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HUMPHRYS: When the government set
up a Scottish parliament lots of people said: they'll be sorry. Well it
seems at last one of the chickens is now coming home to roost... tuition
fees for students at university. The Scots are expected to announce this
week that they'll abolish them.. which is fine for the Scots. But what
about everybody else? As Paul Wilenius reports, the government's going
to come under an awful lot of pressure to do something for the English,
the Welsh and the Northern Irish.
PAUL WILENIUS: It's a New Year and It's
a New Term. For student Ben Ricketts. The car's packed and there's one
more farewell before heading back to university. Like hundreds of thousands
of other British students, the holiday's over and it's back to his studies.
But it's also back to worries about money. On the drive from Merseyside,
it's a time for reflection. The students at Ben's university in Newcastle
come from all over the UK. But now Scottish students are set to get a far
better financial deal from their newly devolved government. In 1998, Tony
Blair's government introduced tuition fees and scrapped student grants,
despite fierce opposition from some Labour MPs. But the Scottish coalition
government is poised to overturn this policy. This will put pressure on
Westminster to do the same, as there are many Labour MPs who fear their
constituents will be getting a bad deal - compared to the Scots.
JIM COUSINS MP: I think people will find
these proposals very attractive, what will worry people is why we aren't
having them across the United Kingdom as a whole?
PHIL WOOLAS MP: You will have students
studying on the same course having different financial support systems
because one's from Scotland, one not from Scotland. And that will cause
parents and students themselves to ask their representatives how to justify
this.
WILENIUS: Power was handed over
to the Scottish Parliament last year, and there were high hopes this would
be great boost to the nation. But the coalition government is still finding
its way. Scrapping of university tuition fees was the prize sought by
the Liberal Democrats and Labour was reluctantly forced to look into the
issue. The report commissioned from lawyer Andrew Cubie is expected to
form the basis of a deal.
PAULINE McNEILL MSP: I think in finding a solution
I think the Cubie Report will be the foundation for it but I think that
part of the process will incorporate the principles that Labour adheres
to which is we are looking for wider access in higher education. We feel
there are too few people from low income backgrounds and the principle
of the Liberal Democrats which they find offensive and that is the issue
of student fees. So it's a combination of some of those principles that
I think will find it's way into the final conclusions.
WILENIUS: Few thought that Andrew
Cubie would come up with a workable solution to the problem, which would
please both sides. But he consulted widely throughout Scotland and concluded
that paying tuition fees up front at the start of higher education was
a problem. He found it was better to ask students to pay later once they
had jobs and could afford it.
ANDREW CUBIE: We have concluded that the
position in Scotland as far as tuition fees is indeed, as we've described
it, discredited. Where we stand at the moment in Scotland is clear that
the existence of tuition fees, whether paid or not by individuals, is seen
as an impediment and particularly an impediment to those from disadvantaged
groups who under our terms of reference were encouraged to find ways to
get into higher education.
WILENIUS: But for Ben in Newcastle,
if Cubie's proposals are accepted it opens up dramatic inequalities. This
is Alex Holt, Ben's friend from Edinburgh. If the deal is agreed soon,
he'll not have to pay the tuition fees up front. Ben will still have to
pay because his family comes from England. Both of them say it would be
much better to pay later, once they have got jobs and good salaries. Now
Ben, just describe to me, I mean the importance of tuition fees to you,
when it comes to you, you know you student living expenses.
BEN RICKETTS: When it comes to finances
I get about twenty seven hundred a year from the government in student
loans, a thousand and twenty-five pounds of that goes straight out again
back to Her Majesty's government. I don't see a penny of it. It means if
I add up my rent and my tuition fees alone it actually exceeds my student
loan. It's impossible to be at university without a lot of help, financial
help from my parents.
ALEX HOLT: We're hard pressed as
it is as students, and therefore not being clobbered with that three thousand
pounds at the start, but rather deferring payment will be something that
I would be quite happy to do.
WILENIUS: Alex and Ben relax before
getting down to the hard work of lectures this week. Many students have
to take out large loans as they no longer get maintenance grants. Some
finish up with thousands of pounds of debt. In Scotland it's feared this
is putting students off university. If Tony Blair is going to meet his
ambitious target of getting half of all school leavers into higher education,
Andrew Cubie thinks grants will need to be revived.
CUBIE: The present arrangements
in Scotland provide only for loan assistance. We, in our work, became clear
that on an assumed access basis of four thousand one hundred pounds, to
fund a student for thirty eight weeks, that some of that, for certain priority
groups, should be available by way of bursary support and frankly that
is simply because there is evidence that from disadvantaged groups, loan
arrangements only are a material deterrent to access. The bursary provision
if implemented we believe will remedy that.
WILENIUS: So giving extra money
directly to poorer Scottish students in grants or bursaries will make the
divide between Scottish and other UK students even wider. It then becomes
a matter of geographic chance, whether or not you get government help.
Having two different systems running side by side will divide students
into winners and losers.
