You must wait for Dearing, NUS tells v-cs

Staff still unhappy about pay, students alarmed at the prospect of fees and vice chancellors squeezed in the middle. Funding pressure built up as v-cs gathered in London this week to discuss the budget.

THE National Union of Students launched a high profile assault on tuition fees this week, calling on vice chancellors to postpone any decisions until after the publication of the Dearing report.

NUS president Douglas Trainer said that the union was well aware of vice chancellors' concerns over the funding crisis but he said that there could be no surrender on the question of tuition fees for home undergraduates.

Speaking before Thursday's CVCP meeting, Mr Trainer said: "We simply are not willing to see students pick up the bill for the underfunding of higher education.

"We understand the frustrations of vice chancellors and their worries over academic quality and the morale of their staff but we do not want students and staff being played off against one another."

Mr Trainer said the fees debate should be postponed until after Sir Ron Dearing's report is published next summer. He also warned that Labour party education spokesman David Blunkett had said that a Labour government would claw back any fees income.

In an open letter to vice chancellors, published in today's THES, (see page 9) the NUS calls for greater cooperation between students and vice chancellors in seeking more funding for education.

Tuition fees will be top of the agenda at next Thursday's governors' meeting at the London School of Economics. The NUS has organised a candlelit vigil outside the meeting.

* More than two out of every five students eligible for a student loan fail to take advantage of the money available, according to the latest Government analysis.

The Department for Education and Employment's statistical bulletin shows that some 560,000 students received a loan in 1995-96, 59 per cent of the total estimated as eligible.

This still represents an increase on 1994-95, when 55 per cent (517,000) of eligible students received a loan, and on 1990-91 when the proportion was 28 per cent (180,000).

The average loan last year was Pounds 1,250 compared with an average of Pounds 390 in 1990-91. Loans therefore accounted for between 41 and 42 per cent of the total resources available to mandatory award holders.

More than two-fifths of those granted loans were allowed to defer repayments after graduation because their income was below the Pounds 15,204 threshold.

* The rush for qualifications continues. Latest figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency, published yesterday, show that qualifications gradually build up with age. A quarter of working people in the 40-44 year old age group now have a higher education qualification compared to 15 per cent ten years ago.