London Student has discovered that right-wing think tank Policy Exchange is set to advise David Cameron to free Russell Group Universities from state control – establishing a British ‘Ivy League’.

Along with Oxford and Cambridge, University of London colleges would become private institutions charging £20,000 a year tuition fees, pricing all but the extremely wealthy out of previously accessible institutions.

Whilst Policy Exchange denies working directly with the Conservatives on this proposal, London Student understands that during last week’s Conservative Party Conference, Tory Higher Education Minister Rob Wilson approached representatives of the National Union of Students and asked for their opinions on the very same plan.

Wilson told the NUS he had “been thinking on my feet” and was just “bouncing a couple of ideas around in my head”.

But the proposal he suggested to NUS president Wes Streeting and Vice-President Aaron Porter was virtually the same as the one London Student had heard from Policy Exchange.

The report is being written by Boris Johnson’s close friend Anna Fazackerley, a former reporter at the Times Higher Educational Supplement.

Des Browne, director of Policy Exchange recently boasted in The Guardian, that LSE Professor Julian Le Grand is also working on the report.

Le Grand is a former advisor to Tony Blair’s government and widely viewed as the architect of top up fees.

In an interview with London Student Le Grand stated: “Universities should be centres of social criticism and should not receive funding from the state”

Whilst stating that the privatisation of Britain’s top universities may lead to increased bursaries for students from poorer backgrounds, Le Grand said: “students from middle income families should have to pay more for university.”

This closely echoes Oxford Chancellor, and former Tory minister, Chris Patten’s statement this week: “It is surely a mad world in which parents or grandparents are prepared to shell out tens of thousands of pounds to put their children through private schools to get them in to universities, and then object to them paying a tuition fee of more than £3,000 when they are there.”

Clueless

Patten seemed unaware that 93% of British school children attend state school and are alien to the concept of paying for education.

Professor Le Grand, was himself unsure how students would begin paying back huge levels of debt, instead he expressed a hope that: “Wages for graduates would eventually adjust or employers would offer to pay your debt off for you.”

London Student suggested to Professor Le Grand that students with £50,000 worth of debt would have to earn £30k a year upon graduation in order to keep up with interest payments.

This would mean that they could not enter lesser paid professions such as teaching. He responded: “No you couldn’t go into teaching immediately but if you did something before, then after, say, 10 years you could.”

In Cahoots

Critics who believe unelected think tanks are undemocratic are troubled by Policy Exchange’s influence on the Tories.

Worryingly, for potential future students the last Policy Exchange report on education was adopted last week as official Tory Policy.

Boris Johnson’s idea to bring back the Route Master buses was also based on a Policy Exchange report.

David Cameron launched his campaign for the Tory leadership at Policy Exchange HQ in 2005.

David Goodhart, editor of the political magazine Prospect recently said: “Policy Exchange have been really quite important in the Tory revival.

They’ve helped to make the Tories sort of cool again intellectually.”

Teachers trying to convince their students to attend the top universities find the Policy Exchange proposal far from “cool”.

Chris Kidman, Head of Sixth Form at St Aidan’s, a comprehensive school in Harrogate, North Yorkshire slammed the proposal: “The implications of this would be that hardworking and talented students would be cast out from the ‘top’ universities through no fault of their own. There is no doubt that many of our brightest students would be deterred from applying – they simply couldn’t afford to accept such levels of debt, whatever the promise of future income.”

Academic staff at the University of London are equally unimpressed. Dr Johanna Malt of King’s College London told London Student: “there’s no shortage of excellent academics working in the UK system, less well funded British universities produce a great deal of high quality research, as well as turning out graduates who are, on the whole, well educated and satisfied with their experience.”

Phil Willis MP (Lib Dem), Chair of the House of Commons Innovation, Universities and Skills Select Committee also gave a negative response to the proposal. Willis said he “was not supportive of the idea of raising tuition fees to that level” however he did warn of “the very real possibility of the Higher Education sector moving that way in the future”.

Additional reporting: Joseph Tandy

Tags: Conservatives, Ivy League, NUS, Policy Exchange, Tory party

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 at 02:02 and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.