BRITAIN: Students picketing Westminster yesterday told Lynne O'Donnell what they think of top-up university fees.
Jimmy Baker is the first member of his family to go to university but, rather than take pride in his achievement, after last night's vote in the House of Commons to introduce university top-up fees, he said he would be advising his younger brothers not to follow in his footsteps.
"I'll be telling them to go and work in a factory like their dad did," said Mr Baker (24), who is £16,000 (€23,100) in debt after four years' studying for a sociology degree at the London School of Economics.
"I've got two younger brothers who had been hoping to go to university, but it seems to me that they will not get the chance. It's not just working-class people who will miss the opportunity," said Mr Baker, who is from York.
In an effort to cover his living costs, he said, he had worked 30 to 40 hours a week for most of the past four years to supplement his student loans. "I failed a year because I was working so much that my degree suffered," he said as he queued to lobby his local MP, Labour's Hugh Bailey, to vote against the Higher Education Bill.
In the gardens opposite the Houses of Parliament, hundreds of students braved the bitterly cold wind that swept across the capital to protest the introduction of top-up fees that Tony Blair had turned into a test of his leadership of the Labour Party.
As word filtered through the shouting, placard-waving crowd that the former chief whip, Mr Nick Brown, had decided to reverse course and back the government's position, Mr Baker said: "I'm going to ask my MP if he is embarrassed about asking us to vote for him when he is supporting a policy that is the very opposite to Labour policy."
Peter Leary (24), from Enniskillen, owes £12,000 after three years of a four-year history degree at the University of London's Goldsmiths' College. "It's more money than I've ever earned, and people I know who have graduated don't find it easy to get jobs, so it will take a long time to pay off," he said.
Pressures to repay debt could mean graduates "who might have wanted to go into the public sector or work for charity groups to give something back in return for the skills they have gained will have second thoughts," Mr Leary said, adding that the introduction of fees wouldn't solve the funding crisis faced by tertiary institutions.
The general secretary of the University and College Lecturers' Union, Mr Paul Mackney, said the decision to ask students to contribute to the cost of their education, coupled with plans to increase university attendance to 50 per cent of all school-leavers, would affect every family.
"Our view is that higher education should be paid for from progressive taxation. Specifically we suggested, before the Liberal Democrats, a 50 per cent rate of tax over £100,000," Mr Mackney said. "When we talk to lecturers, they suggest another source. They say if this government can find the money to spend on an illegal war in the Middle East, they should be able to find the money to fund higher education."
The Higher Education Bill would lead to a class system in universities, with some students paying more and getting better facilities and tuition, and poorer students having to make do with courses that they could afford locally.