Students Shake Off Apathy And Catch Protest Fever

Saturday’s massive G20 march through London proved a big hit thanks to the catch-all nature of the protest – “JOBS JUSTICE CLIMATE!” the comprehensively indignant banners read. Even lazy young student types were spurred into action, largely due to the news a few weeks ago that universities in Britain were plotting to increase tuition fees to as much as £20,000 a year – a huge leap from the current standardised rate of £3,000 per annum, which already leaves most students with a sizeable pocket of debt when they leave higher education.

A Facebook group called ‘Students Against Higher Tuition Fees’ encouraged students to go to the Saturday march and had attracted over 150,000 members by the weekend. The group apparently consists both of current university students as well as A-Levellers dreading the prospect of coughing up tens of thousands to get a degree.

One such admin of the group, Richard Broad, said, “with the current economic downturn, the prospects of getting a higher paid job are becoming slimmer. How are we meant to reover from the debt? We will just become another statistic.”

So the terror is spreading. A student at Oxford who has been trying to whip up support for activism against fees is Toby Harris. He believes that a fees hike like that being suggested by some, especially during recession, would drive today’s notoriously apathetic students to taking more rebellious measures – and in greater numbers.

“Italy and Greece have had serious problems in the past when the cost of education has increased dramatically,” Harris said, “There have been university and school occupations where institutions have been shut down for months – students have effectively gone on strike.

“It’s only a matter of time before the recession and the impact of poor graduate employment brings that kind of movement to Britain” he warned.

It all got very socialist after that. Harris added, “Campaigns like that embody the ideological character of rebellion. It’s a continuing part of our struggle against a pro-business government that has been bailing out the bankers and bosses who have got us into this mess.”

Still, he’s got a point. And, as he also commented, the range of prices different universities are considering would put the UK’s institutions into a “stratified system” where people end up choosing where to study based purely on what they can afford. On that issue, I’m nearly ready to grab my placards and megaphone and get out there myself, but the thought of taking over the Bodleian library with torches and pitch-forks remains more distant.

One thing’s for sure, though, squeezing the economic life out of the country’s students before they’ve begun their professional lives is not just harmful to them, it threatens to encourage consumer culture among students and leave employers with the responsibility of rehabilitating the debt-ridden exports of higher education.

At risk of becoming a new kind of ‘toxic assset’, it’s no wonder students and graduates feel the need to challenge universities on a policy which threatens their futures so seriously. The march on Saturday passed off peacfully, but as fears of public disorder around the G20 summit grow, it would be unsursprising if students, who right now have little to lose, didn’t go in for a piece of the action.

Posted by Chris Baraniuk in Green Rush | March 30, 2009 11:51AM |