Nine years have passed since the Times Higher published a short piece on its Opinions page (‘Are “forgivable fees” the answer?’, THE, 9 October 2014).
That piece was written at a time when the Labour Party, trying to shape its manifesto for the 2015 election, was wrestling its approach to student and university funding, a wrestle that continues today. The suggestion was that the Party should sustain the fee at £9,000 (a figure that has barely moved in more than a decade) but that, for some at least, tuition fee debt should be written-off.
Fast-forward to 2023 and there is widespread industrial unrest in our hospitals and schools. Junior doctors are out on strike, nurses have rejected the latest pay offer and teachers’ unions have come to the same view. Changes to student loan repayment thresholds, with repayments for new graduates starting at £25,000 and continuing for forty years have, alongside rampant inflation, taken a real toll on ‘take-home’ pay. Fewer and fewer are applying to train to teach, despite ‘incentives’ of up to £30,000 whilst training, and those who do teach stay in the profession for less and less time. In parallel, applications for professional programmes in health and social care, medicine excepted, are heading south at an accelerating rate.
If you are paying a marginal tax rate of 29% [plus National Insurance] on earnings below the national average wage, in sectors where hybrid and ‘at home’ working are not on the table, it is hardly surprising that disaffection increases with every Student Loans Company statement. And the real cost to the state and to society of unfilled posts, a lack of subject specialists in schools, health and care workers on their knees, may more than match any perceived benefit to the Treasury.
