Clarke defends ‘realistic’ tuition fee plans
Education Secretary Charles Clarke has leapt to the defence of tuition fees as the only ‘realistic’ option for funding higher education.
Mr Clarke’s declaration comes after a report by the Higher Education Policy Institute (Hepi) warned that, even with tuition fees, the government’s plans for higher education would leave a £1.6 billion funding gap.
The Education Secretary was speaking ahead of his keynote speech to the Labour party conference in Bournemouth.
Think tank Hepi added that the opposition parties’ plans would mean either even larger bills for the taxpayer or the cutting of hundreds of thousands of university places.
The report, by the director of Hepi, Bahram Bekhradnia, is based on the assumption that two thirds of universities would charge tuition fees of £3,000 a year, raising about £1.5 billion, and a rise in demand for university places of 250,000 by 2010.
However, Mr Bekhradnia said the government had allowed opponents of higher fees to give prospective students the idea they would face massive debt if they went to university, even though repayments would be earnings-related.
‘I am very worried that the opponents of fees are actually in danger of turning off the very students that they are claiming to be trying to support,’ he said.
The Labour Party plans to increase university fees to £3,000 per year, despite election pledges not to raise fees for students. The party is facing widespread opposition to the plans from backbench MPs and party members.
Mr Clarke said that ‘people are fearful about change’. He insisted that students from poorer backgrounds would not be excluded by the system, despite estimates that many students will leave higher education with debts of up to £20,000.
However, Tory Education Secretary, Damian Green, dismissed the research as ‘peculiarly half-baked’.
‘The Conservative policy of abolishing all tuition fees and getting rid of the government’s 50 per cent target for university admissions would be fairer for students and better for the university sector,’ he insisted.
