Student Protests - Symptom of an Unfair Society

The student protests held in the UK on 19 November, were well reported but not, in my opinion, reported very well.  Regrettably, there were some scuffles between a minority of protesters and some of the police, which can happen in demonstrations of this type.  The media tended to give a disproportionate amount of attention to the violence thus missing the point of what the protests were all about.  This post will attempt to redress the balance.

Let's for a moment step back from the issue of education and how it should be funded, and ask a fundamental question, why do nations collect taxes?  To pay for societies' needs of course.  So what are those needs?  Health, education, infrastructure, security........to name but a few and in no particular order.  I reckon education must be high on the list of priorities because it is an enabler for the development of society.  It is the prime ingredient of social mobility, helping to provide equality of opportunity.  That makes sense doesn't it?

Now let's return to the issue of tuition fees.  For someone born to wealthy parents, tuition fees are not a problem.  Mummy and Daddy will pay.  On the other hand, a student who has excelled in state education, whose parents are not affluent, could easily think twice about, or even not consider, the option of going to university and being saddled with a massive debt at the age of eighteen.  And why should that be?  Surely society should see the benefits of funding all stages of young people's education, not just primary and secondary schools.

There is also another important aspect of this debate.  In many of the countries of the world, particularly the richer countries, the gap between rich and poor is increasing.  That is a fact supported by a wealth of evidence.  The gap varies from nation to nation and is particularly worrying in the UK and USA, but less of a problem in the Scandinavian countries.  The UK's tuition fee policy is surely going to exacerbate the wealth-gap problem.  Students from well-to-do families who can afford the fees, will get a better education than students from less-well-to-do families.  A better education tends to lead to opportunities for better paid jobs.  Conversely, a lesser education tends to lead to lesser paid jobs, or no job at all.  It all adds fuel to widening the wealth-gap.

What about affordability?  Yes I can hear the politicians bringing the austerity arguments to the table - we're all in this together!  Well sorry but we're not.  Again there is plenty of evidence to show that the tax laws are heavily biased in favour of the very wealthy.  When I say very wealthy, I don't just mean the top decile of the wealth distribution, but even more favourable for the top 1%, and extremely generous for the top 0.1%.  People with fortunes of tens or even hundreds of billions of pounds don't need to work.  Their money makes plenty of money for them and they can, of course, afford the best investment advice.  But it's always too difficult for governments to tap into this wealth.  There is a major problem, of course, which is international tax competition and thus the use of tax havens.  I don't want to stray into the issue of international capital flows and I don't need to because, that aside, I still believe nations such as the UK, aim their tax collection activities at the soft targets - ordinary workers on Pay As You Earn.

So let's not use affordability as a reason for not providing free education because I would counter that argument with we can't afford not to.  So good on you students, keep protesting and just one day we might have a government that will see the light.  That said, I don't believe any of the UK's political leaders come from families who would struggle with tuition fees........maybe therein lies the problem!