Rav Casley Gera

With the UCAS process completed and a new year of students beginning to gear up for beginning university, there’s a remarkable level of concensus in the media at the success of the Government’s contentious funding reforms. Here’s the Guardian, one of the papers most receptive to critics of the reforms in the past:

on the whole, as the first year of the new tuition-fee regime draws to a close, not much has gone wrong. Applications have continued to rise. Fears that universities with large numbers of places to fill would slash their prices have proved to be unfounded. And thousands more students now have financial help. Kirsty Jones, from the finance directorate of Sheffield Hallam University, says: “Overall we feel that this year has gone well.”

Much of this stems from the 6% increase in UCAS applications last year. The chief argument of critics - that the reforms, which introduced much higher fees in exchange for the reintroduction of maintenance grants for the poorest students - would put poor students off University by threatening them with massive debt.

I’ll admit I was surprised by the rise in applications. But of course, a rise in applications alone tells us little. Was the cohort of people of UCAS application age larger this year? And, crucially, how has the socioeconomic background of applicants shifted, if at all? It’s no secret that A-level grades are improving, that the ranks of people with the qualifications for University is increasing; an increase in applications overall doesn’t mean those from poorer backgrounds are any more likely to apply. And, of course, we’ll have to wait several years before we see the effects of the increased debt burden as this generation of students enters the workplace with over one year’s salary’s worth of debt.

But all this ignores the central objection to the Government’s new model: that, like the previous model with reduced fees, it simply doesn’t supply students with enough money. My year at University (1999-2002) was one of the first under the initial reforms, and there was an Alice in Wonderland quality to the mathematics under which our living budgets were decided. A student from the poorest background, whose parents were expected to make no contribution to their education costs, would pay no fees and be able to receive £3,600 a year towards their living costs. I recall sitting down at some point in my first year - probably around the same time my cashcard first got declined - and working out my situation. Halls rent, including some meals, was £2450 a year. That left £1150, or £32 for each of the 35 termtime weeks, spending money. This is at a time when friends at home who hadn’t stayed at University were earning £150 temping - and recieving a similar level of feeding from their parents as I was getting in halls. In the second year, things were even worse - because it was paid over the full 52 weeks, rent at £45 a week came to £2340 - almost as much as halls. Now, I had £36 a week - and I had to eat, too. To eat, travel, pay bills, buy books, clothes, phone home, and - naughty! - perhaps actually go out every now and then. A ticket home for the weekend could leave me unable to eat for the next week.

How did anyone in the Government ever think this was workable? Universities desperately tried to discourage us from getting part-time jobs, while banks and credit card companies swooped in to fill the gap - in addition to, in several friend’s cases, hardship loans. Is it really a coincidence that, a few years on, we’re seeing record number of redundancies from credit card debt? Of course, we were all supported by our parents, too - even those whose parents the Government had decreed not required to contribute to our living costs, often because they were paying our fees. And if you could get to the front of the mile-long queue at the temp agency, you might just manage to get a holiday job. Still, the gap between the money available and the real costs of living - to even a pale impersonation of the lifestlye of our working friends - seems so stupidly large, it’s astonishing this arrangement was ever implemented. And what’s so astonishing - what made me really angry - was that this penury stemmed from the tight upper limits on our loans. We weren’t saying the Government had to give us money. We accepted we were going to borrow. Why limit the interest-free borrowing to such ludicrously low levels, and effectively force us into the hands of commercial lenders?

So with the Government bleating proudly at the bursaries and grants built into its new system, I naturally wanted to look at the actual numbers. Fortunately, the NUS - who we demonised in my day for their cosying up to the Government over funding reform - have done the number-crunching for me.

Let’s accept the default figures, which seem reasonable in their estimate of student spending. As much as horrified ministers like to pretend otherwise, the truth is that students do wear clothes, and use mobile phones, and get trains to visit each other in their parent’s houses in the holidays. Accept the default numbers, click the little ‘OK’ at the bottom, and you get the result: a £725 surplus! Great! Off to Spain for the holidays!

Now look back at those income numbers. £3000 to cover fees, good. £3205 loan to cover living costs, OK. Family contribution or grant, £2700, fine*. Bursary, £300, yep - that’s the statutory minimum for Universities to provide to students recieving full maintenance grants. But what’s this? Part-time / vacation work, £2500.

Hmm. Let’s see. There are, at most Universities, 17 non-term weeks in the year: 4 at Christmas, 4 at Easter, and 11 in Summer. It’s hard to obtain temp work at Christmas, although those with longstanding arrangements with supermarkets or shops might have a better chance. And of course, it’s assumed you’ll be working heavily on revision and essays. Let’s say you manage to get two weeks’ full-time work (37.5 hours a week) at Christmas, and three weeks’ at Easter. And let’s be really optimistic, and assume you get to work 10 of your 11 summer weeks. No lazy summer afternoons in the park for you, youngster. And let’s - realistically - assume you do all of this at the minimum wage, currently £4.45 an hour for 18-21 yr-olds. 4.45 x 37.5 x 15 = £2503.

My God! It actually works. If everything goes to plan - your parents pay up, you get work, the loans, grant and bursary all come through on time, and you stick to reasonable spending limits, you can get by without accruing a huge overdraft or working part-time in term-time. And if your University is one of those that provides more than the minimum bursary, you could work less.

This doesn’t invalidate some of the wider criticisms of the system: the deterrent effect of heavy debts, which we still aren’t sure about; the risk of serious problems if one of the above factors, notable parental contribution, falls through. Still, I’ll stand up and admit it: I was wrong to argue that the latest reforms would make a bad situation worse. While the debt burden is worse now, the ludicrous penury of student life in the early noughties - and the bank and credit card debt that too often went along with it - should be heavily reduced. I’d still rather see education funded through progressive taxation, or failing that, a graduate tax. And I’m certainly still horrified to hear elite Universities lobbying for the removal or raising of the fee cap, and right-wingers for the end of interest-free loans. But I will admit that this time, it appears, the Government’s sums do add up.