Universities have exploited goodwill of naive students
THE CORONAVIRUS pandemic has taken a terrible toll on lots of different groups in our society. The elderly have paid by far the highest price in terms of fatalities, with deaths in care homes a particular source of national regret and even shame.
Covid has been rife in ethnic minority communities too, as well as among frontline workers in transport, retail and other sectors vital to maintaining the foundations of civilised life.
And of course, our NHS staff have worked heroically to save lives – often to the point of exhaustion or placing themselves at added risk.
It is unsurprising therefore to find one large group of people who have not been badly hit healthwise, but who have suffered greatly in other ways, being overlooked. The people I have in mind are the 1.8 million undergraduate students enrolled at UK universities.
They are not always easy to sympathise with – a reckless minority among them have sometimes congregated in selfish defiance of lockdown and distancing measures. The idiotic woke ideas harboured by many of them about which political viewpoints are acceptable, and which are not, can also grate.
YET they have nonetheless been treated appallingly and the naive goodwill of the majority in their ranks has been exploited to an unforgivable extent.
It has become clear this week that the vast majority will go through the entire academic year without the benefit of any face-to-face teaching. Hopes that a lull in Covid last summer would allow for a relatively normal university year were dashed.
October saw thousands of undergraduates locked inside halls of residence as the pandemic ripped through campuses. They weren’t locked away for their own benefit – they are an age group which faces negligible risk of serious illness, let alone dying from Covid – but for the protection of the middle-aged and older people.
They were then treated much like cattle in respect of coming home for Christmas and going back to university afterwards (which most of them still haven’t been permitted to do). Now that ministers are indicating that the lockdown may not be lifted by Easter, they can no longer even bank on enjoying a relatively normal student experience in the summer term, traditionally dominated by revision for exams anyway.
Yet universities have continued to charge them full £9,250 tuition fees – and often they have had to carry on paying full rent on accommodation they are not currently able to live in. Social clubs, university sporting teams and student unions have all been shut down.
Universities which previously sold themselves on the idea of
“the best days of your lives” have suddenly decided that their allegedly “high quality online teaching and learning” – the favoured description of the new arrangements of their Universities UK lobby group – is worth as much as the previous system of in-person lectures and seminars. That’s palpable nonsense.
But Government ministers appear inclined to let them get away with that and have reportedly rejected the recommendations of a review of the sector that called for a lower cap on fees of £7,500, deciding instead to offer students a “freeze” for next year at the current rates – as if that was any great concession.
They are set to get away with it because the fees are mostly put on the never-never, hanging an ever-greater debt burden around the necks of people just getting going in adult life and
now facing the most difficult jobs market for decades.
Most of us have family – if not our own children then perhaps a grandson or a niece – who has been caught in this exploitative trap. It is time to weigh in on their behalf and say it is not remotely acceptable.
At the very least, the Government should pronounce that no student will be charged full tuition fees for this current academic year. An appropriate charge would be the annual fee levied by the Open University for its online courses; just £3,096.
AS he stands up to deliver the Budget in early March, Chancellor Rishi Sunak should say that the Government will this year waive tuition fee debt above this level. The Government has made a point throughout the pandemic of claiming to have “put its arms around people at a time of crisis”.
It is not right that students should be the one group that does not benefit from any such protection. Their plight is relatively easy to ignore amid all the other tragedies of Covid. But the unaddressed injustices being visited upon them will create a toxic legacy for us all.
‘Their plight is relatively easy to ignore amid all the other tragedies’