HE Funding in limbo
STUDENTS MAY FACE top-up fees of up to £3,000 a year under government proposals to be announced next week.
In the long-awaited white paper on higher education funding, ministers look set to announce plans for top-up fees to be paid back after graduation.
The amount, which will be set by individual universities and will vary according to the degree course, is likely to be repaid through monthly debits from salaries.
The Education Secretary, Charles Clarke, stated: "What you pay will depend on what you earn, so that if you're doing a very low-paid job you won't have to pay a very substantial amount, but if you get a lot more in pay-you will pay much more."
In deferring these payments until after graduation the government hopes to stem criticism from both those who think that top-up fees will deter poorer students and from those of middle England who would have to stump up the extra cash.
In a further move to quell dissent from Labour backbenchers the maintenance grant, previously abolished by the Blair government, may be revived.
l Will Straw has expressed anger at alleged 'misrepresentation' of his views on a graduate tax in an article on BBC online.
In a letter to the Vice Chancellor, Straw and President-Elect Helena Puig Larrauri, forgetting that she was no longer co-chair of Finance and Funding Campaign at that time, stated that: "A graduate tax is therefore a much more suitable way to ask for an individual contribution as it is based on earnings and not potential earnings or parent's means". This was taken by the BBC to imply that Straw was in favour of a graduate tax, despite the fact that official OUSU policy supports completely free education.
Straw defended the apparent contradiction by pointing out that the last line of the letter stated: "Nonetheless we believe on a point of principle that the state should solely fund Higher Education as part of the welfare state through progressive taxation."
9th Jan 2003