Starmer made a painful but necessary move on tuition fees

Sir Keir Starmer painfully discovers that competent government involves painful choices and unpopular decisions. Nowadays tuition fees for students. Tomorrow? Train fares? Water costs? More taxes?

One of Starmer’s smarter moves in opposition was to quietly set aside his populist Labor predecessors’ pledge to freeze, cut or abolish university tuition fees.

And, even wiser, he avoided the disastrous mistake of me and my colleagues fifteen years ago in making a well-publicized promise about fees. He only hinted so much.

It was the Blair government that first recognized that a ‘free’ system was unsustainable. It may once have been affordable – if not entirely fair – to provide the luxury of “free” education to a public school and a high school, an elite one in ten. But it made no sense and was unaffordable when universities were – rightly – open to students. almost half of the post-school population.

The fee loan system, introduced by Labor and further developed by the Coalition, was a progressive mechanism that required relatively well-paid graduates to pay, in effect, an additional income tax. The coalition made the system more progressive, but increased fees, reflecting the poor financial position of the government and universities. There were no magical money trees when we needed them.

The increase was deeply unpopular. I know this because I was the Foreign Minister who had to guide the policy past a wall of loud outrage in parliament and rioting students outside.

The loss of confidence in my party was one (but only one) factor in the 2015 election debacle, which has now thankfully been completely reversed. I believed then, and now, that an honest examiner would have given us two or less out of ten on politics, but eight out of ten on policy. That was necessary and broadly speaking sensible and fair.

One consequence of the policy was that universities did not experience ‘cuts’, but continued to expand teaching and research and maintain the brand value of British higher education. More students than ever are enjoying university education and – contrary to many predictions – a growing number of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

I would argue that my Conservative successors have weakened the scheme in several ways. They have lowered the reimbursement thresholds. They undermined student livelihood support, which is a more important issue than allowances for disadvantaged students. And because of an obsession with immigration figures, their visa policy discouraged foreign students which, among other benefits, cross-subsidized British students.

No doubt we made mistakes. One of these was to allow the Ministry of Finance to impose high interest charges on the loans, so that the loans can reach unreal and worrying levels.

Another mistake was that universities were allowed to charge maximum fees regardless of any improvement in their offering to students. Rather than experimenting with different course lengths, delivery mechanisms, and content to suit student (and employer) preferences, some universities became seriously complacent.

There is a clear contrast with the FE and adult sectors which, despite severe financial constraints, have delivered a lot of innovation and good student experiences. The real stars of British higher education at the moment, at least in teaching if not research, are to be found in colleges offering flexible university-level courses to students and returning adults.

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The government has bit the bullet on tuition fees, which currently prevents bankruptcies, layoffs and reductions in courses at financially weaker universities. To prevent this issue from becoming a boring and unproductive annual political battle, compensation must now be inflation-proof.

We must now move beyond financial firefighting and face the larger question of what universities are for. Some offer world-class research whose commercialization is at the heart of the government’s growth agenda. Most of them exist primarily as educational institutions.

I hope we can resume a conversation that gained momentum under the previous administration about how we can expand university education from merely a rite of passage for mostly middle-class youth to part of lifelong learning. The politics of tuition has been toxic for too long. It will be a success for this government if the last increase is forgotten the day after tomorrow.

Vince Cable is the former leader of the Liberal Party Democrats