NUS memo to SUs - don't fight the fees rise!

The Times reports today on the memo issued by the NUS to Student Union officers which advises our elected representatives not to fight the rise in tuition fees. Its description of the repayment system as 'progressive' makes it sound remarkably similar to the justifications offered by politicians like Nick Clegg when they attempted (and failed) to sell the policy to students.

Memo from student leaders: don’t fight rise in fees

Student leaders have privately advised their full-time campus representatives not to campaign against moves by some universities to charge the maximum tuition fee of £9,000.

A memo from the National Union of Students (NUS), seen by The Times, advises its elected student officers that campaigning against high fees could backfire and that they should hold talks with their universities instead.

The NUS has publicly opposed any rise in tuition fees but the briefing note appears to contradict that stance, calling the Government’s higher education reforms “progressive”. It also admits that funding cuts are not as drastic as the union has claimed.

The disclosure of the memo comes amid signs of a growing split within the student movement as a more radical campus-based activism becomes hostile to the NUS leadership.

Nationally the NUS has opposed any increase in fees from the current £3,290 and advocates a graduate tax, but within each university it advises a pragmatic approach, accepting that lower fees may damage quality.

The Universities of Oxford and Cambridge and Imperial College London have proposed the maximum of £9,000 from 2012, with others set to follow.

The five-page briefing note gives advice to NUS officers on campuses about discussions on increasing fees from 2012-13, after the Government’s decision to lift the cap on charges.

Aimed particularly at universities in the Russell Group and the 1994 Group of smaller research universities, it cautions NUS officers against trying to stop universities setting the maximum fee. It says that “simply campaigning for a low fee might not generate the results you require (especially inside the Russell and 1994 Group)”.

On the reforms of student finance, with a high repayment threshold and payments spread over 30 years, the note says that “the vastly increased numbers of graduates that will never pay the loan off are in fact what makes the system relatively progressive”.