Review seen as Labour’s ‘best option’ on English fees dilemma

The Labour Party lacks any “obvious solutions” as it grapples with formulating a new position on university funding in England, leading policy experts to predict that it will commit only to conducting another review of the current system if it were to take power in next year’s general election.

Sir Keir Starmer has signalled the party will abandon its commitment to abolishing fees and funding higher education directly from public spending in England, but in an interview with the BBC he criticised the current system as “not working for students or universities”. Reports suggested he would confirm the dropping of the policy in a speech later this month.

Despite Sir Keir’s comments, “we are no closer to seeing any concrete higher education policy from the Labour Party”, said Diana Beech, the chief executive of London Higher and former adviser to Conservative universities ministers, who said she felt the reversal of the free education policy was “inevitable”, given the “current state of the UK economy and growing pressures to deliver on other policy priorities”.

She called for more clarity from the party on the potential options under consideration, but warned that there was no “silver bullet” for the student funding model.

Labour has long deliberated whether to back the idea of a graduate tax, though in Wales, where Labour is in power, students are offered a higher level of maintenance funding, including grants.

Recent Higher Education Policy Institute polling showed there was little consensus among students about the best way forward in England but – with just 4 per cent support – a graduate tax was one of the least popular options.

“This is a real knot of a policy problem and I don’t think there is an obvious solution; there are trade-offs in any of the options that have been put forward up until now,” said Vivienne Stern, the chief executive of Universities UK, which is in the midst of carrying out its own “national conversation” about the funding system.

Labour, she said, did not appear to be in a position to put forward a fully-fledged plan, so announcing its intention to conduct a review would be “the smart thing to do”.

But such a commitment should come with a set of principles attached, Ms Stern continued, adding that two glaring issues that needed to be addressed were the level of maintenance funding for students in England – currently at its lowest level for seven years – and the shrinking resource for teaching, which was an increasing problem in all four nations despite the different funding models in use.

“That simply can’t go on if you want to maintain the level of support students are receiving,” she said. “So I think it is important that, given Labour has said it is going to revisit its policy, we push them into putting alternatives in place that halt and reverse the decline in teaching funding, as well as addressing pressures on students and the public purse.”

Another dimension, Ms Stern said, was the expected expansion in the demand for UK higher education in the coming decade, and she called on all the major political parties to articulate a vision for how they expect to deal with this.

Andy Westwood, professor of government practice at the University of Manchester and a former adviser to Labour universities ministers, said a review of funding was “almost certain” to be the opposition’s policy going into the election.

This was not the “fudge” some had seen it as, Professor Westwood argued, because comprehending the breadth and depth of what was required was not possible until a party got into government.

Such a review would need to consider much more than fees and repayments, he said; it would need to address how to rebuild the whole tertiary education system in a way that better integrated universities, further education, lifelong learning and apprenticeships.

What is more, Professor Westwood added, “we need a much better understanding of why HE matters to a wide range of other objectives”, including industrial strategy, net-zero commitments and reforms to the NHS.

Dr Beech said there were some clues as to what Labour might prioritise if it were to gain power, including more of a focus on skills and a realignment of skills policy with regional economic policy and local labour markets. 

tom.williams@timeshighereducation.com