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► HELP ON SWANSEA SU

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► SWANSEA SU POLL

Poll Results...

► Conservative Response

CONSERVATIVE CANDIDATE RESPONDS

Conservative Party candidate for Swansea West, René Kinzett, responds to SU calls to keep the cap and rule out rises in Tuition Fees in the next term of Parliament.

I worked for Universities UK for a couple of years and was involved in the reponse to the Dearing Review when I was a Sabbatical Office at UWSSU (as was). Therefore recall all to well that it was a Labour Government which brought in both the tuition fees and top up fees. The Conservative Party opposed Labour on many of these changes. We are now in a position, moreover, where Universities have become dependent on the finances they get from this funding system. It would therefore be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle, as it were, unless the cut of general taxation taken by Higher Education was to increase massively.

However, I do think that any increases above inflation in terms of general tuition fees should be ruled out and I would not vote for any scheme that placed this kind of burden on students. The system does need an overhaul and longer-term I would like to see a funding regime that treated students more fairly and included provision for more financial support for students from lower-income backgrounds. I would have seriously contemplated not going to University had such upfront fees (albeit payable by loans) had been in place.

I share your concerns about the balance of interests on the review board and I think this should be addressed. It seems that history is repeating itself and I have a strange sense of de ja vu, having been through the Dearing Review process. The submission I wrote for UWSSU to that Review may well be in your archives. My view essentially remains the same from then (1996/7) when I proposed a system that allowed for income-contingent financial support, more hardship funds and a fees system that expected contributions from government and industry as well as from the individual student - in the case of the latter, a repayment system that allowed the individual to pay back over a much longer period of time and at a fair rate.

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