Big guns roll out to fight top-up fees

The National Union of Students this week claimed to have the backing of vice-chancellors and 100 Labour MPs as well as academic unions as it prepared to launch a national campaign opposing top-up fees.

Vice-chancellors at York, Glasgow, Liverpool John Moores, Kingston, De Montfort, Derby and Hull universities had already rejected top-up fees, while MPs are supporting three Early Day Motions calling for the government differential fees ban to remain in place, NUS leaders said.

The support, along with an anti-fees "campus coalition" between the NUS, the Association of University Teachers, Natfhe, Manufacturing, Science, Finance and Unison would form the basis of a national campaign to coincide with the publication next month of a Russell Group report on higher education funding, said NUS president Owain James.

The report has been delayed amid rumours of a split among Russell Group vice-chancellors over its contents. The introduction of top-up fees is expected to feature as a preferred option.

Mr James told an AUT meeting at Nottingham University last Friday that the NUS would be pressing for a manifesto commitment from all political parties to ban top-up fees after the general election.

Universities advocating higher fees and scholarships for poorer students wanted "an elitist social engineering project", where "students would not be treated as individuals or customers but as units of commodity", he said.

Sir Colin Campbell, vice-chancellor at Nottingham and a vocal supporter of top-up fees, said higher education funding was in crisis and a debate was needed about whether top-up fees were the best way to overcome it.

Higher fees backed by scholarships could help universities reach out to students from poorer backgrounds who are still underrepresented in higher education, he argued.

Sir Graeme Davies, principal of Glasgow University, confirmed his opposition to top-up fees this week. He told The THES: "I'm on the record that our policy is not to solve our financial problems by increasing the burden on students. This is the agreed senate and court policy and therefore tuition fees are not on our agenda. The Russell Group know where we stand."

York University vice-chancellor Ron Cooke said the issues surrounding top-up fees had yet to be properly aired. "It is essential to find ways of solving the impending funding crisis but we should not be rushed into a knee-jerk single solution, whether that is top-up fees or privatisation or whatever," he said.

Sir Stewart Sutherland, principal of Edinburgh University, said the Russell Group report would not be making proposals and policy recommendations. "It will be examining options and contributing to Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals' discussions on the future of funding. There is no Russell Group position on this. As it happens, top-up fees are not on the University of Edinburgh agenda."

Penny Holloway, an AUT executive member who chaired the Nottingham meeting, said that while ministers continued to reiterate their opposition to top-up fees, "it is clear their policy advisers do not have the same view".

She added: "It is to be hoped that the government will come up with a more considered approach to funding before the next election."

Nick Palmer, Labour MP for Broxtowe, said he was opposed to top-up fees but warned that higher education was unlikely to win more money from the Treasury without offering something in return.

Research squeeze to hit elite, page 3