BEN RICKETTS: There's a lot of people at
the moment having great financial difficulty and I would count myself amongst
them to a certain degree. I'm going to have to work part time next year
and that's no good at all when you're trying to study full time as well.
It's just not working at the moment.
HOLT: It's just
not working at the moment., we have the same rents , we have the same living
costs, and yet we are getting a better financial package . If this is the
case for Scotland then I think certainly it should be spread for the rest
of the education authorities.
WILENIUS: Scottish politicians
said it was inevitable that devolution would throw up sharp differences
in policy. The Westminster government has tried to minimise those differences
over tuition fees, but any solution that appears to give the Scots a better
deal is bound to anger many students and their parents south of the border
- and put pressure on their MPs.
JIM COUSINS: Of course
it's a big political problem - it'll be a big political problem for English,
Welsh and Irish MPs, who will have the difficulty of explaining why students
from their areas don't have the same funding system and support system
that Scottish students have. And incidentally it's a double problem because
most of us think the Scottish proposals are really, really good, and take
the whole discussion about student finance forward in a very sensible and
creative way.
WOOLAS: If there
is a perception amongst the non Scottish students and their parents that
the non-Scottish system is unfairer, is not delivering a fair crack of
the whip, if that perception is real and we don't yet know if that will
be the case , then it would be very difficult for politicians such as myself
to justify to my constituents the difference in the system, but that is
a consequence of devolution .
.
WILENIUS: : But Ben's
dad , Vic, knows all about the figures. He's head of maths at a school
in Birkenhead . Tuition fees have a big impact on his and Ben's finances
and he feels the government could suffer politically if they ignore people
like him.
VIC RICKETTS: It's going to
cause a great deal of irritation because the thousand pounds that we are
paying for tuition fees would then be a thousand pounds that Ben would
have to actually supplement his living expenses - so at the moment he is
finding life very difficult to make ends meet and he has spent his loan
and he borrows as much from the bank as he can and that thousand pounds
is a lot of money for him and that's being paid now in tuition fees. If
the boy next door to him is not having to pay that and therefore has got
the thousand pounds to spend, that's going to make a considerable difference
and it's bound to cause irritation in the very least. And I think there
will be a price to pay in the ballot box , if the government wants to think
that way.
WILENIUS: Alex and
Ben know that student life isn't all fun and games. When they get back
to their studies this week , they'll face the harsh realities of finding
money for rent, food, and books. Many Labour politicians North and South
of the border feel the Scottish proposals are a winner , and should be
adopted to give students from all parts of the UK a better deal. If the
Westminster government agrees to this, it would delight students like Ben.
MCNEILL: I'm satisfied
we will end up with a better system in Scotland . I think if that means
that there is not such a good system in England , if that is the case
then that is entirely a matter for Westminster to look and see what is
required as a solution outside of Scotland . I do think that the Cubie
report means that there are sections of that particularly around student
hardship and student poverty. that can be easily translated and I think
probably would be a UK concern for students all over the UK.
COUSINS: The Scottish
Parliament has looked at this issue and come up with something that is
really sensible. It's a tribute to the whole process of devolution , it's
a tribute to decentralising government, modernising it , getting ideas
in from different sources . So okay these are good ideas, let's pick them
up and look at them for the United Kingdom as a whole.
WILENIUS: Ministers
here in Westminster are worried because it would be very expensive to adopt
the Scottish policy across the whole of the UK. Even worse, they fear it
would be portrayed as an embarrassing U-turn, but Tony Blair's government
is being urged to accept , not reject, this product of the new politics
of devolution.
CUBIE: I hope
the strength of the devolved arrangements we have, and particularly as
they apply in Scotland, will be that good ideas can go from one part of
the United Kingdom to elsewhere. I don't know how others will view our
report elsewhere in the United Kingdom, but I would hope, given that the
wider community, the civic society in Scotland, has welcomed our report,
that some of that may echo across the border.
WOOLAS: We don't
yet know what the political consequences of devolution are. We're into
new territory. If we can justify the different systems or the different
financial support systems for students on the basis of: well, some students
are from Scotland, they have different priorities, different systems, then
so be it. But if it comes to the harsh economic realities and students
from England are saying, this is not fair, then we don't know whether we'll
be able to carry that. That's why this new political period is such a
fascinating one and a very tough one.
WILENIUS: For Ben
it's getting tougher. This term he needs a job to help pay the rent and
stop the debts piling up He can only look on enviously at the Scottish
proposals, but many MPs say there's no excuse for not finding the seven
hundred million pounds needed to help students like him.
COUSINS: It's a
bit hard for Gordon Brown, as a Scots MP himself, whose constituents are,
are going to be benefiting from these excellent proposals, to say to the
rest of us that, that we can't have them 'cause there's no money.
WILENIUS: So money
is the key. Ben and thousands of students like him need more of it , but
will the Westminster government agree to follow the Scottish lead and fund
it If they don't it could lead to long term political trouble and future
generations of the government's supporters could well just walk away.
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