When a student complains about tuition fees, it is often met with jeers. “What are they complaining about now? I would have had a job at their age.” 

Students, I’ll admit, don’t cover themselves in glory: they have a habit of whining on, in those idealistic nasal tones of theirs. But sometimes — just sometimes — their complaints are valid. Even though I am as of this summer no longer a student, the pain is still fresh.

Starmer rubbed salt in my tuition fee wounds recently with his plan to raise tuition fees from £9,250 to £9,535. It’s a small increase and one that doesn’t affect me personally. But it’s one that is indicative of Labour’s priorities in office: increase how much you pay, don’t bother with reform.  

Tuition fees have been a contentious topic for decades. They were introduced in 1998, when Blair’s government introduced a tuition fee of £1,000. From 2006, the cap was increased to £3,000. In 2012, this was tripled by the coalition government. The last time that tuition fees were increased was in 2017, when they went up to £9,250, which is what I paid. 

The need for reform is obvious. The Conservatives made only a half-hearted attempt at it. In 2023, there was a bit of reform. They decreased the amount that students had to repay monthly, whilst extending the period over which it was being paid. Now you could be repaying the loan into your 60s. Before the reform, only 27 per cent of graduates were expected to pay back their loans in full. After the reform, 65 per cent are.

Better than nothing. Yet more reform is evidently needed. It is unfair to have a system where we expect some people not to repay their loans in full, but also a system that doesn’t pay for itself. The fee cap has meant that universities are (allegedly) losing an average of £2,500 on every domestic student. Vivienne Stern, chief executive of Universities UK, said in June that Labour must immediately act to stabilise the university sector. And Peter Mandelson, former spin doctor to Tony Blair and candidate in the race to be Chancellor of the University of Oxford, echoed calls to increase tuition fees. 

It would be far better, I think, not to increase everyone’s tuition fees, but to stratify the rates

The answer is by no means to return to a pre-tuition fees world. Ironically, this is what Keir Starmer campaigned for in his 2020 leadership bid. Apparently he had a Damascene conversion — one of many — and realised just how expensive his would be. It would be nice (and I’d personally quite like the write-off). But it would also be nice if everyone’s mortgages were also written off — and their credit card loans. 

It would be far better, I think, not to increase everyone’s tuition fees, but to stratify the rates. Some degrees have greater value and cost the university more. They should be charged accordingly. 

Tuition fees cost the same for all domestic students on every course, yet some courses evidently require more to teach than others. If you studied a humanities degree like me (Classics, don’t laugh), then your tuition fee goes towards the wages of teachers. But if you studied sciences, those courses require additional materials. Lab work can require expensive chemicals and equipment, the provision of safety materials. I’m not given safety goggles to read my Tacitus but I pay the same.

Humanities students, on the whole, have far, far fewer contact hours than their STEM counterparts. I had about two contact hours a week. I know STEM students who had at least a dozen. I’m not complaining (as a student I was not yearning for more work to do) but it’s odd that I should pay the same amount for less teaching. STEM students get more bang for their buck. 

And for all their hard work, STEM graduates will on the whole also get higher-paying jobs when they leave. I’ll admit it, it was my choice to choose to study Classics. It was my choice to do a degree that didn’t pay as well as others. But if I didn’t do Classics, there’d only be someone else who would study my degree and fill the gap I left behind. 

This results in some students subsidising other students’ courses. This is the case with international students, who can pay up to £40k a year at British universities. On average, universities receive 20 per cent of their funding from overseas students. Over a dozen UK universities receive 40 per cent of their funding from international students. 

And let’s face it, not all degrees are worth the £9k that people might pay for them. I’m not just talking about so-called “Mickey Mouse degrees”, but degrees that simply don’t make you any more employable. So many people do non-vocational degrees that it no longer distinguishes you in the job market. We shouldn’t make people pay more for a degree that doesn’t actually help them (or the economy) all that much. 

The Taxpayers Alliance agrees with me. An article that they published points to the fact that in Australia, this is standard practice. Tuition fees in Australia are not all the same but are calculated according to which modules you take. Each module has a different cost, and students choose a combination of different units. It’s civilised, like ordering from a menu. Not like the sloppy university free-for-all we have here in the UK. 

That is not to say that Australia’s got it all going on. But it shows there are other solutions to the funding crisis in British universities. Students are becoming increasingly fed up with university fees and politicians don’t have the impetus to listen to them. Perhaps, though, Keir will stumble on this article and have another Damascene conversion.