The NUS campaign against top up fees (Stop Fees Now) has focused on the issues of widening university access to working class students and the idea that the introduction of top up fees will lead to the marketisation of higher education and to an elitist “two tier system.” Tom Watson, MP for West Bromich argues in an article on the NUS website that “Top up fees will lead to an elitist two tier system, divided even more between the haves and the have-nots. The richest will be able to shop around for the best degrees, the rest will be forced out of the market.” The more prestigious universities would be able to charge higher fees, attract better staff, and only richer students could afford to go to them. Other universities would charge very low fees, have poorer facilities and working class students would go to them.



Proponents of fees have argued that their introduction is actually a socialist and progressive measure. Universities need to get funding from somewhere, and raising taxes to fund higher education would not be progressive since the whole of society would be made to pay for what only graduated benefit from. It was argued in a leader in the Guardian on Monday the 19th January (21st century coalmines) that student support has always been a regressive policy, which redistributes money towards the middle class. According to this 80% of the children of professionals go to university. The proportion of the children of unskilled or semi-skilled workers who go to university is much lower.



It is true that the middle class benefits more from university education. However, who would benefit from a situation in which people from working class backgrounds will be put off going to the more prestigious universities because these charge the highest fees? Mandy Telford, President of the NUS writes in an article in the Guardian on Wednesday Jan 22nd (Students foot the bill) “We cannot understand why the government refuses to admit the role debt plays in deterring poorer students from applying to university…These new proposals will lead to students graduating from university with debts of up to £30,000…”



However, some commentators have argued that there is no alternative but to charge people for their education. The only way to widen access to the point where 50% of school leavers go to university is to charge fees. This is because providing the extra places would be extremely expensive, so the state cannot afford to fund it. Users of this argument accuse opponents of fees of elitism. You cannot raise taxes to fund students because people who don’t go to university will not benefit. Therefore you need to charge fees if you want to widen access to the working classes. David Chaytop writes in the Guardian on Friday, January 23rd , (Socialism actually) that “the new policy is a necessary, logical and practical act of redistribution of educational opportunity that should be welcomed.” Any one who opposes top up fees supports a system in which much fewer people could go to university.



I would argue that fees are not beneficial to the poorest in society for two reasons. Firstly a two-tier system will not benefit working class students. Francis Beckett argues that introducing fees mean “…accepting that prestige universities will always be upper middle class enclaves…we are creating a new class divide for the 21st century: not whether you go to university, but how prestigious a university you go to.” (This Trojan horse of charging, Wednesday January 21st) Secondly it has to be viewed in the context of neo-liberalism in Britain. The idea that education is beneficial to the society, and that the members of this society should pay for it is being discarded. The quality of education that one has access to is now being made dependent on the individual’s resources. The richer you are the better quality of education you can afford.