Education, Not for Sale

A wealth of speakers included Norwich and Cambridge MPs, civil workers, and union representatives, who rallied up the crowd with the same message: it’s up to the students to take action against a future of serious debt.
“Education can’t be funded on personal debt,” said local Green MP Rupert Read, “the idea of a graduate premium where better jobs can pay off higher debts can’t exist in a recession.” Read compared the UK’s decisions to Obama’s plans for education in the US; “he has promised a tentative but real universal provision of education, an unequivocal, progressive system. Meanwhile, England is still imitating a failed American policy.” Read went on to say he was tired of government education policies and that together we can create a fairer system.
All were in agreement that the credit crunch has evaporated our careless attitude to debt. With the increased cost of living, the buy-now-pay-later view has collapsed.
Ed Maltby, Cambridge student and National Secretary of Education Not for Sale (ENS), mingled with the crowd, handing out a document outlining demands that financial exploitation of schools, colleges and universities must be stopped and reversed; we should tax the rich and corporations to fund education. “We need a united movement, and we can build one,” he said. “We need to disturb business-as-usual on campus with mass meetings, rent strikes and non-payment campaigns. Financial pressure on a university forces the organization to ask for more from the government.” The red-painted crowd released a flock of red balloons into the sky to the tune of a ukulele, chanting chanted “Education! Not for sale! You say cut back, we say fight back!”
The UEA Union’s communications officer Rowena Boddington mentioned that “once parents have to take measures to handle the quickly rising financial strain of putting their children through education, it puts the whole economy under burden. If the cap on top-up fees is lifted, it will affect higher education for generations.” Even if you aren’t planning to have kids, the problem has a ripple effect on the whole economy. It is vital that people from underprivileged and non-traditional backgrounds have equal access to university. A lot of these people aren’t even considering university as an option, yet intelligence and diversity within a workplace can never flourish if these people are penalised the most and barred access from knowledge.
A secondary state school teacher revealed on the day that 50% of graduate teachers are forced to leave government funded positions after two years. “People should feel encouraged to enter the public sector, but as loans grow, wages go down.” This is a live issue for the general public, who voted for a Labour government whose 1997 manifesto condemned all fees yet pulled them up extravagantly in 2004. Encouragingly, the proposition of this bill united students in a fight that came within five votes of defeating Blair.
A bill will go through later next year to remove the cap on fees meaning that universities can charge any tuition they choose, unless a protest can be organize to prevent its approval. Student unions are planning to meet in London in February or March 2009 to demonstrate. Meanwhile, regional activism will pull East Anglian universities together. To keep up to date on proceedings, visit www.free-education.org.uk and www.workersliberty.org.