EDUCATION
Grants to stay
RHODES BOYSON
The very day that a conference was being held on the progress of the Independent University Mrs Thatcher announced, to the disappointment of many Conservative sup- porters in the country, that the Government had no plans for the replacement of student grants by loans. Even Dr Watson would note the connection between these two events if at some future date there should be an inquiry into the reason for the death of the idea of Professor Ferns, Professor Max Beloff, Sir Sydney Caine and an enterprising Academic Planning Board. Who, before the advantages of choice and quality are grasped by percep- tive young men and women, would pay £700- f1,000 a year to obtain a degree at the Independent University when he could have it 'for free' in the state sector?
Mr Heath talks bravely about a change of course yet his ministers continue to make statements which limit any manoeuvrability. Education is a heavy-spending department and both the NUT and Dr Kathleen 011eren- shaw claim that its total budget will rise from the present figure of some 6 per cent of the gross national product to some 8 per cent by 1980. If government expenditure is-to be re- duced and if people are to be encouraged to stand on their own feet and realise the econ- omic cost of their decisions how better than by paying their way through university? On both economic and moral grounds a loan system should be completely within the phil- osophy of the present Government.
A loans system may not be essential but it would act as a stimulant to the growth of the Independent University. This is itself im- portant as a blow for the free society. Clive Jenkins writing in the Daily Mirror saw that the Independent University was a threat to the collectivist and egalitarian society. He recognised better than the present govern- ment that the Independent University, like university loans, was part of the philosophical battle between two opposing concepts of society.
At the moment fees and maintenance for university education are paid by the tax- and ratepayer. The total cost of higher education
is now £700,000,000 a year and it is estimated that with the projected expansion this-total
will be doubled to £1,400,000,000 at constant prices by 1980—a figure equivalent to in- come tax at two shillings in the pound. Is it equitable that the ordinary taxpayer should pay this huge sum to produce university graduates who by nature of their training and qualifications are often likely to double their earning power for the rest of their lives? Is it also equitable when something like one-third to one-fourth of the graduates in under-recruited professions like medicine emigrate to countries where their earnings will be even higher?
If each undergraduate had to pay by way of loan the yearly gross cost of his education,
it is very likely that he would consider carefully whether he really wanted to go to university and which course would be most useful in terms of future employment. Banks desiring future customers and new institu-
tions like nineteenth-century building soci- it dies would quickly arise to provide loans at relatively low rates of interest. The left
could be silenced by the information that even in Sweden, that Mecca of the new society which has replaced the New Jerusalem in popular mythology, loans make up 78 per cent of the help to university students! The Colleges of Education as at present organised would be emptied in a year since most girls use them as a kind of finishing-school-cum-insurance-policy before early marriage and most young men go there simply because they cannot get into university. More young people would enter business, banking or accountancy at the age of eighteen and read for a degree or pro- fessional qualification part-time. This would probably be to their advantage and the spec- tre of costly expansion in higher education would disappear overnight.
If it were objected that a loans system would hurt true learning in subjects which brought no economic return the state could offer 10,000 completely free university places with generous living grants each summer to the people most outstanding in the advanced level GCE examinations. A further 10,000 each year could be offered exhibitions cover- ing half the cost of places and living ex- penses. Thus the way to free higher learning would remain open to brilliant scholars and yet the cost of higher education would still be reduced by 70 per cent, no mean sum.
Other students would carefully assess not only the future usefulness of their studies but the levels and cost of residential ac- commodation. Each would then decide whether he preferred to live at home and reduce his costs or go to a distant university to live in reasonable or poor ac- commodation. At the moment a student's housing at college or university in com- fortable hall rooms with many adjacent facilities or very poor digs is a matter of luck or influence. Under the suggested system people would learn from the age of eighteen to exercise intelligent and responsible choice and since this is now the age of majority there is no reason why their unfortunate parents should be subject to a 'voluntary' parental levy, itself often a cause of genera- tion friction.
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