Most notoriously, the government intend to forge ahead with an idea as bad now as it was when Gordon Brown proposed it in 2007: selling off the student loan book, turning public debt into private debt. In the United States, where most student debt is private and tuition fees are unregulated, the student loan system has been bailed out twice over the past five years at the cost of over $100 billion so far, while graduates are saddled with so much debt that they live in poverty for years after completing their degrees. Government plans for US-style private loans will only bring US-style misery. NUS’s response, in the form of a motion passed by the new leadership, is to “lobby ministers across the UK to recognise and address the negative impact of the current public spending settlement and make redress”. They do not demand to stop the cuts to education. They do not call for the elimination or even the reduction of tuition fees, or the creation of jobs so graduates can put their education to good use. The leadership cannot even bring itself to condemn the sell-off of the loan book — no surprise, as NUS then-president Wes Streeting shamefully endorsed that same selloff in 2010!
Posted on: Sun, 29 Sep 2013 18:41:04 +0000
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