Make the super-rich pay

Adam Powell-Davies, Socialist Students National Organiser

Keir Starmer’s Labour government has announced its plans to increase university tuition fees to £9,535 in September.

Labour wants students to pay even more for education, instead of big business and the super-rich. By lifting the cap on fees, they will now rise annually in line with RPI inflation. By 2029, that could mean fees as high as £10,500.

Education secretary Bridget Phillipson has indicated that an inflation-linked fee rise would only be the first step towards a wider overhaul of the university funding system, signalling the potential for even bigger attacks to come on students under this government.

In the space of five years, the Labour Party has gone from pledging to abolish tuition fees, to now increasing them. The announcement only confirms that when Starmer talks about his Labour Party governing as ‘changed Labour’, he means a complete abandonment of the anti-austerity policies of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn.

Students have to organise now to stop any rise in tuition fees. We refuse to pay an even higher price for the crisis in higher education, which Tony Blair’s Labour government set in motion by introducing tuition fees in the first place.

Socialist Students has initiated the Funding Not Fees campaign this term as a step to building a united student and workers’ movement for fully funded, free education with living grants for all, paid for by taking the wealth and resources off the super-rich.

We will be reaching out to other student organisations and trade union branches in the coming weeks to build for ‘Funding Not Fees’ lobbies of MPs up and down the country, to demand they call for the full public funding students and university workers need – not more cuts, sky-high rents, maintenance loans we can’t live on, and fees.

Socialist Students says

• No fee increases – get organised on campus to fight for free education! Cancel student debt, replace student loans with living grants tied to the rate of inflation. Make the super-rich pay!
• No cuts and no closures! Build democratic student organisations to link up with campus trade unions and the wider working class to fight for the funding our universities need
• Kick big business off campus! End marketisation of our education. Open up university finances to democratic oversight and control, including by elected students’ representatives and campus trade unions, with the power to terminate all contracts and research tied to war, occupation, profiteering and exploitation, while guaranteeing jobs and funding
• Students need a political voice. Build a new mass workers’ party that will stand up for students and workers and fight for socialist policies
• Fight for socialist change. For democratic public ownership of the banks, monopolies and major industry to provide us with a future