and the treasury; if a student uses the skills they learned at university to go into the oil industry and are earning £60,000 plus per year they’ll spend between £600-£1,800 per year putting money back into the higher education system meaning that they’ll have put in £45,000+ into the system allowing for significant investment to go into research into that sector (and others) boosting not only the academic sector but the economy as a whole.

* http://www.hks.harvard.edu/degrees/sfs/prospective-students/tuition/domestic

Implications of the fight against the Tuition Fees rise.

It is time to put the pressure on Cameron

It’s a terrible time to be a Liberal Democrat. Pollsters have them between 8-13% nationally, they're likely to be placed in 6th in Wales and they're 4th in Scotland. Meanwhile Vince Cable (and several other Lib Dems) has been stung by the Telegraph with the result that a pro-Murdoch conservative is now in charge of the BSkyB decision.

Really, this is almost a comeuppance Vince Cable & Nick Clegg’s absolute refusal to engage with students over recent months; when Vince was faced with ‘constituents’ he gave into the need to show off about something. The problem is that it was only a matter of time before someone clipped Cable’s wings; the flip-flop over graduate tax vs. Lord Browne’s proposals on tuition fees and whether he should abstain on his own proposal had left him in a very vulnerable position. The worrying thing is that, whilst his offence was a small one, Cameron could easily have dropped him from the cabinet but they didn’t which means that a deal was made somewhere.

Vince’s “nuclear weapon” has been diffused leaving him with little or no power, which means that he has become a true puppet head of department; the fact that he lost the decision over BSkyB to an openly biased individual is a demonstration that the Lib Dems are losing the battle that is forever raging in Whitehall. This is all a little worrying for the tuition fees white paper coming up in the New Year; it would not surprise me if the package being proposed for tuition fees will be made ‘less fair’ in the detail. The rise in fees was rushed through intentionally ahead of the white paper and before Christmas so that they could brag about the 'improvements' later on.

Part of the problem for the Lib Dem has stemmed from the fact that they're suffering so badly in the polls, Cable's 'nuclear weapon' was never realistic because Lib Dem High Command will be terrified about the prospect of triggering an election. Significantly the student movement has thrown all its weight into trying to force Lib Dem MPs into voting against the tuition fees proposal, damaging the Lib Dems dramatically; causing the unfortunate side effect of compounding the problem for them and allowing Conservatives to come out relatively unscathed by all this, whilst they've lost their lead in the polls; it has become apparent that the argument has not been brought to Conservative voters (those who currently support the proposals) and instead has become rather confined to “how awful” the Lib Dems U-turn has been. If we are to win the debate over tuition fees we must win the argument against those who are supporting these proposals, not those stubbornly shouting about this being a “compromise”.

And, sadly, of course we have the small problem that the other mainstream party (Labour) haven’t got the best track record on the subject of tuition fees. The lurch towards the Graduate Tax is a healthy one in my opinion, whilst ideally I would prefer free higher education; I can understand and appreciate the argument that students should make a contribution (My views about a graduate tax). The important matter, however, is that we need to look into the ways to ensure that political reform does not just touch Westminster. In order for politics to move into a new era the mainstream parties must look into their democratic structures; they all operate with a top-down approach and the memberships only true option when dissatisfied is to leave the party.

This is all significant, but if we are to oppose those things which we do not like about this government then it is so very important to ensure that we’re both targeting the right people and finding ways to make organisation who are supposed to represent us more accountable to the electorate.

So, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, remember that the true enemies right now are not the Liberal Democrats, but the Conservatives.  But remind yourself that working with others is important, and that forming bridges (not burning them) is crucial to the success of any movement; so please open up debate on how to improve things not whining about who has been the worst in government.

It's time to put the pressure on the Conservatives.

Educational Maintenance Allowance: Good or Bad?

So, the government has gotten rid of the EMA; citing the figure that 80% of students will still go to college without it and shouting about their replacement being more ‘progressive’ (the more I hear the word the more it annoys me) and will ‘put the power into the hands of head teachers’.

The thing is, they have a point; in many ways the EMA has had problems as there are many students who do use it for things like pizza and computer games. But is this problem really as bad as a potential student being denied access to the college they want to go to because they’ve been forced out of their parent’s home and can’t afford the transport costs?

The issue is that many of the problems have occurred in EMA due to the method of means assessment, one entirely based upon parental income. Much in the same way that student maintenance loans/grants for university has problems. Let’s picture two scenarios: Scenario 1) Parents are living together and are earning £31,000 per annum and Scenario 2) Parents are divorced; one is earning £15,000 per year, the other is earning £100,000 per year.

In scenario 1 the student receives absolutely nothing, they could have a brother or sister and it just doesn’t matter. In scenario 2 the student declares the parent with the lowest income as their primary residence and receives the maximum EMA. Can you see the issue?

Naturally, this is a systemic problem with most means-testing methods; they simply don’t work without an immense amount of bureaucracy.

This all being said, it is important to remember that the EMA was still in its infancy when the coalition government decided to axe it; and it has had some very strong points. First of all, the EMA was never meant as a simple ‘incentive’; it was put forward with the full knowledge that it wasn’t necessarily going to encourage students to ‘go to college’, but it had a great deal of potential to empower students to choose WHICH college they wanted to go to.

