Ben Matthews
Students are scrimping to cover their sky-high rents. Universities are full of overcrowded lecture theatres, many of which are teetering on the financial edge. University workers have had over a decade of attacks on their pay and conditions – demanded by governments of austerity. And when you leave university and enter the graduate job market apocalypse, you are saddled with a lifetime of student debt.
Will Chancellor John Healey’s Budget contain measures that will actually live up to what is needed to deal with the situation at universities? Well, maybe. But a meteorite could also hit the Houses of Parliament before he can present it – it doesn’t mean it’s likely!
The Higher Education sector is in crisis, and the root of that is the broken tuition fees model. Universities don’t get the resources they need which leads to attacks on staff and course closures. Students’ maintenance loans aren’t enough to survive, so students are forced to work all hours if they can’t get help from their parents. And debt is built up over a lifetime.
We need funding, not fees! Education should be free for all, at all stages of our life. The resources are there in society to provide high-quality, free education, with grants that students can live on. The resources needed to provide this are locked up in the bank vaults of the super-rich, who make massive profits at the expense of our labour. Instead of gathering dust, or being wasted on rich people’s follies, the wealth could be directed for all our good. But you can’t control what you don’t own! We need the wealth and resources of society under democratic public ownership.
20 November UCU day of action
University and College Union (UCU) members will be taking part in a day of action on 20 November in defence of their pay and conditions – linked to building support for a national strike ballot. That’s the same day as the International Youth Strike that Socialist Party members are building action for alongside others in Socialist Students.
Those strikes and walkouts have the banner ‘Fight for our futures, not their wars’. We want a future that includes an education accessible to all, and with staff paid what they deserve. That’s why those walkouts will demand free education, with funding not fees, and show our solidarity with UCU members. We appeal to UCU branches to get in touch with Socialist Students groups to coordinate on the day. Students and workers unite and fight!
