04 October 2017 
Matt Sisson, Projects and Membership Manager
‘Tis the season of party conferences, and while last week’s Labour conference added little to what we knew of the opposition party’s plans to abolish tuition fees, the Conservative conference this week, and the comment leading up to it, has been far more ‘interesting’ for the sector.
The Conservatives have been concerned about their lack of support amongst younger people since June’s election (whether perceived or real), and the HE funding system has been a flashpoint. Hence Sunday’s announcement from the DfE was not a surprise - tuition fees will be frozen for 18/19 and the earning threshold for repayments will increase from £21k to £25k, among other measures on maths, literacy, and teacher training. Confusion has arisen though with mention of a substantial review of the whole system – something since repeatedly downplayed by the universities minister Jo Johnson.
A number of commentators have analysed the proposals in more detail. Andrew McGettigan looks at who benefits from the decision to raise the repayment threshold, but rightly concludes that students will hang very little on tweaks to a system that has already changed twice in 3 years. He predicts that the biggest change is likely to come when the government drives real course pricing differences by choosing to either a) set out a schedule of maximum tuition fee bands benchmarked to course earnings, or b) by limiting the amount that the SLC is prepared to lend to different courses. He thinks it will plump for the latter.
In related news, analysis at the THE suggests that the sector could lose £1.4bn from an earlier Conservative idea to cut fees to £7,500 for most classroom-based (as opposed to lab-based) courses. And Martin McQuillan writes in the Guardian that the way the government borrows to fund the tuition fee system is like a household “buying a sofa on HP then selling it cheap on eBay to pay the grocery bill.” The ‘i’ online newspaper bravely states that maintenance grants are set to return, although no-one else seems to back that claim up.
Interesting times.
