Destroying the hopes of a generation

The government is dashing the hopes of a generation of young people through cuts in education to try and claw back some of the £850 billion which New Labour committed to save the financial system from imploding.

After announcing that the universities budget for 2010-11 would be cut by £449 million, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said last week that spending on higher education, research and science would be cut by £915m in the next three years.

The cuts come just as the number of school leavers applying for a university place in October has gone up on average by 23%. The University of the Arts London has seen applications rise by 111%, the University for the Creative Arts by 93.8% and Edinburgh Napier by 78.5%, to name but a few. Many applicants no doubt see education as the only option with unemployment among young people soaring. The result is that 800,000 students will be competing for 480,000 places this autumn.

In order to raise revenue, universities are taking in increasing numbers of overseas students who are increasingly being used as cash cows. The average charge to overseas students is now a hefty £10,781 per year. In the last ten years the proportion of overseas students admitted to British universities has doubled. Half of all students on post-graduate courses are now from abroad.

In addition to real spending cuts, the government is fining universities £3,700 per head if they accept students above their allocated quotas, which has led to more drastic cuts in the number of places offered. Thus, thousands of young people who have worked hard to achieve high exam grades are being rejected.

Instead of encouraging the desire for self-improvement, everything is being done to discourage young people, and leave them in an education and jobs-seeking wilderness.

Other areas of education are also been slashed. Further education colleges in England are facing an average cut of 16% for adult learning, according to the Association of Colleges. It says that the Skills Funding Agency is cutting £200 million across the sector, which includes vocational courses like plumbing, electrical installation, catering, care and A levels and GCSEs for adults. In many parts of the country such as Yorkshire and North-east England vocational courses are so hard to find that young men and women see the army as the only way to get a skills training.

The coming tsunami of cuts will hit even harder in a situation where the number of adults benefiting from adult education classes had already dropped back by two million during the noughties. The number of adult learners is currently at its lowest level since New Labour came to power, according to the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE).

A survey conducted by NIACE in 2009 revealed a sharp class divide “between the educationally privileged and the educationally excluded”. Only a quarter of the poorest people surveyed were in education or had studied in the past three years as compared with 53% amongst the best off.

An economic and political system that provides unlimited support to unaccountable and reckless financial institutions at the expense of educating and training a whole generation of youth has forfeited any claim to legitimacy. And don’t even think of wasting your vote on New Labour at the general election.

Corinna Lotz
AWTW secretary

Military move in on universities

Military involvement in the funding of research, teaching and training at British universities is on the rise. Pushing this agenda is the government, which has maintained Britain’s unenviable position as the second biggest arms exporter and devotes a third of state research and development (R&D) funding to military projects.

The trend is part of the growing commercialisation of universities and their subordination to business interests under the impact of corporate-driven globalisation. Firstly, R&D is cheaper when carried out by universities than by the corporations themselves. Secondly, the main objective of the universities as laid down by the government is to contribute to economic growth. Ruth Kelly, then education secretary, spelled it out in January 2006 when she told a funding council that higher education should “be partly or wholly designed, funded and provided by employers”.

This orientation is reinforced at every turn. Last year the Sainsbury Review on science and technology for the Treasury spoke warmly of “knowledge transfer” from the universities. Sainsbury’s team met with military corporations and the American defence department.

Scientists for Global Responsibility (SGR) has campaigned against the growing links between universities and military research. A new SGR report Behind Closed Doors, reveals that since 2002 a number of military-university partnerships have been put in place. Of 43 UK universities investigated, no fewer than 42 were found to receive military funding. Cambridge University received 11% of its domestic and 15% of its overseas research income from military sources.

Much of the funding is obscured, despite the universities presenting themselves as open and accountable institutions. The SGR report noted: “Detailed, comprehensive data on military involvement in universities was very difficult to obtain even when the Freedom of Information Act was invoked. The causes were a combination of incomplete record-keeping, commercial restrictions, pressures on researchers and, most disturbingly, evasiveness on the part of officials.” As for the researchers, the report not surprisingly found they were less able to express any ethical concerns openly because of the pressure from powerful interests as well as university administrators.

The SGR believes that the “war on terror” has fuelled what it calls a “relentless increase in the global military burden”, with a growing emphasis on high-technology, weapons-based approaches to tackling security issues. The priorities for global capitalism are beyond dispute. In 2006, governments in the richer countries spent a total of $96 billion on military R&D, but only $56 billion on R&D related to health and environmental protection. Climate change R&D just topped the $1 billion mark worldwide.

The sentiments expressed by SGR in its report are absolutely right: “Universities are a cornerstone of an educated and healthy democracy, and there needs to be a profound shift away from seeing them in narrowly economic terms. Research, teaching and training need to contribute more explicitly to social justice, climate change mitigation and to challenge other threats to global security, and should not simply be seen as a primary means to increase business profits.”

Optimistically, they are addressed to the New Labour government, which is in bed with the global corporations and their takeover of the universities. While this unholy alliance dominates politics, the universities will continue down the slippery slope of becoming the taxpayer-funded R&D arm of big business.


Paul Feldman
Communications editor