Adam Gillman, Socialist Party youth organiser
Just days after the budget, the so-called Labour government announced a rise in tuition fees to £9,535, coming into effect in the 2025-26 academic year. This will not only affect students starting university in 2025, but also returning students.
The fee hike will anger many already stressed, outraged students. Young people are already facing a cost-of-living crisis, massive debts, and cuts to their services and courses.
Some people say that if you’re low paid after studying you won’t have to pay it back, but if you are a graduate working full-time on just next year’s minimum wage you will still have to start to pay it off.
The budget had already contained attacks on young people, such as the increase in the bus fare cap to £3, making it more expensive for students and young people to travel.
The Labour government is testing to see what it can get away with without triggering a mass movement.
This is why Socialist Students has initiated the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign with other groups on campus. To fight to scrap tuition fees and cancel student debt, for fully funded education, with living grants not loans. To fight for rent controls in student accommodation, to end low pay and unstable contracts for staff, and to stop all cuts and closures on campus.
Socialist Students groups will be writing to student unions and trade union branches to ask to speak at their branch meetings and to ask them to support the campaign.
Funding Not Fees will also be lobbying MPs to see if they are on the side of students or of rotten university managements and a government that wants to make students pay for the university funding crisis rather than the super-rich.
We have ten months till this fee rise will be implemented, so we have to get out there and fight back to show the government that students will not just accept attacks.
It’s not just on the universities where young people are angry. We face the devastating effects of cuts to our public services, such as youth services and schools, which are making life harder for millions.
If you are interested in campaigning for funding not fees, if you want to fight back against cutbacks and for socialist change, then join the socialists today!
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
