Cardiff Students have vowed to send a message to University Vice Chancellor, Dr David Grant, by staging a protest against increased top-up fees outside his office.
A sit-in protest, organised by Cardiff Students’ Union and Cardiff Socialist Students, will be held next Wednesday, February 7, at noon outside the Vice Chancellor’s office.
The protest will show opposition to the revelation in a recent Guardian survey that most senior staff in 40 of Britain’s universities are in favour of the cap on top-up fees being lifted to £6,000 a year, and possibly as much as £10,000 a year for science courses.
Only 40 out of 100 top universities answered the survey, and most warned that fees could rise after the review in 2009, when the first students to be affected by the changes will graduate.
Gerald Blee, spokesperson for Socialist Students, said: “We’ve been campaigning for years on the idea that tuition fees should be abolished and that education should be free.
“Dr Grant is a very important target for this campaign because he’s part of the Russell Group (a group of the top 20 research-led universities, including Cardiff) who are lobbying to remove the £3,000 cap, which we think is very dangerous.
“Already, the average debt is around £10,000 and with top-up fees it’ll be much higher. Paying it back at 9% once you are earning £15,000 means new graduates face higher taxes than millionaires.
“The Vice-Chancellors of the Russell Group are out of touch with the student body. If they had some empathy with us, they wouldn’t ask for no limit on top-up fees, because that’s going to be disastrous for university applications from working class and middle class students.”
The Vice-President of Cardiff Students’ Union, Ed Jones said:
“Our student body has voted against top-up fees so this is something that we will support.
“Welsh universities are under-funded compared to English ones and the Union has raised a motion with NUS Wales to lobby for better government funding for Welsh universities. The solution is not to take money from students to close the funding gap.
“The Aldwich Group (the Students’ Unions of Russell Group members) is planning to lobby Parliament against top-up fees in February.
“Alan Johnson, Education Secretary, once said that ‘students would learn to love top-up fees’. We’re going to send Valentines cards to those in power to say that students don’t and won’t love top up fees.”
Dr Grant has, so far, not commented.
The top-up fee debate began in 1999 when the Labour government went back on a manifesto promise by introducing plans for top-up fees in Parliament.
However, the act caused much controversy and until recently was the most opposed bill presented by the current government in Parliament.
Students’ Unions and the NUS lobbied hard against the new regime, climaxing with a mass demonstration in London in 2003.
The system was introduced in 2006, with this year’s intake being the first to pay top up fees.
The situation is complicated in Wales by the Welsh Assembly’s decision not to charge Welsh nationals and, for the next two years, other UK students top-up fees by way of extra grants to Welsh universities
The NUS has recently lent support of the Socialist Students’ Campaign to Defeat Fees and wished CDF ‘all the best in harnessing as much support as possible in this vital period for campaigning for free education’.
Mr Blee added: “We’re realistic and we know that this move on its own isn’t going to defeat top-up fees and tuition fees but it will build more support for the campaign and put more pressure on the Vice Chancellor and Government.
“It also gets the Students’ Union more involved and they’ve fully supported the campaign.
“Cardiff students can get involved by coming to the lobby. We’ll be at the gates of the main building at noon.”
