Agree with him or not, Corbyn has reframed the debate on post-18 funding. He has stoked No.10 panic ever since the election, with his deceptively straightforward manifesto offer last year: abolishing tuition fees; restoring maintenance grants; and free lifelong college education. And yet a dangerous attitude abounds in sector circles that it’s inconceivable Corbyn will ever be Prime Minister, so there is little need to think that hard about his pledges.
And that would be a mistake. Corbyn is no policy wonk, but abolishing fees is a flagship manifesto commitment he (nor any successor) will not resile from.
We live in extraordinary times. No one can say, hand on heart, who will be in power this time next year. No.10 want the post-18 review to neutralise a Labour attack line about privatisation and marketisation of HE – so at the very least, it’s hard to imagine fees will ever rise beyond the current £9,250 cap. That means HE cannot be left arguing for the tuition fee rises to fill in funding gaps when no major party in England has the will to deliver it.
Consequently, Labour’s policy wonks need constructive counsel on mapping out its National Education Service, the legislation underpinning it and the questions needing urgent answers. Will an abolition of fees lead to a decline in poor students enrolling, as in Scotland? How will universal free tuition impact on universities’ finances? Will we need to reintroduce student number controls? Will existing debt be written off? And how does all this fit into the new statutory regulatory system?
And yet the terms of the debate may change fundamentally if ONS force the government to include billions of pounds of HE funding into the day-to-day national accounts – suddenly, there will be much greater transparency about scale of public subsidy and the value to taxpayers’ (especially non-graduates).
This is all connected to a different vibe to political activism on campuses. There is a disconnect between frontline academics, professional staff, and management. We saw that the the size and scale of the UCU strike on pensions reflected the activism which Corbyn has harnessed since 2015. And we see it in more and more Labour Party student groups aligning with Momentum – and getting smarter about their campaigning tactics at the same time.
The Tories, scarred by losing Canterbury for the first in 99 years, want to take the fight to Labour in university towns (important, given young alumni populations). Universities will be THE crucial battleground at the next election, whenever it comes.