Don’t raise our fees! Don’t cut our staff!

Make the super-rich pay

Jacob Gyton, Leicester Socialist Students

De Montfort University (DMU) vice-chancellor has threatened staff with redundancies and cuts. This is one of many attacks on students and staff, by financially unstable universities.

University bosses expect students to pay increased tuition fees to help cover their exorbitant wages. DMU’s vice-chancellor made £249,000 last year.

These problems are not local to DMU in Leicester. The University of Exeter has announced 200 job cuts.

More than 100 of 140 UK universities are expected to make cuts, with as many as 10,000 people being made redundant.

And Labour now wants to raise our tuition fees. But we are fighting back to make sure they don’t get away with taking another penny.

Clearly, running universities like businesses, instead of centres of education, doesn’t work. Universities benefit from funding from weapons companies, such as Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems – both companies have produced arms used in the genocide in Palestine – and are still unable to balance the books.

Uni education should be free, with unis properly funded by the government and super-rich instead. This is why Socialist Students has established the ‘Funding Not Fees’ campaign, fighting for:

  • Proper funding for all universities, take the wealth off the super-rich
  • Eliminate tuition fees, and reintroduce maintenance grants for all
  • End low pay, job cuts, and ‘casualisation’ of higher education workers
  • Funding Not Fees

The Funding Not Fees campaign has been lobbying local MPs to support the campaign, and talking to local union branches representing university workers to join us too, as well as hosting demonstrations nationwide on ‘Budget Day’.

The only way we can bring about change is through organised, mass action. Everyone, from lecturers to students to cleaners, who want properly funded higher education, must get involved with Funding Not Fees.

Socialist Students national conference takes place on 8 February in Leicester. It provides an opportunity for all students and young people to discuss how to build the fight against fees, and for socialist change, in our schools and campuses.