Confessions of a student in the golden era

On college fees

WHERE will all the students go? A survey of 16- to 18-year-olds and their parents for this paper shows that the introduction of pounds 1,000 a year tuition fees is a serious deterrent to entering higher education. Should we be surprised?

The fees certainly represent an historic shift. When I went to University, I received a full maintenance grant from Cheshire County Council which handsomely covered my cost of living.

I could study as far away from home as I liked, without considering the expense. As for tuition fees, I didn't have to think about those. They were paid by the Government.

My widowed mother was enthusiastic that I should read for a degree, but in a sense she was an onlooker. In going to university I was placing no financial burden on her, except by assuming that she would provide bed and board during the vacations. I could make plans on my own; there was no parental dimension to the decision.

I didn't think that free higher education was an inalienable right but, rather, that I was extremely lucky. I had no knowledge of the Thirties, but I still knew that I was the beneficiary of a fortunate turn of events. It never occurred to me to wonder what my financial situation would be when I finished my course. In the event, I had neither assets nor liabilities. I had nothing, but I owed nothing. Nor did I worry about future employment. There were plenty of jobs, weren't there? At university I could do whatever interested me.

If somebody had come up to me and asked who I thought had really paid for my university education, I would have been nonplussed. Had my interlocutor pointed out that my benefactors were the millions of my fellow-citizens - paying tax on comparatively low levels of income - who had not had the advantages of a university income, I would have been speechless twice over.

Such questions were never raised in those more deferential days when, as the nineteenth century hymn puts it, 'The rich man in his castle/ The poor man at his gate / God made them, high or lowly /And ordered their estate.'

Since I went to university in what now seems like a golden age, everything has changed. Grants for living expenses failed to keep pace with inflation, leading to genuine student poverty, until finally they were replaced with the loan system, introduced by the previous government and then modified. Now, students from poorer families can expect to leave university with debts of pounds 10,000 or more. Admittedly, the liability becomes repayable only when the graduate is earning and the terms are moderate, which means that at pounds 17,000 a year the graduate would have to repay his or her student loan at a rate of pounds 12 a week. If you are unemployed, you do not have to make repayments.

But all this is bringing about profound changes in the idea of being a student. A loan is a loan, however easy the repayment terms might be. In these circumstances, can the university years any longer be considered a strange interlude, not part of real life, when you can be carefree and as eccentric as you like if, for every day that goes past, you accumulate a bit more debt?

And if financial prudence forces students to go to local universities, so that they carry on living at home to cut costs, isn't one of the advantages of university lost - living student life with intensity and forming unexpected friendships because you are so far away from your roots?

The proposal to make some families pay pounds 1,000 a year tuition fees must be seen in this setting. Students whose families earn less than pounds 23,000 before tax will be exempted and full fees only become payable at salaries of pounds 35,000 and upwards.

Probably the families which were already rich enough to help with living costs will the ones which will have to find the full tuition fee as well. In these families, nowadays, going to university doesn't only mean getting the right entrance qualifications - it means, more than before, negotiating with your parents about the money.

Taken together, these changes mean that the age of financial responsibility, for students, has suddenly dropped. Before it was, perhaps, 22 or 23 years. Now it has become 18 or 19. Going to university is no longer a vocation, or the expected thing to do, or a final frolic in the groves of academe before emerging into the so-called real world. It is a business decision - and presented as such. Thus Kim Howells, a minister at the Department for Education, said recently that ''higher education is a good investment for the individual student''. Not only is unemployment among graduates substantially lower than it is among non-graduates, but graduates earn a lot more. He added: "those who are fortunate enough to obtain degrees face significantly better work prospects than those who do not.''

True enough; and this way of looking at it isn't all bad. If students feel that they, personally, are paying for a service in one way or another, they will begin to demand that it meets their expectations. When they demonstrate against their vice chancellor or complain about the way their institution is organised, or their courses, we shall have to stop seeing them as feckless young people sounding off. They are angry customers.

What our poll, and the sporadic protests on campuses, shows is not a hard assessment of the financial bargain being struck between student and Government - which handsomely favours the former. They are evidence of regret for that lost golden era that I, and millions of others so enjoyed: the time when going to university was more than a business transaction.