Restoration of Student Grants
UKIP believes the introduction of tuition fees and loans has been a retrogressive step. How many of those of us who benefited from a grant would have had second thoughts about further education if we had known we would be saddled with such a large debt on leaving university? In 2009, the BBC estimated that students who started University that year could expect to graduate with a debt of £23,000 with the Government spending five billion on student support. The UK Independence Party intends to restore student grants in the form of ‘Student Vouchers’ for a substantial element of student costs, particularly tuition fees (rather than living costs).
Our proposals will result in fewer students than at present spending so long in full-time education. Therefore extra funding will be available which, over a period of time, will enable the student loans scheme to be replaced by grants. Considerable additional finance will become available when Britain leaves the European Union, and no longer has to fund large numbers of continental students at British universities. There were over 117,000 students from EU member states in British universities in 2008/09 (HESA Statistics - Higher Education numbers). Instead of having to pay the full overseas student fees of up to £20,000 per year, these students pay the same sum of up to £9000, the same as British students. Like British students they are eligible for a student loan to cover this and, so far, little attempt has been made to trace foreign students once they leave the UK to recover these loans. Indeed, Boris Johnston asks in the Daily Telegraph if ‘we are really going to pay to send British tax officials tramping up dusty tracks in Sicily or knocking on doors in Warsaw to find out whether or not a former EU student at a UK university is earning more than £15,000 ?’ From the 2008 figure, the UK would have gained £1.12 billion extra by charging EU students the overseas rate after leaving the EU. Only UKIP will be able to recover these costs through EU withdrawal and be able to scrap restrictions proposed by the EU and give preference back to UK school leavers. Furthermore, extra funding will be available by considerably slimming down the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) reducing the school inspection budget, reduced student costs along with a £500,000 annual saving by abolishing OFFA.Cutting back on the number of universities.
University education is about the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, and should only be available to those with a genuine thirst for knowledge and the acumen to handle it. A target of university education for 50% of school leavers is harmful for universities and students alike. It is a fallacy that a obtaining a degree will inevitably result in a successful career and guaranteed prosperity.
In 1962 there were only 250,000 university students. By 2005, this was just over one million - some 43% of all 18-21-year olds. This percentage is only slightly less than the 47% of students who gained 5 or more GCSE grades A*-C (and it is possible to gain a grade C with a score of only 20%). This figure increased to 1.96 million in 2008. The only possible conclusion, even allowing for an increase in the population and in the popularity of university education, is that a significant number of students are being awarded degrees when their academic performance clearly does not merit it. This country simply does not need this over-supply of graduates allied to a paucity of vocational skills.
We will therefore review the Conservative Party’s “Comprehensivization” of higher education, which converted perfectly good polytechnics into third rate universities. The simple fact is that many jobs do not require qualification to degree level, and that degrees from some educational establishments are recognised by the students themselves as worse considerably less academically than those from the older universities such as the Russell Group.
We will institute a nationwide review of higher education with the intention of distinguishing between those institutions that deserve the title of university and those that do not, and between those courses which merit degree status and those that do not. We will encourage the redeployment of former university premises that no longer merit the title to technology and higher skills-based training.
The party will also address the blurring that has occurred in recent years between academic education and vocational training. While it is true that certain historic university courses do have a vocational element (e.g. medicine, law), these subjects are serious academic disciplines. The same cannot be said about tourism or media studies. The touchstone for an academically respectable vocational course is whether it is essential to have a degree in that subject in order to pursue a career in it.This is definitely the case with medicine, but not with working in the media or a travel agency. Training for such careers should either be financed and regulated by the professions themselves or else undertaken through NVQs. The UK Independence Party will revise the NVQ courses, emphasising their distinction from degree courses in that they offer practical rather than academic training.
Revising the Admissions policy.
Universities were masters of their own admissions policies until recently, when they caved in to unsubstantiated government accusations that their policies discriminated against candidates from poor backgrounds.So now, following the 2004 higher education review, chaired by Professor Steven Schwartz of Brunel University, which stated “that it is fair and appropriate to consider contextual factors as well as formal educational achievement”, universities have been encouraged to select pupils with lower “A” level grades if they come from a disadvantaged background.
The Office of Fair Access (OFFA) was established as a consequence of this review. It is no more than an official government bully, meddling in university affairs. The UK Independence Party will scrap OFFA immediately, and allow universities once again to be masters of their own admission policies. Concrete evidence of discrimination by the universities themselves in the pre-OFFAera has been very hard to substantiate.
Merit and academic ability must be the sole criteria when it comes to university places, especially if our most prestigious universities such as Oxford and Cambridge are to retain their world-wide reputation. A recent study by academics at Oxford 37 has found a strong correlation between “A” level grades and the class of degree obtained at these universities, regardless of the type of school attended.
Finally, on the subject of higher education, we will initiate a complete review of teacher training, in order to eliminate any element of political indoctrination in the courses. Student teachers are free to espouse any political views they wish personally, but the ethos of colleges, PGCE courses and schools must be free of any politicisation.
We will also separate teacher training colleges from universities. Their role is to train teachers for their vocation. The desire for academic respectability - namely a degree at the end of a teacher training course - must not in any way allow the vocational element to be compromised.
We nonetheless will insist on high academic standards for secondary teachers in particular. The UK Independence Party will ensure they are appropriately qualified academically, namely that teachers must have a degree in any subject they teach at “A” level standard and at least an “A” level in any subject they teach at GCSE or “O” level.
To view the full policy go to Restoring Standards
To view all current UKIP policies go to UKIP Policies
