08 October 2014 Matt Sisson, Projects and Membership Manager
Much like the Labour conference before it, the recent Conservative and Liberal Democrat Party conferences have thrown up some interesting insight and comment into the future of UK HE, particularly for England. The two main themes have been tuition fees and immigration.
On the former, the THE reports the comments of Conservative policy advisor and MP Margot James at a conference fringe meeting, who said that tuition fees may have to rise above the £9,000 mark in future. She also said that students could be asked to repay their fees more quickly. This view was supported by Secretary of State for Business Vince Cable at the Liberal Democrat conference, who said that the Conservative’s commitment to reduce taxes and cut spending would unavoidably lead to an increase in tuition fees, as well as a likely reduction in the earnings threshold above which students have to repay – currently set at £21,000. The Conservative conference also included an interesting fringe event on “Why does going to university cost so much money?” The debate included comment from John Gill, editor of Times Higher Education; Margot James; Carl Lygo, vice-chancellor of BPP University; and Nick Ratcliffe, head of policy at the Russell Group. The video is available to watch on the THE website.
The government’s immigration policy has come under fire from Andrew Hamilton, V-C at the University of Oxford, the FT reports. He said “Wherever I travel in the world, particularly in China and India, one question persists. Why has the UK adopted a visa system so hostile to student entry? I do my best to answer but, frankly, the question baffles me as well”. He called on the government to recognise that the majority of the public do not see students as an immigration issue. “Study is the least frequent answer given when the public are asked what they consider the motives for migration to be. Student migration simply isn’t an issue for them.” Nobel Price winner John O’Keefe also criticised the government’s immigration policies for their impact on research, saying that they were a “very, very large obstacle” to hiring the best scientists from across the globe.