Tuition fee debate gets exciting

On Tuesday last week, 8W1.1 was virtually full for a debate between Glynis Breakwell, Wes Streeting and representatives from the three major parties. Each participant was given seven minutes to speak, and questions were taken from the audience afterwards. Ms Breakwell spoke first, saying that funding from tuition fees helped to reverse a “major decline” in university funding since 1991 and arguing that fees had helped raise revenue to 85% of that year’s level. She then raised a point which proved one of the more contentious of the debate, arguing that there is “no evidence that [fees] have damaged participation levels” of students from low income backgrounds. Wes Streeting was next to speak and he directly contradicted Breakwell’s assertion. He then accused Labour and the Conservatives of using the tuition fees review as a way to delay taking a stance on fees until after the election. Liberal democrat Nicholas Coombes was next to speak and continued Streeting’s attack on the two main parties, interspersing this with details of his personal life. Fabian Richter responded to Coombes’ criticism by alleging that the Lib Dems’ pledge to scrap fees was impractical and implying that the party were likely to renege on it if they were granted power. He argued that the Conservatives do have a solid position on fees: to oppose fee rises unless stringent conditions are met to provide assistance for poor and part-time students. Labour Councillor John Bull then spoke, asserting that he was in a position of some experience as he used to lecture at Manchester Metropolitan University. He felt that university funding and participation rates had gone up, so tuition fees are reasonably successful. He then defended his party’s decision to wait until the report of the independent commission investigating fees as there is, in his view, little point creating a committee to investigate something and then deciding your opinion on the issue before their report. He then criticised the Lib Dem policy on fees as unrealistic, claiming it was irrelevant as they were not going to win the election, a joke poorly received by the audience. The question and answer session saw more sniping from Mr Coombes, who referred to a policy suggestion as “one of those glorious Conservative WTF proposals”, and Wes Streeting, who criticised the view that fees encourage university attendance as “cuckoo land economics”.
Nationally and locally, the fee debate shows no sign of losing steam in the run up to the election.