BRITISH TORIES SLASH PULBIC EDUCATION
Litt, Edgar
The stern taskmasters of Mrs. Thatcher's government have now translated the ideology of monetarism into chilling cutbacks throughout the social services of the United Kingdom. The Conservatives'...
...Social studies and the humanities fare worse than do the sciences and mathematics—a pattern that holds from the secondary schools to the differential treatment of the Royal Society of Engineering and the Social Science Research Council at the university level...
...Below the university level the primary schools, adult education, the humanities and social studies have been particularly hard hit...
...Dismay extends far beyond the Labour party, the trade unions, and the educational authorities...
...Universities that do not attract enough cash-paying new customers from the Persian Gulf, the United States, or wherever will simply have their budgets reduced proportionately...
...THE LADDER OF SOCIAL MOBILITY has been chopped down for bright working-class youngsters...
...However, the long tradition of welcoming and supporting overseas students from the West Indies and from the Indian subcontinent has ended...
...Both the Labour and Tory governments not only accepted this principle but redistributed resources from the universities to the public higher education sphere throughout the decade...
...In US and UK Educational Policy: A Decade of Reform (New York: Praeger, 1979), Michael Parkinson and I drew attention to the leveling of higher educational quality in British universities and polytechnics during the 1970s...
...Britain's economy now has fallen to its lowest state in a decade...
...The business community holds the government directly responsible for the decline of foreign export and of commerce at home...
...We criticized the extent to which university resources were diverted to bolster a patchwork public sector composed of education and vocational colleges, and polytechnics...
...This can only mean the continued dismemberment of social, health, and educational services that are most vital to the population...
...All this changed...
...The universities, with their aging, tenured faculties, are treated less severely than the public sector...
...Shortfalls in revenues from overseas students will confront university chancellors with the choice of either admitting fewer qualified British students, in contradiction to the bipartisan Robbins policy, or extracting larger fees from British students at a time when the real purchasing power of British student grants is at its lowest point in 20 years...
...For example, staff salaries and student grants achieved parity in the polytechnics...
...Beneath the concern for the universities by a scholarship girl (Mrs...
...A nation now suffering 20 percent inflation rates will spend 9 percent less in current dollars on education, from primary school to university...
...Responding to the increased demand for higher education in the 1960s, Lord Robbins's Commission set forth the framework of university expansion guided by the principle that no qualified British student should be denied advanced education because of lack of places or family income...
...THE MASSIVE DETERIORATION of one of Britain's finest social arrangements can be appreciated only in the context of the economic disaster Thatcher's government has brought...
...Meanwhile, in recognition of inflation's impact on the middle class, student grants have been reindexed, thus qualifying about 10,000 more university students whose parental income would have been too high to qualify for government aid under the old calculations...
...The cold fact is that the cutbacks in education are substantial...
...In the primary schools 10,000 teachers are being sacked...
...The polytechnics are to suffer an 11 percent cutback over five years, one of 93 the largest reductions of any educational program in the United Kingdom...
...This global prime rate is modified only for students from other European Economic Community (EEC) countries...
...Both in the White Paper on Public Expenditures, setting forth the government's five-year budget, and in actual cutbacks, the dismantling of the welfare state proceeds apace...
...Either development profoundly influences the social class distribution of advanced educational opportunity...
...Not only is limited opportunity in the public sector to be curtailed, but considerable numbers of qualified university applicants are being priced out...
...This curtailment of British higher education touches the lower-middle and working classes most severely...
...The Binary Policy followed in the early 1970s with its commitment to upgrading and expanding a second, so-called public sector, principally the polytechnics, which had long languished in the shadows of the ancient and red-brick universities...
...It is merely gallows humor to observe that education is less decimated than public housing...
...Clearly, anticipation of fees from overseas students, ranging from $5,000 to $8,000, motivates the apparent generosity with Britain's ancient and modern citadels of scholarship and research...
...Back-bench Conservative MPs almost revolted over the cuts in child benefits and educational services...
...Fiscal support came forth in a generous student grant system, based on parental ability to pay, in which more than half the university student body received full tuition, and more than 80 percent of all university students received some government subsidy...
...Thatcher read Chemistry at Cambridge) is the budget reality expressing a belief in "the two nations"-one university-educated and predominantly middle-class, the other made up of the masses for whom comprehensive or vocational school will suffice before they take their places in factories and offices...
...capital investments went disproportionately to the second sector...
...Lecturers who perform the yeoman work of part-time instruction at polytechnics and their companion colleges of education (teacher training) are being laid off...
...The ladder of opportunity, constructed under both Tory and Labour regimes, has been kicked from under the newest aspirants...
...This deteriorating situation is significantly due to the dogmatic belief that reducing the money supply is the sine qua non of the new economics...
...The Conservatives' goal of reducing public-sector spending by I percent of the Gross National Product is a reality...
...The cumulative impact of school cuts, reinforced in higher education, will be to roll back the two cornerstones of British higher education policy, namely the Robbins and Binary principles...
...The impact on the local educational councils translates into both cutbacks in schooling and higher local property taxes to make up the shortfall from the Department of Education and Science in London...
...all overseas students will have to pay prevailing tuitions and fees...
...In 1970-80 university places increased by 60 percent, compared to a 190 percent increase in provisions for polytechnic students...
...While cutting the polytechnics and adult education, the Thatcher budget expends more pounds on terminal, secondary-school vocational education...
...Under such inflexible leaders as Geoffrey Howe and Sir Keith Josephs, the statecraft of the British Conservatives has been replaced by worship at the Shrine of Milton Friedman and his gurus...
...Meanwhile, the government has created the single largest increase in defense spending in 30 years.D 94...
...Universities are thus presented a standstill total budget at best...
...Debate on the consequences of the Robbins and the Binary principles continues, but their objective of providing more higher educational opportunity in Britain, particularly for working-class students, was clear...
...Henceforth, overseas student fees will count about one-sixth of a university's recurrent grant from the government...
...Local property taxes are being increased from 20 to 40 percent and a standstill budget is the best that the major cities (Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds) can hope to achieve under the sledgehammer of Tory cutbacks...
...Now the heavy hand of Thatcher has made things worse...
...The student grant system is indexed for 6 percent less than the rate of inflation, while resident fees at polytechnics and universities rise to the full rate of inflation...
...The expansion of places was achieved by the rapid expansion of the "cathedral town" universities (such as York and Exeter...
...Neither a 20 percent inflation rate (treble the amount prevailing when the government took office), an unemployment aggregate approaching 2.5 million, nor the declining productivity and export trade deters the true believers guiding the fiscal state of the United Kingdom...
Vol. 28 • January 1981 • No. 1
