Dec 15, 2010

Resign?

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard members of the student body call for the resignation of NUS’ NEC or President over the past 3 years, but this one has to be one of the more ridiculous ones. At a time of increasing uncertainty, when the government is making swathing cuts to maintenance for FE students, to teaching budgets for colleges and universities and damaging students in their broadest generality, the student movement has decided to turn on one of the best presidents NUS has ever had. Yes, we’ve lost the fees vote, but this is no time for NUS to begin in fighting and attacking the leadership just because we fell at the final hurdle. There are so many other battles we need to fight right now that a change in leadership would be absurd.

I challenge the very premise that these resignations are being called on.
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Dec 15, 2010

Reflecting on the tuition fees vote

Some members of the student movement will likely feeling a sense of deja vu right around now. Not 10 years ago, students were campaigning against the initial introduction of tuition fees. Another generation will be remembering the same circumstance in 2004, when fees were tripled under the then Labour government. They lost that battle then and no doubt told themselves that they hadn’t lost the war.

It’s just under a week since the Coalition government voted to again triple fees, and whilst I vaguely remember what was happening in 2004, as an 13 year old outsider sat in a school classroom at a poor performing school that was within a cat’s whisker from special measures, I didn’t expect to be in the same position as my predecessors just 6 years later.
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Dec 7, 2010

Demos and NUS

There has been some controversy about what NUS’ stance is over demonstrations taking place on Wednesday and Thursday of this week. Most of this is based on a poorly reported article in The Guardian today: Read the Guardian here

This controversy is founded because the NEC haven’t made the decision we have been reported to.
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Nov 9, 2010

Responding to Howard

It might have been freezing outside, but at last week’s UGM, it was certainly heating up as Howard Davies, emperor penguin and Director of LSE, was in attendance. We, like hundreds of other students, turned out ready to grill Howard and see if there was any substance behind his objections to the Students’ Union’s Freeze the Fees campaign.

We left the the UGM feeling angry, concerned and questioning the intentions of our Director.
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Oct 26, 2010

The Dearing Compact is Dead

Back in 1997, when tuition fees were first on the agenda of the then Labour government, Lord Dearing’s report on higher education funding argued that those who benefit from higher education could reasonably be expected to pay a fraction of the cost of that course. The since cherished ‘Dearing Compact’ saw higher education as a funding coalition of sorts, between the state, the student and the employer, with each expected to pony up their fair share in line with the benefits derived from the system.
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Oct 24, 2010

Fees or taxes?

It is impossible to escape the growing argument over higher education funding and tuition fees in the media over the past six months. With each corner of the HE sector fighting over funding and a fragile coalition agreement preventing the Liberal Democrats from sticking to their long term commitment of scrapping fees, its clear that this explosive issue will be upsetting some.

The independent review into tuition fees and student finance, headed by former chief executive of BP, Lord Browne, is expected to present its report this month, after nearly a year of research. Depending on who you listen to, you may believe that the outcome is a foregone conclusion. With only one student on a panel made up predominantly of business leaders and university chiefs, it is easy to suspect that the review is a stitch up and will result in a recommendation that fees should increase. Indeed, the review has suffered several leaks which suggest this; the latest indicating that Browne favours a total lifting of the fees cap.
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Jul 16, 2010

The Graduate Tax

Yesterday, in his first public speech on higher education, Vince Cable, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, showed the clearest sign yet that a simple rise in the top rate of tuition fees was not as much of a dead-cert as some thought. In fact it was a policy first put forward by the National Union of Students, proposing an income linked ‘graduate tax’, that was put front and centre in the keynote.

Dr Cable is now on record showing support for a graduate contribution scheme that replaces the current fees system and is believed not to be the only one in the coalition government with that view. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have also apparently been keen to make sure that the Browne Review – set up last year to examine the current tuition fees system and how it needs to change – looks seriously at introducing a graduate tax.
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May 12, 2010

A letter to Jeremy Browne MP

Dear Mr Browne,

RE: Conservative/Lib Dem coalition and Higher Education tuition fees

Late last year, I met with you in Parliament along with a small group of students that attended Richard Huish College and lived in the Taunton Deane constituency to ask you to support a pledge by the National Union of Students on Higher Education tuition fees, as part of its Vote For Students lobby of Parliament. I hope you’ll recall the meeting as being positive and indeed you agreed to support NUS’ pledge at the meeting. More

May 12, 2010

Lib Dem fees sellout

It’s not often I will openly criticise a political party or a particular member of Parliament. I tend to find it childish at worst, pointless at best. I usually concentrate more on the policies of the parties and will critique them in my own way. Today though, I’m breaking with tradition because the two go hand in hand.

Today, the Liberal Democrat party should feel absolutely ashamed of itself. It’s Parliamentary Party and Federal Executive have agreed to a coalition with the Conservatives; a coalition that at the centre of it mutes vital opposition to the increasing threat of university tuition fees. 57 Lib Dem MPs are now bound by Collective Responsibility to follow the whip or abstain in a vote on tuition fees, likely set by the Conservatives as they attempt to railroad through a huge increase in fees. 57 MPs, I might add, that less than 6 months ago all signed up to the National Union of Students’ pledge on Higher Education funding;

I pledge to vote against an increase in tuition fees in the next Parliament and pressure the government to introduce a fairer alternative.

JohnPeart.org

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