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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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

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.

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This week saw the National Union of Students Town Takeover campaign hit Bristol. Students from across the South West got involved, travelling from as far as Bath and Exeter to aid the University of West of England Students’ Union and the University of Bristol Union in making fees the issue.

Students turned out in the pouring rain to take part in an aerial stunt, making a giant “£” sign on Bristol’s College Green, directly outside the City Council chambers. Later, members of the unions as well as numerous National Executive Council members and NUS staff took to the streets to flyer passers by, drawing their attention to the issue, as well as drumming up support for the hugely successful panel debate that took place at the ex-Jury’s hotel later that night.
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The National Union of Students have released a ‘blueprint’ for reform of the Higher Education funding system. The blueprint, squarely challenging a report earlier in the year from Universities UK (the body that represents Universities and Vice-Chancellors around the country), sets out clear arguments for scrapping the current funding methodology of upfront fees for Higher Education and instead replacing it with a form of direct taxation, linked to a graduate’s income and the amount of study they under took.

The system sounds quite simple on face value; being dubbed by many media outlets as a ‘graduate tax’, but the blueprint is actually far more detailed.
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