Disclaimer: The following blog post is not a reflection of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s opinion on the below topics.
This is the first part of a four part series exploring the English Education System.
Many students feel isolated or detached from their higher education institutions. Tuition fees are only becoming increasingly expensive, widening pre-existing socioeconomic gaps, separating different studies from one another and invalidating some by exercising intense funding discrimination between subjects. Education has turned into a business, one that is seemingly more concerned with making a profit than with providing a lifelong learning experience, an education. Universities have become quite good at operating as a business, and as a student, it is easy to feel merely like a customer or consumer to the school. The concept of education seems so far removed from the one place that many passionate learners would gravitate towards for solace.
I will discuss the importance of an accessible higher education and how I argue economic motivations have corrupted higher education’s intention to ensure lifelong learning and an equitable, pluralistic and democratic society. This article is the first section of a four part series. In this part, I will briefly explain a history of Britain’s political climate to the extent that it is relevant to the educational policy decisions made during the 20th century and into the beginnings of the 21st. I will focus on educational policy made in the UK leading up to the public’s response in 2010 in protest against tuition fee raises and contextualize the cultural conditions surrounding the English education system, exploring why and how neoliberalism has shifted education from being a public good to a business, a product of the now dominating ideological apparatus.
Universities in England have been independent financial organizations and, until 1919, have received almost no income from the central government. In 1939, student fees accounted for about 30% of their income.[1] The income based on student fees decreased as more of universities’ income started coming from subsidies or from public funds, following the post-World War II educational initiatives such as the Education Act of 1944, which pushed Britain to make its education system more expansive and productive. In the early 1960s, a system of universal grants for full-time undergraduate students was introduced and student fees decreased to composing only about 10% of teaching costs.[2] This was an effort to get more children educated, but in doing so, the UK maintained a schooling system structured by elitism. In the 60s and 70s, this elitism was becoming increasingly acknowledged, but until then, students were categorized into different ability-levels and sorted into different schools depending on that evaluation. This caused students attending certain schools to have much higher chances of attending secondary school than others.
The UK has an unusually strong correlation between socioeconomic background and education attainment[3]: factors like parental choice, tax-funded education, and the advantages of a private education instead of public are often predicated on class standing and greatly influence where a student will go in their future. Because of this, attending more advanced levels of schooling, instead of minimizing socioeconomic differences, tends to emphasize them.[4] There are disadvantages that come to those who do not have access to higher education, not only socially and financially, but intellectually and creatively. The UK worked to reduce those barriers and increase the amount of students in school, which was successful in the post-World War II period.
Shortly after these rather progressive education policies were imposed, a conservative government swept in and challenged them. The conservative government began with Maragret Thatcher, who was elected in 1979, and it lasted until 1997, ending with the election of Tony Blair as prime minister. The conservatives’ goal was to reduce public expenditures. This included cutting university funds which left these schools with limited options as from where to source their funding; universities had to collaborate with industries through research and rely on receiving funds from private sources. In the 1990s, the university expanded; academic and vocational schools united under the same title. The Treasury and Department of Education agreed to pay increased fees in order to grow the number of students in university and it worked, enrollments largely increased in the 90s and there was a decreasing average cost per student.[6] The government then capped the number of students attending, so less students were coming in and university income fell. This created conditions under which universities were now taking in less money. In 1997, the Dearing Report was put forth. The key proposals were to introduce an annual tuition fee, enact payment fees by other full-time students up to 1000 pounds per year (dependent on parental income), increase loans for main student costs with an extended time-scale and potentially establish collection mechanisms through the tax system.[7]
These changes deeply reflected the growing neoliberalization of England. The policies were based upon free market ideals of productivity, individuality and efficiency. Free market ideals claim that if individuals pay directly for educational services instead of sourcing funding through grants, then it is more economically efficient since there is no governmental body acting as a middleman between the two. This should thus save the government money by effectively turning the university into a business. The introduction of student fees is necessitated by the university’s obligation to privately source funds. It seems that public funding is now impossible, so the only solution is to make the student pay, usually through loans, as explained by sociology professor Sarah Amsler, who attributes this framing to neoliberal politics, “The piecemeal transition from public to private funding in England has thus been accomplished through a combination of defunding, a framing of systemic “crises” as the inevitable consequence of unreasonable demands for public education, and the characterization of private investment as the only rational means of funding universities.”[9] It is a process of implementing ideological strategies to cause panic and convince the public that what the government is doing, the neoliberal policy changes it is making, are crucial to its survival.
The New Labour government introduced the first national tuition fee of £1,000 in 1998. In response, more than two million students walked out of lectures to protest the plans; some went into occupation.[10] A year later, maintenance grants that used to function to cover additional student costs of living were abolished. In 2006, fees were raised up to 3,000 pounds.[11] It was a gradual, persistent process of privatizing educational funds, as explained by Aaron Porter, former Vice President of the National Student Union, “The introduction of tuition and then top-up fees in 1998 and 2006, respectively, saw the introduction of a financial contribution and the slow but steady emergence of a consumer mentality taking increasing prominence.”[12] In 2008, there was a global financial crisis which only urgently reinforced neoliberalism. In May 2010, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats successfully formed a coalition, ending the Labour government that had started with Tony Blair in ‘97.
The year before, in 2009, an influential independent review was released, headed by Lord Browne, former chief executive of the oil company BP. Browne’s report regarding university funding is summarized well by Amsler: “A review that started off looking at how additional investment could be brought in to English universities to ensure that they could remain internationally competitive quickly changed to a money-saving exercise to help the new coalition government eliminate the deficit as quickly as possible…” Lord Browne called for “…an 80 percent cut in the overall teaching budget, the abolition of state funding for the arts, humanities, and social sciences, and the largest single shift in funding in the history of the English university system.”[14] The idea was that the university should fully open itself to free market forces and unregulated undergraduate tuition fees, funding only strategically important subjects like the sciences and introducing higher interest rates on student loans. All of these decisions were smart fiscally and fulfilled the free market’s philosophy. The loan adjustment made the collectors more money; it also made students more vulnerable to financial manipulation. Additionally, although charging high fees increases wealth for a few, it has the effect of worsening discrimination, enhancing elitism and slowing social progress.
[1] Gareth Williams. “Current Debates on the Funding of Mass Higher Education in the United Kingdom.” European Journal of Education 33, no. 1, 1998: 78.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid. 80-81
[4] Kirstine Hansen and Anna Vignoles, “The United Kingdom Education System in a Comparative Context.” In What’s the Good of Education?: The Economics of Education in the UK, Princeton University Press, 2005, 16.
[5] Kurt Hutton, Getty Images, Nov. 4, 1944.
[6] Gareth Williams. “Current Debates on the Funding of Mass Higher Education in the UK.” 78.
[7] Ibid. 77.
[8] Bettmann Archive
[9] Sarah Amsler. “Beyond All Reason: Spaces of Hope in the Struggle for England’s Universities.” Representations 116, no. 1 (2011): 71.
[10] Ibid 64.
[11]Aaron Porter. “Student Unrest, University Unrest: The English Gamble with the Future of Higher Education,” Qui Parle 20, no. 1, 2011: 246.
[12] Ibid. 245.
[13] Andy Rain/EPA
[14] Sarah Amsler, “Beyond All Reason: Spaces of Hope in the Struggle for England’s Universities.” 63.
[15] Pete Riches, “Student Protest 09.12.2010 – Trafalgar Square”, Flickr