“The model has never worked, it never solved the funding crisis in the first place, but commodified and destabilised higher education. The proof is that most students will never pay back their loans.”
Niamh Iliff is a student activist from Nottingham who recently addressed the rally for free education hosted by Arise Festival and organised by students and young activists around the country. You can read an edited version of her speech below:
These are the real experiences of students today – food bank usage doubled since 2022, and student poverty is at an all time high measured on every metric available, with 35% of students going without heating in the winter. Student Unions normalising using community pantries and breakfast clubs to literally feed students who cannot afford to eat. The number of students in employment during their studies is at an all time high, with some of the lowest rights and protections at work in modern times.
Why are we punishing working class students for doing what is “right”, what we’re told to do; get an education?
University is supposed to be a vehicle for class mobility – a means to go and improve yourself, get a great job and look after your family. The myth does not hold true any more. Working class students dependent on wages are missing the social side of university life, which brings those opportunities to further ourselves and our personal development. This all stops the empowerment that comes from a further education experience, breaks the promises told to us when embarking on a university education.
This leaves students apathetic, left at the bottom of the pile when budgets come around and with students bearing the cost of austerity. Students are so alienated in government policies that they are turning to Reform and the Green Party, because the Labour Party is no longer looking after our best interests. Right now, the government has an opportunity to support communities, including students, facing the cost of living crisis to bring about serious social change. They could show that a Labour Government can be a vehicle for social mobility and give opportunities to working class people.
We need to address the actual student loan increase and the myth of it being only a small amount more on the original loan in line with inflation. When student loans were introduced, the government paid 75% of the loan with students topping up the rest, this has now dropped to 16%. In hard times, it is big private companies that will bail us out, not the government. That is not the society I want to live in, or our students to grow up in to.
Repayments themselves have been frozen, in 2012 students began repaying loans at 21 thousand, the equivalent of 40 thousand today to begin paying back the loans. This is coupled with the cost of living crisis and highest tax levels since World War 2.
Students have been paying the price for years. This is not the first time the government is increasing our loans, they have been doing this since they were brought in. Unless we fight this rise, they will continue to pile more debt on working class students.
The model has never worked, it never solved the funding crisis in the first place, but commodified and destabilised higher education. The proof is that most students will never pay back their loans. Why are we continuing to saddle students with debt and stop them accessing the benefits of higher education when the debt is never going to be paid back?
Jo Grady, UCU general secretary, has advocated for an increase in corporate tax of 4% to solve the higher education funding crisis. An educated workforce is a more productive one, it should be corporate profits that fund our education, not working class students that are missing out on the opportunities we deserve.
We need to build a framework that puts students and staff first, ahead of private profits.
- Niamh Iliff is a student activist in Nottingham and the NPF West Midlands Youth Rep. You can follow her on Twitter/X here.
- Myriam Kane recently spoke at the Rally for Free Education hosted by Arise Festival and organised by students and young activists around the country. You can watch the event here or listen to it as a podcast here.
