On the news last night I saw four sights that I have never before witnessed. The first shock was seeing protestors breaking-in to the Treasury on Whitehall. The second was to see fires burning in Parliament Square and the final shock was to see members of our Royal family coming under attack. All of which is deplorable.
Earlier in the day I had tweeted that I hoped their would be a rebellion tonight but this wasn’t what I had in mind. I was, of course, hoping that enough Lib Dem and Conservative MPs would rebel against the government and that the huge increase in tuition would not be passed. Tragically, it was.
As I watched Nick Robinson’s report on the government, ‘winning the vote in the chamber but losing the argument outside’, it seemed a bit of an understatement. I am in the happy position of having three degrees. I can’t help feeling that this is a privilege that few students leaving school this Summer will be able to enjoy.
My tuition fees were covered by my local authority for the first degree in Biblical studies, by a scholarship for the second one in systematic theology and by the Church for the third one in Pastoral Theology. Now you are probably thinking that these are pretty useless and self-indulgent and I remember my father being uncertain whether I would ever find gainful employment. But I did, indeed in the twenty-two years since I first graduated (is it that long?!) I have never been out of work. Over that time these degrees have fuelled my imagination and have been the bedrock of a career in the voluntary sector, often in faith based organisations.
My tuition fees were covered by my local authority for the first degree in Biblical studies, by a scholarship for the second one in systematic theology and by the Church for the third one in Pastoral Theology. Now you are probably thinking that these are pretty useless and self-indulgent and I remember my father being uncertain whether I would ever find gainful employment. But I did, indeed in the twenty-two years since I first graduated (is it that long?!) I have never been out of work. Over that time these degrees have fuelled my imagination and have been the bedrock of a career in the voluntary sector, often in faith based organisations.
The vote last night means that students starting degrees in September are likely to graduate with a debt of around £30,000 (according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies) and will spend the next thirty years paying it off. The NUS have led the way in pointing out that such debts will deter students from poorer background and that the mitigating strategies of government are unlikely to have a significant effect. This is, of course, not really news and previous government reports have acknowledged that potential debts are a particular disincentive to poorer students, lone parents and ethnic minorities.
So this then was the fourth and most troubling thing that I witnessed last night- the privatisation of higher education in the UK. To be more accurate it was probably the spending review on the 20 October that brought this about. Last night, however, the reality hit home.
For school leavers this Summer, I imagine fewer will consider studying for abstract degrees like theology, let alone higher degrees, and faced with huge debts they may well think twice before embarking on a career in the voluntary sector- supporting something called the big society.
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