Scrapping fees does nothing to help disadvantaged Young people. The money would be better spent helping all, regardless of their chosen path

There’s plenty to make me cringe when I reminisce about my university days, and it doesn’t stop with my dodgy sense of style. If I’m honest, I feel a little shame-faced about the narrower world view I inhabited back then. One of the ways that manifested itself was the enthusiasm with which I threw myself into campaigning against Tuition Fees. Then, the government was proposing raising fees from £1,000 to £3,000 a year. Cue much passionate marching in student demos, earnest drafting of student union responses to government white papers, and letter-writing to MPs.

The reason I got so exercised about a fee hike that might seem fairly modest in the context of the £9,000 fees most universities are charging today, was that the university I went to, Oxford, had a big access problem (and indeed still does). Young people from working-class backgrounds were, and are, seriously under-represented. As someone who’d had all the benefits of a middle-class upbringing – including parents who nurtured my aspirations every step of the way – that struck me as deeply unfair, and I got very involved with our student union’s access-widening schemes. I thought higher fees would further discourage any young people who might think university wasn’t for them.

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from Education | The Guardian http://ift.tt/2lfje6e