Thread by @CouldBeKel

#TuitionFees are an active contributor to sustained and deepening socioeconomic inequality — true when they were introduced by @UKLabour in the late 90s, even more so now that they top £9000 a year. Let me explain. 🧵

There are people studying the exact same course as me. They’re in the exact same lectures, the exact same tutorials, reading the exact same core literature. We’re accessing the same teaching resources and facilities.

The only difference? They don’t have a student loan. Their parents have been able to pay £27,750, and likely living costs, too, for them to attend university loan-free. If they’re in the position to do so, do I blame them? Not at all.

Some people argue that tuition fees are effectively a graduate tax. This framing is deeply unhelpful. A well-functioning system of taxation is redistributive, and ensures that in society, those who have the most pay the most. It’s a tool of justice.

Calling tuition fees a ‘graduate tax’ is further demonising taxation as a concept: when done properly, redistributive, progressive taxation ensures the delivery of better public services, meaningful equality, and a fairer society for all.

Tuition fees are anything but fair. My course mates — we may well end up graduating with the same degree classification, working similarly paid jobs, with relatively equal living costs.

Their disposable income will be higher than mine — the repayment rate is 9% above the earnings threshold, currently £27,295 for loans taken out in the past decade. We didn’t need a cost of living crisis to demonstrate the harm of this — but it definitely reinforced it.

I should pause here to note that this earnings threshold has not kept pace with inflation — and hasn’t increased at all in the last year. Hard-fought pay-rises to match inflation are being met with real-terms decreases in earnings thresholds to repay sky-high tuition fee loans.

Regardless, my course mate won’t need to worry about that, because they’re not repaying their student loan. They’re taking home more pay, despite being in the exact same educational and employment circumstances, for one key reason: their family is rich.

Tuition fees are entrenching socioeconomic inequality in our country, making sure that the rich stay rich, and the poor are punished for wanting access to the same learning opportunities. This isn’t equality, and it certainly isn’t fairness.

Education is a public good. It belongs to and benefits us all. There is no justification for a system which commodifies it, making sure that the rich have exclusive access. The product of neoliberalism — to which the Tories, Lib Dems, and Labour are all equally committed.