issue 913 | Tuesday 12 October 2021
Newspaper of the LSE Students’ Union: Making Sense of LSE Since 1949
Tuition fee rebates: How SU proposals would make LSE grads pay tens of thousands more in loan repayments
Scan to read The Beaver. Online.
INSIDE INSIDETODAY: TODAY: NEWS Student hall occupancy at all-time high, Covid-19 remains under control
F E AT U R E S Sam Crutcher’s neurodiversity activism aims to “stick a dynamite under LSE’s neurotypical ignorance”
Bora Bayram
hroughout the pandemic, students have been complaining about the lower quality of education they have received, and one group mobilised for the fee reduction that many supported. Students United Against Fees (SUAF), the national campaign to provide compensation to students who faced a year of online learning with no end in sight, was led by David Gordon, 2020/21 General Secretary of LSESU. In the end, no compensation was given to students. This investigation by The Beaver reveals how the SU lobbied the government with proposals that would potentially result in many LSE graduates paying tens of thousands of pounds more in student loan repayments.
lished an article on proposals by student unions of various UK universities to increase interest rates on student loans by 3% to fund a £2,700 tuition fee rebate. In a letter to Education Secretary Gavin Williamson and Universities Minister Michelle Donelan, the student unions argued that this would ensure the fee rebate would be paid only by the highest-earning graduates, and would be fiscally neutral for the Exchequer. LSESU, along with the SU of the University of Sheffield, based this argument on analysis by economic consultancy firm London Economics, which argued increasing interest rates on loans would only substantially affect male graduates in the top 20% of the income distribution. The analysis suggested these graduates would pay back up to £29,800 more, while female graduates on average wouldn’t be affected as their lifetime earnings are lower.
On May 31, The Guardian pub-
The specific impact of this policy
Features Editor Illustrated by Lea Pelleteret
T
on LSE students raises questions about why the SU would spearhead such a proposal. As LSE has the highest-earning graduates out of any UK university, a policy that would increase interest rates would most probably increase the loan payments of many students, more so than at most universities. A student who spoke to The Beaver anonymously has said that this would, in their opinion, amount to a “redistribution [of income] from grads of elite unis to the grads of regular unis.” Nicholas Barr, Professor of Public Economics at LSE, seems to agree. Professor Barr, who is widely seen as the co-architect of the system of deferred student loan payments introduced in 2006, said that “the idea of trying to make high earning graduates pay lots more than they borrowed… means that LSE students who earn more on average than students from other universities will
repay more than their fair share.” He also suggests that if a rebate is to be given, the question of who is going to pay for it arises: “If you think that one of the purposes of government is as insurer of last resort … maybe there should be a rebate paid for by the taxpayer”, mirroring concerns by some that this is essentially students directly paying for their own bailout, something that was unparalleled during the pandemic. Even given the potential impact of this policy on students, campaigns like SUAF are not required to have a democratic mandate. Those that do can get them indirectly through the election of sabbatical officers or through motions in Union General Meetings (UGMs) to advocate for a specific issue. There was no mention of tuition fee rebates in the manifestos of sabbatical officers elected in 2020, nor was there a motion in
Suyin Haynes: exBeaver editor and current EIC of gal-dem on LSE, working at Time Magazine, and telling underrepresented stories
OPINION Murder after murder, when will we really feel safe? Parachute journalism and why I’m obssessed
&
flip for