I'm writing to ascertain your position on the insidious undermining of this country's education system by

the coalition government. I voted lib-dem, and now like so many other people there is a feeling of
betrayal following the lib-dem u-turn on university fees and their whole-hearted and WRONG
embracement of the right wing ideology that states that university education should only be pursued if it
is financially productive. This is a nonsense. Teenagers thinking about their lives should not be
encouraged to enter into the same kind of speculation regarding future benefits that caused the financial
crisis in 2008 (and in 1720, and, no doubt, the next one). "Is my degree worth 30,000?" I’m not sure how
one would begin to answer that question, but my point is that the question contains a category error.
Education is not a commodity. Attaching a financial value to the benefits of higher education is simply an
underhanded way of justifying cuts to the public sector. By saying that a degree enables higher earning
potential, the imposition of increased tuition fees is justified. This logic then leads to the view that by
‘buying’ a degree, one ‘buys’ a more affluent future. This is not necessarily the case, but even if it is, it
incorrectly sees education as a means to an end. It should be seen as an end in itself. The higher education
sector is an easy target because it is easy for commentators to poke fun – with complete ignorance and
often no justification – at ‘unnecessary’ subjects like media studies or cultural studies and to pretend that
such ‘unnecessary’ subjects are the only ones that are going to suffer, as if we are simply losing a few of
those Beaurocracy Gone Mad Quangos that the right wing press so gleefully went to town on earlier this
year. This is not true. Classics, Philosophy, Modern Languages – some of the oldest university subjects we
have in this country – these are the departments that will close or be reduced to insignificance. I mention
those subjects not because I think they are more important than media studies, but because I think the
right wing might pay more attention to their disappearance. The country needs good thinkers - not
because they make money, but because thinkers are important in and of themselves - and universities
produce them. A university ceases to be a university when it ceases to offer a full range of subjects - it
becomes a technical college. Which is fine: we certainly need technical colleges. But technical colleges
must not replace universities.

Even more infuriating - and until recently rather deftly smoke-screened by the tuition fees headlines - is
the cutting of the Education Maintenance Allowance. Now any pretence that these changes will not
SPECIFICALLY affect the education opportunities of the poor has been shattered. Having A-Levels,
AS-Levels, or GNVQs makes a huge difference. Simply continuing education after YOU NO LONGER
HAVE TO is important because it makes a statement about the kind of person you are and what you
think about education and learning. This government is taking away that decision from countless young
people. They are not just saying that education doesn’t matter; but specifically that education doesn’t
matter if you are from a low-income background.

Again, I don't mean that having A-Levels, etc., helps people get better jobs (it does), but that it makes
them into better people. These are necessary goods that a civilised nation should be providing for its
citizens. Not so they can use narrowly conceived vocational degrees to work in finance or business, but
simply because it is A Good Thing. Like emptying bins, having a functioning sanitation system, or a
health service free at the point of delivery.

The Browne review states that universities that charge over 7000 a year in fees (this will be a lot of them –
certainly the most prestigious, because they can) have to satisfy as-yet-uncertain criteria regarding their
efforts to widen participation. I have a feeling that these criteria will be as ineffective. Not least because
this government clearly does not care about widening participation: by cancelling the EMA they
drastically reduce the amount of people such widening participation programmes could help, because they
won’t have been able to go to a sixth form or further education college, because their family needs them
to earn or claim benefits to survive. Even if the criteria are stringent, they still won’t be enough. Oxford
University tries rather hard (some colleges and departments more than others, but there is a concerted
effort in general) to widen participation, partly because it knows it is perceived as a stronghold of
privileged, public-school educated students. But these efforts are not enough. We still don’t have
anywhere near the right ratio of state-school to independent school students, simply because we don’t
have the applicants from state schools. This will get worse under the lib-con government’s proposals.
This is a terrible thing.

I also note that amongst all this debate about higher education NO-ONE is talking about the utter dearth
of funding for post-graduate study. Universities cannot exist without academics. At the moment we are
careering towards a situation in which the only people pursuing higher education – especially to PhD level
will be overseas students and the independently wealthy (or, often, both). Whilst the cosmopolitan nature
of postgraduate communities can certainly be A Good Thing, my point once more is that this
government is failing its own citizens (I almost said the people that voted it in, but that wouldn’t quite be
accurate, would it?) by denying even the supremely gifted the opportunity to have a career in the higher
education sector – it is socially engineering not only the undergraduate and postgraduate population, but
also the future lecturers and researchers who will teach subsequent generations. So not only will the
student population become socially monologous, but, in time, so will the backgrounds of faculty staff. It
will then probably be even harder to fix.

A free market is only free for the wealthy. Putting education on the market excludes the poor. Education
is not for sale: not because it is going to cost too much (it is), but because in selling education, education
is transformed for the worse. So, I would be interested to hear your views on these issues, and, if it isn’t
an imposition, to know how you think you will vote when the government publishes the White Paper on
universities. The Browne review is only one option, and even if it represents its DECISION as a necessity
(there has been a lot of that recently) there are many others, and I hope you will take the time to consider
them.

Best wishes,

Dr. John McTague