Cutting to the Point: Greg Brown

The Government has just announced new terms for its National Scholarship Scheme (NSS), designed, we are told, to mitigate some of the dangerous barriers the tuition fee reforms will set in place. The Office for Fair Access – a watchdog set-up to prod universities with low intake of poorer students on the arm – is going to be given a “more serious job to do”, according to David Willets. No university will be allowed to charge above £6,000 per annum without making an effort to boost numbers of working-class school-leavers and adults among their ranks, says Nick Clegg. It all feels very much like the mentality of the man who makes his wife a cup of tea after beating her.

The NSS £150m pot of gold to be targeted at students from households with less than £25,000 income is at best crass tokenism. To be sure, it is better than nothing at all but is no compromise. It does not cater for fair access and should be seen for what it is: a last-ditch attempt to try and dissuade as many students as possible from their rightful anger. A cynical move to try and convince some of the poorest students they aren’t getting shafted.This money is to provide one or a small number of the following: a fee waiver or discount, a free foundation year, discounted accommodation, or a bursary capped at £1,000. The figures equate to a free year of tuition for only 17,000 students – a mere 0.68% of the number of students participating in Higher Education in 2009-10, while there are 40% of UK households with a total yearly income averaging below the £25,000 qualifying threshold. If this is not crumbs from the table, then what is?Even permitting this, read closely: the NSS applies only to institutions charging above £6,000. In other words, it is deemed acceptable for some of the poorest, who would now suffer £9,000 in fees on your average university course, to have their burden exactly doubled. Even at £7,500 fees they could still reasonably expect a simple £1,000 token bursary.

The statistics give the lie to the myth that the Government is doing what it can to not just sustain access levels for poorer students, but to improve them. But what can we expect from individuals who went to schools which charged per year the level of debt that the average student graduates with?We shouldn’t be surprised or shocked that Nick Clegg refuses to apologise.

It was never his desire or belief that HE should be free and accessible to all: his only desire for power, and his belief in the potency of lie, spin and con-tricking his way there. With hundreds of thousands of able students waiting to be locked out of our universities and trampled over in all other myriad ways sought by his government, it isn’t Clegg’s apology that we should be calling for, but his head.