Ten years ago I was at university. At that time one of the battles I was engaged in as a student nationalist was against the Labour government's plans to abolish student maintenance grants and introduce tuition fees. We lost that battle and as it turned out I was part of the last generation of students in Scotland to have their fees paid by the state (much to the chagrin of my younger sister who started university a year later and was lumbered with an annual bill of £1,000 a year for the privilege).Now you may have heard it said that in Scotland we no longer have tuition fees. The Labour-Liberal run Scottish Executive make great play of this "fact" and much noise is made by the English press about the fact that students here don't pay for their education whilst students in England do.
This is all nonsense of course. Fees are very much alive and kicking in this country. Sure, they have had a makeover and no longer are they called "tuition fees", and certainly liability for payment has been deffered from an up front basis till after graduation. But, what is the so called graduate endowment if it isn't a tuition fee. The graduate endowment is a mandatory charge (sounds like a fee doesn't it) levied upon an individual for a period of education they have undertaken (this seems remarkably like tuition to me).
If it looks like, smells like and feels like a tuition fee, it is a tuition fee. The battle for free education I was engaged in around a decade ago is still alive. It was ever thus.
Sadly the principle of free education has been successively eroded over many years. My father was the first person in the Hepburn family ever to go to university, back in 1963. At that time students not only had their fees paid, they received a generous grant, had no loans to take out and were able to claim benefits when it wasn't term time. By the time I was at university, whilst a more generous package was available than those who followed, grants were not as generous and had to be supplemented by loans, beginning the culture of student debt which has seen the level of indebtedness amongst Scotland's students grow from an average level of £2,500 in 1999 to around £11,000 today.
Personally, I think it is ludicrous that we lumber so many young people with such a level of debt at such an age. This has big knock on effects for society as well. Rather than being able to spend money on goods and products in the Scottish marketplace, boosting our economy and keeping people in work, young graduates must service ridiculous levels of debt. The bizarre thing is, this actually costs the state money to do so.
Student loans when introduced were envisaged as becoming self financing within a set time frame. This has never happened, and the Scottish Executive continues to pay money to create and service this colossal student debt at a rate higher than repayments are made. It would then actually be cheaper for the Executive and the taxpayer to pay what they are as loans as maintenance grants instead.
Not only would this save us money it is more just as well. It ends the culture of debt for students that puts off so many from entering Higher Education (one only needs to look at application figures recently which have been down to see this as a problem) and it reinstates the principle that as we all benefit from having a highly educated population then we all pay for it.
I have never bought the idea that as people who attend university gain a benefit from having done so theyt should pay for the privilege. Certainly I accept that I benefited from attending university, and that most who do so benefit. We benefit socially and materially. I accept that there appears to be a statistical correlation between attending university and earning capacity.
However, if someone earns more then they will pay more, but this shouldn't be by fees or a graduate endowment, but by the extra taxation they will pay as a consequence of that earning potential.
Also, don't we all benefit by university education even if we don't go through the experience ourselves. I know that at various stages in my life I have benefited from there being teachers, doctors, nurses and so on provided by our society. All these people will have been educated at some stage in university. I am happy to pay for their training as I know the societal benefit of doing so.
Thankfully the SNP propose the return to the principle of free education. I look forward to campaigning for this over the coming weeks, and to helping to implement it should I be fortunate enough to be returned at the election in May.
Doubtless there will be those who say that Scotland can't do this.
This lack of ambition I cannot accept.
I have a friend who went to university in Oslo where his course was not only taught in English to a wide variety of nationalities, but was in fact paid for by the Norwegian government.
If Norway can pay for my Scottish friend to go to university in Oslo, then we can certainly afford to pay for the education of our own people.
