25 Years Since the Introduction of Tuition Fees - A Retrospective

By Lilac Carr, National News Editor, BA Politics and International Relations 09/12/2024

When Tony Blair’s Labour government was elected in a landslide majority in 1997, they were elected on a promise that they supported tuition-free, state-funded education. Blair’s government then passed the Teaching and Higher Education Act 1998, which introduced university tuition fees for the first time since WWII. In 2001, the Labour Government promised they would not raise tuition costs further. In 2004, the same Government increased tuition fees from £1000 to £3000 a year. 

In response, the then Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith promised a future Conservative government would scrap tuition fees, calling them a ‘tax on learning’. In 2010, the Conservative government led by David Cameron tripled tuition fees to £9,000 a year with the support of their Coalition government partner the Liberal Democrats. Prior to the election, every single Liberal Democrat MP had signed a National Union of Students pledge to not raise tuition fees, including then party leader Nick Clegg, who had stated months earlier that ‘We want to abolish tuition fees.’ (Following the student protests against tuition fees, Clegg accused the protesters of ‘living in a dream world’).

When elected Labour party leader in 2020, Keir Starmer promised to his party membership that he would ‘Support the abolition of tuition fees and invest in lifelong learning.’ On Monday 4 November 2024, current Labour Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson announced that from the academic year starting 2025, tuition fees will rise from £9,250 (the cap since 2017) to £9,535, with more possible increases signalled in the future. Tuition fees, then, do not seem to be going away any time soon, regardless of what politicians say before entering office.

Each time - in 1997, 2004 and 2010 (with the exception of the £250 increase passed in 2016) - the decisions to introduce and raise tuition fees were met with huge waves of opposition, from parliament to the streets. In 1998, thousands of students followed the National Union of Student’s call for a walkout. In 2003, in response to government plans for top-up fees, 30,000 students demonstrated in Trafalgar Square, and Tony Blair’s massive 161-seat majority was reduced to 5 in the vote for the Higher Education Bill, with 71 Labour MPs rebelling against the bill. Then NUS president Mandy Telford - who successfully fought tuition fees in Scotland, where university remains free of tuition fees - warned in the Guardian: ‘Let us not be under any illusion that tuition fees will remain at £3,000 a year.’ 

On the 10th of November, when the vote was held, a protest was organised which passed by the Conservative Party HQ. Some protestors forced their way into the building, and were immediately met with a violent police response.

In 2010 and 2011, the protests against tuition fees reached their boiling point. Students protested up to the day of the vote, leading occupations of various universities in protest, including UCL, Edinburgh, Newcastle and Oxford. On the 10th of November, when the vote was held, a protest was organised which passed by the Conservative Party HQ. Some protestors forced their way into the building, and were immediately met with a violent police response. Several people broke the building’s windows and lit off flares; one person dropped a fire extinguisher from the roof (no one was harmed). The NUS (which dropped its opposition to tuition fees in 2008 under then-President Wes Streeting, now Labour Health Secretary) saw its president, Aaron Porter, distancing itself from and condemning the actions of the protestors.

Two weeks later, another protest, which was initially peaceful and properly communicated with the police, was met with a heavy police response and kettling (surrounding protestors and preventing them from leaving for an extended length of time). This resulted in push back against the police, panic, and escalating violence between protestors and police officers. 

On the 9th of December, the day of the vote, a protest was held which police responded to by hours of kettling outside Parliament. Once the vote passed, the kettle reached boiling point. The police charged in with horses, engaged in significant police violence, and the protestors responded with violence themselves. Protests and kettling continued late into the night. The media condemned and vilified the protests: the Daily Mail referred to the protestors as ‘masked thugs’; David Cameron called the protests ‘totally unacceptable’, applauded the police’s handling of the events and demanded those who damaged property and clashed with the police ‘face the full force of the law.’ 

How has the university landscape changed since 1998? Mandy Telford, opposing the top-up of tuition fees, warned that it would be a ‘disaster for higher education’, particularly affecting poorer students; that ‘a market of any sort generally ensures that the richest get richer and the poorest get poorer.’ But several years later in 2007, Blair (in a move immediately condemned by the NUS, University and College Union and several academics) stated that ‘the worries about tuition fees turned out to be misplaced, and it’s a global marketplace.’ 

While there have been concerns about the effect of tuition fees on equal access to education, that tuition fees would make those with less money unable or scared to go to university, supporters of tuition fees might counter that tuition fee loans do not have to be paid until graduates make between £24,990 and £31,395 a year (with a lower threshold for Master’s and Doctoral Loans). Furthermore, over a third of UK 18 year olds entered higher education in 2023; while in 1997, under a quarter of 18-21 were enrolled.

However, just because more people go to university now does not mean that tuition fees have had no impact on education inequality. Specialist arts institutions are ‘among the most elitist in the country’ according to Arts Professional; with some accepting fewer state school students than even Cambridge and Oxford.. Other universities, such as Durham, have a remarkably high percentage of private school students: in 2018, 39.5% of students were privately educated, this number increased to an overwhelmingly 49.2% when looking at arts and humanities students. When top-up fees were announced, then Higher Education Secretary Margaret Hodge stated that ‘in an era when students are expected to contribute towards the cost of their higher education, they will, of course, select with great care a course which will enhance their career prospects.’ Conversely, though, this could be said to have made the freedom to choose to study what you are genuinely passionate about - and therefore the arts and culture sector more broadly - a privilege of the wealthy.

Margaret Hodge declared in 2004 that there was ‘no such thing as a free lunch.’ The logic here goes that if you want to go to university, if you want the benefits associated with it, you should expect to pay your dues for it, and to disagree is to act selfish and spoiled. There are costs to everything; nothing comes for free. Yet in the Economy 2030 Inquiry, co-developed by LSE, increases in university education were found to be hugely beneficial for the economy. More universities in a region result in higher GDP per capita; ‘every year of education boosts long term growth by 3 to 6 per cent.’. They argue that ‘the UK needs to break out of a ‘too many university degrees [approach]’ and instead get on with the serious work of how best to reform higher education’. From this perspective, if there is indeed no such thing as a ‘free lunch’, it remains unclear who is expecting a free lunch: the students who demand free education; or the government which demands the economic benefits of higher education while refusing to foot the bill?