Second, students were entitled to a maintenance grant, whether at their local university or away from home. The maintenance grants were means tested dependent on parental income , as were fee grants until , but both were outright payments, not loans.
Provided parents paid their share if any , students were free of financial burdens. The Robbins committee took these changes as given. They were seen as a logical extension of free secondary schooling, introduced in England and Wales in It is often forgotten that the Robbins report preceded the introduction of comprehensive education. Without something like the changes made in , expansion beyond a limited social base would have been impossible.
Most European countries met the same demand by abolishing fees or keeping them at a nominal level, but the British model was uniquely expensive. Furthermore, the prestige of the residential model, as shown by the campus universities, meant that universities not only had to pay for a great expansion of university staff, and for expensive laboratories and libraries, but also for student accommodation and social, welfare and sporting facilities.
As many critics have pointed out, this was a luxury version of the mass university, reflecting the image and prestige of Oxford and Cambridge.
Despite new foundations, universities could still be seen as a single national system committed to common values and fundable on a uniform basis. It was not a universal benefit, but paying for it from general taxation seemed acceptable if universities recruited strictly on merit.
They were obliged to adopt admission procedures, organised nationally from by what is now the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service UCAS , which treated all students equally, and even the most prestigious universities were open to all. Free higher education was seen as a long-term investment in human and intellectual capital, and those who benefited from it would expect to pay through progressive taxation for its extension to future generations.
All this was seen as a permanent social achievement. Thus, the recent erosion of free higher education has had a symbolic and emotional impact as it seems to reverse the tide of progress.
Academic freedom guaranteed the right of science and learning to develop without external direction. It is issues of this kind, rather than simple conservatism or the defence of professional self-interest, which have made the academic world resistant to so many aspects of recent policy, along with an ethos which sees higher education as a public good and values collegiality and cooperation above competition.
But were these traditions only historic attributes of the elite university whose day is now past, or do they remain valid in the age of mass higher education? The equilibrium and consensus of the Robbins era did not last. This held dangers for the universities, which relaxed their fundraising efforts and neglected their links with local communities.
Dependence on state funding made them vulnerable to periodic economic crises and the resulting attempts of governments to cut public expenditure. A first crisis of this kind came in , a more serious one in Following the advent to power of Margaret Thatcher, this became more than a matter of cuts, as market ideology and the imperative of lower taxes became political orthodoxy. In the s the block grant to universities survived, but came under increasing pressure, and governments urged universities to raise more money independently and to run themselves on more businesslike lines.
From , in a pilot exercise which became permanent, the teaching and research elements in the grant were separated, allowing selective funding in favour of universities with strong research. The desire for more direct state intervention led to the demise of the UGC in , and its replacement by separate funding councils for England, Scotland and Wales that were more responsive to government policy. In the s the old consensus finally broke down, for practical as well as ideological reasons.
First, demand for university education, which had been expected to stabilise, again took off. This removed the last survivals of local authority governance and finance which had once counterweighed centralisation, while creating an expanded system whose diversity made it difficult to identify common missions and values.
Pressure now arose for student finance to be converted from outright grants to loans. By stages in the s, maintenance grants were turned into loans, with some outright payments retained for poorer students until abolished in As taking a maintenance loan was optional, this was relatively uncontroversial.
Restoring fees in the form of loans was a different matter: a proposal in was hastily withdrawn after a Conservative backbench rebellion — a reminder that free higher education was a prized middle-class benefit. The result is twofold: debt repayments start at a much lower income than previously expected. And the amount graduates have to pay back in each instalment will be more than previously expected.
The change was backdated, so that students who started university in were included. Wes Streeting — now a Labour MP — accused the government of mis-selling the loans. Students who had already signed up and started their degree could be hit by the rise, depending on the contracts at different universities. After twenty years of supporting tuition fees — and introducing them in the first place — the Labour Party had a re-think.
The party announced they would now campaign to scrap them altogether. During the General Election campaign, the Conservatives said they would use money raised from tuition fees to help fund its academy and free school programme.
Skip to main news content Skip to news search Skip to news navigation Skip to All 4 navigation. In an inquiry into how higher education in the UK would be funded for the next 20 years. In response to this, the Teaching and Higher Education Act was published on 26 November , part of which introduced tuition fees across the UK. Once Scotland and Wales were devolved in , each country had a different way of dealing with the fees.
This came into effect in in England and later in Northern Ireland and Wales. Once Lord Hutton has made a statement on his findings at lunchtime the following day, the prime minister will address MPs and take their questions on the report, completing perhaps the greatest hour media frenzy experienced since he took office. January 20 The government receives international backing for its higher education proposals from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD , who describe the plans as "essential" for the revitalisation of British universities.
January 23 The government's chief whip, Hilary Armstrong, warns Mr Blair and his cabinet they are still on course to lose the key vote on January The government is thought to be between 20 and 30 votes short, and unsure of where to find any more potential switchers. The revolt must be cut to below 81 MPs for the bill to pass.
Conservative thinktank Politeia urges Michael Howard and Tory MPs to back the government's top-up fees bill for the good of universities. January 25 The government announces a full-scale independent review of the top-up fees system after three years in a final bid to head off the rebellion. January 27 Nick Brown, one of the leading rebels, announces that he will now be supporting the government in the top-up fees vote, which is to be held at 7pm.
Timeline: tuition fees. As the government publishes its plans for student top-up fees, Stuart Alley and Mat Smith trace the history of the policy.
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