The Labour Party lacks any “obvious solutions” as it grapples with formulating a new position on university funding in England, leading policy experts to predict that it will commit only to conducting another review of the current system if it were to take power in next year’s general election.
Sir Keir Starmer has signalled the party will abandon its commitment to abolishing fees and funding higher education directly from public spending in England, but in an interview with the BBC he criticised the current system as “not working for students or universities”. Reports suggested he would confirm the dropping of the policy in a speech later this month.
Despite Sir Keir’s comments, “we are no closer to seeing any concrete higher education policy from the Labour Party”, said Diana Beech, the chief executive of London Higher and former adviser to Conservative universities ministers, who said she felt the reversal of the free education policy was “inevitable”, given the “current state of the UK economy and growing pressures to deliver on other policy priorities”.
She called for more clarity from the party on the potential options under consideration, but warned that there was no “silver bullet” for the student funding model.