Many middle and upper class individuals do not realise just how hard it is for many people from certain backgrounds to up sticks and move, at college there is no means assist students to move to a place where they want to study. EMA goes some way to resolving this, increasing the choices of students to go that much further afield with their studies.

For the Sake of Unity...

Today Joe Oliver, a man whom I have a great deal of respect for; announced that he had decided to leave Labour Students over the selection of Thomas Graham by the organisation to stand against the current VPHE Usman Ali. I fully admire, respect and understand his decision on this issue, it is not an easy one to make and by sticking to his principles on this it only makes me respect him more than I already did :-).

This being said; I feel that the direction Joe Oliver has gone on this is not for me, being a (relatively new) member of Labour Students it feels too paradoxical for me to leave the organisation; one of the reasons I joined in the first place was for the sake of unity. (Luckily for me my decision is not as difficult as Joe's as I have not nearly been involved as much as he has and nor am I in as influential position but I felt it important to make my positioning on this clear)

'Unity' has become one of the biggest struggles of the student movement in recent months: the result of a severe set of divisions. Activist groups calling Aaron Porter a 'traitor', the NUS distancing itself from direct action and others who don't want to be lumped in with either and just want to get their voice heard. They all have valid points, but to me it's all started sounding a bit too much like the Judean Peoples front (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE).

Whilst I'm not a big fan of Aaron Porter (I feel his leadership has had too great a top-down approach) I'm not going to go around saying he's a 'traitor' and start calling for a vote of no confidence. All parts of the students movement have got to accept that direct action, lobbying and talking to the public do not and cannot work in isolation; a balance has to be found between the three, something the entire movement has to work on together.

                So where to stand in regard to Thomas Graham being selected as the Labour Students candidate for NUS Vice President for Higher Education? In my opinion the selection of Thomas was done in an absurdly top-down manner which, on it's own, makes me very reluctant to support him as a candidate the idea that, despite not having been involved with the process of putting him up as a candidate on behalf of Labour Students; delegates are expected to not just vote for him but campaign for him as well is one that I'm not happy with.

As Joe suggested in his note many will suggest that there is a collective responsibility but I also agree with Joe that this decision was made in an unhealthily top-down manner. If this practice continues it will isolate members from the organisation core and will only contribute to the divisions of the student movement.

                For the sake of unity I will not be leaving Labour Students over this, but nor will I be supporting Thomas’ campaign; I will NOT be campaigning for, supporting or openly endorsing ANY candidate for the position of VPHE.

Many will probably consider this as a cop-out, in a very “sitting-on-the-fence” way, but in my opinion the student movement polarises so frequently on so many issues that I feel that a compromise must be made here: for the sake of unity.

Cheers,

Alan x

Political Reform is long overdue.

The Liberal Democrats demonstration of why our parliamentary democracy is so weak.

When the tuition fees bill passed something happened to me, it was the moment I finally lost faith in parliamentary politics. Parties can do whatever they like, without a mandate and without consequence to themselves.

Throughout the Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown years many people felt frustration at the way the political system has worked, parliament has a very top-down approach. I used to appreciate many aspects of the system, but I’ve been enlightened to its largest flaws.

Today Chris Huhne talked about how the Liberal Democrats were going to be unpopular for a while but it’ll all be fine by 2015, something I found profoundly worrying. It’s the idea that a party can completely U-turn and then run in the opposite direction within weeks of being elected and then shrugs its shoulders and says “the public will forget”. I understand that unpopular decisions are made in any government and that we have to way up the governments decisions as a whole, but the Liberal Democrat outright betrayal of a clear and decisive election promise which had signatures and photo calls backed with a campaign of “no more broken promises” should never of happened.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not a rant about the Liberal Democrats; on the whole most of their supporters had/have their hearts in the right place, but our parliamentary system has given rise to the idea that a party’s leadership can ignore its supporters. Today, if you talk to many Labour party activists they’ll say the same as many lib dem activists do now; they stay in the hope of changing the party.

One of the reasons I’m against proportional representation in its purest forms is that candidate lists actually promote top-down politics as those at the top of the party are untouchable and unaccountable to most of the population. This is a weakness of the current system also; Nick Clegg has caused such anger in his seat that on bonfire night they were burning effigies of him, yet the local populace can do nothing to force a by-election.

So what can be done? How can we change politics for the better?

Recently I’ve paid a fair amount of attention to Australian politics, they already have AV, an elected upper house and they have three year terms; all things that I'm fully in support of but this isn't enough as they have developed similar problems to ourselves. Reforms like Right to Recall and Regional Assemblies are areas of debate that we must engage in and do so maturely, the punch and judy politics of the commons must end and part of that must be the end of brand politics.

This government have talked about boundary changes and producing a referendum on AV, this isn’t nearly far enough to bring in the ‘new politics’, and unfortunately has destroyed any advantages of either because this government and the opposition are failing to enter proper debate. If this continues we are in danger of destroying rationality in politics.