Tuition fee hike "economically & morally wrong"

'The proposed hike to tuition fees is both economically and morally wrong. Taking more money from debt ridden students and handing it to overpaid underperforming vice-chancellors is ill conceived and won't come close to addressing the sector's core issues.

'As Keir Starmer himself said last year, the current fees system doesn't work for students and doesn't work for universities. The model is broken; it has saddled students with decades of debt, turned universities from sites of learning into corporations obsessed with generating revenue, and continually degraded staff pay and working conditions.

'Labour accepts the issues facing higher education are systemic yet has only applied a sticking plaster. Its principles are vague and could be exploited by vice-chancellors, while higher fees mean even more graduates will fail to pay back their loans, ultimately costing the exchequer. The Chancellor says 'invest, invest, invest': it is time to do that in higher education, especially if Labour is serious about delivering a decade of national renewal.'