Labour isn’t educating

This autumn, a record 375,000 students will start degrees at UK universities, an increase of 30,000 on last year’s intake. The desire for a university degree does not seem to have withered with the introduction of top-up fees. But the impact of New Labour’s latest round of higher education reforms on social mobility, the value and meaning of degrees, university life and the state of academia is becoming discernibly bleak. This special section of Red Pepper focuses on some of the key issues now facing students and universities in the UK.

Are the problems we now face symptoms of a deeper shift in the nature of academia and the wider economy? British universities enjoy relative independence from government compared to some of our European neighbours and have quickly re-geared towards meeting research funding targets by imitating corporate structures. Meanwhile, the mass of students get short-changed by a system that demands higher fees for courses led by tutors who are now chiefly selected and motivated by their research commitments.

So academia, one of the last great institutional strongholds of the British left, is witnessing a generation of great thinkers and educators facing premature redundancy. The student campaign that saved socialist-feminist Sheila Rowbotham’s teaching role at Manchester offers a much-needed glimmer of hope. Yet still, under the diktats of economic imperative and cold competition, less and less is left of the free-flowing, rebellious-minded exploration that fuelled some of our greatest academic and creative achievements of the past century and more. It is in this context that Terry Eagleton (Death of the intellectual inspects the state of the nation’s scholars and laments the downfall of our public intellectuals.

Where once there was hope that expansion of higher education might extend opportunity, the system is now deteriorating into an unfair and increasingly worthless competition for ‘skills’. Laurie Penny looks at what the falling value and rising cost of a degree means for students forced to pay their own way through university (Back to class).

This ongoing expansion of higher education brings with it armies of undergraduates, foisted upon sometimes small and struggling university towns and cities. Such an influx can be a force for economic growth and cultural diversity, but the full picture has been far from rosy. Jenny Nelson examines these tensions between ‘town and gown’ communities, and suggests some ways that student activists can try to break out of their ghettos (Beyond town and gown.

Uniting students politically has been an uphill battle, as they are such a diverse and transitory group. Keeping students empowered from the roots up and effective at the top is at the heart of the debate on reforming the National Union of Students (NUS) – the so-called ‘governance review’. The NUS is trying to respond not only to higher education reforms but also to changes in the nature of lobbying and grass-roots activism. Hind Hassan, Student Respect’s representative on the NUS ‘block of 12’ part-time officers The fight for the NUS, and Aled Fisher, LSE student union general secretary and a Green Party candidate in London (Students are citizens too, offer their accounts of the current student climate.

This special focus on higher education was brought together by students, and while we wouldn’t claim to speak for them all, we hope the contributions here encourage a broad debate on the need for progressive, workable alternatives to the neoliberal education system that is taking over our universities.