Polly Toynbee’s article fails to convince this reader (Keir Starmer is right to U-turn on tuition fees. The funds will be better spent elsewhere, 4 May). When the Tories committed to cutting spending on higher education through increasing tuition fees, why did they not use some of the money saved to increase spending on further education (technical and vocational education) and nursery education? In fact, they did the reverse, starving further education colleges of funding and closing Sure Start centres. The Tories made it quite clear that increasing tuition fees was part of a package of measures to reduce central government spending, not to redistribute education spending, where it could be better used.
This Labour party appears, through its public announcements, committed to continue this government’s public sector austerity measures. Where will the money come from to fund the spending increases they propose? “Efficiency improvements” – the usual cry of politicians making policy commitments when they don’t have the funding to finance them.
There is a misconception underlying this change of tack – and that is that the middle classes can afford these high fees. It ignores the fact that years of slow growth and public sector austerity have taken their toll on the middle classes, too; they worry about their children taking on such large financial commitments in a time of uncertainty. It’s a fear reinforced when they read that junior doctors – some on £16 an hour – face debts of up to £90,000.
The student fees/loans scheme is a nonsense, an example of what the economist Hyman Minsky called “Ponzi financing”, when investment is made on the basis of hope rather than on realistic expectations. This is demonstrated when the government, to finance the scheme, sells the loans at a discount and has to promise buyers generous interest on the purchased loans to make them a viable investment.
Derrick Joad
Leeds
• In her article about Labour’s U-turn on tuition fees, Polly Toynbee states that “there is nothing very progressive in these hard times about spending billions on those already destined to be higher earners”.
While I agree with many aspects of her article, I believe we must stop seeing education spending as all about either/or choices. I should also add that I was fortunate to be one of those whose degree was paid for by my local education authority and government at the end of the 1970s.
As higher earners, graduates will also, in most cases, be higher taxpayers. Labour’s reneging on the student loan forgiveness commitment effectively condemns many to pay twice for their education.
It will discourage those from less well-off backgrounds from going to college, leaving higher education as the preserve of the well-heeled middle and upper-middle classes. Enabling a broader section of young society to have the chance to go to university is an important part of levelling up and crucial if we are to challenge the social status quo that still bedevils the UK.
Tim Exton
Seattle, Washington
• I don’t often disagree with Polly Toynbee, but to argue that money spent on university tuition fees could be better spent elsewhere rather ignores the fact that – according to just about every survey since their introduction – their abolition is effectively self-funding. Graduates’ lifetime average earnings exceed the population mean by enough that the government’s increased revenue from tax and national insurance more than covers the cost of their tuition.
David Mayle
Newport, Essex
