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| This is a budget that turned its back on young graduates | This is a budget that turned its back on young graduates |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| It is good to be a student. If you enjoy your course and have good friends, university is the time of your life, with time divided between reading and socialising. Campus feels like a bubble, with the realities of life partially suspended. | It is good to be a student. If you enjoy your course and have good friends, university is the time of your life, with time divided between reading and socialising. Campus feels like a bubble, with the realities of life partially suspended. |
| But of course the realities of life are still there, as the chancellor reminded us on Wednesday. Look beyond graduation, and they become startlingly hard to ignore. Turfed out of student accommodation – which is already expensive – many are then faced with spending a few years back at home, living like teenagers 10 years after their angst-ridden youth. | |
| Any prospects of moving out are hampered by three things: property prices and rents; the difficulty of finding a job; and the enormous debts that come from getting an education. As soon as you earn enough to start paying your way, you see wads of your salary go down the plughole of student loans and continue to do so for the next 30 years. | Any prospects of moving out are hampered by three things: property prices and rents; the difficulty of finding a job; and the enormous debts that come from getting an education. As soon as you earn enough to start paying your way, you see wads of your salary go down the plughole of student loans and continue to do so for the next 30 years. |
| I am incredibly fortunate, because my parents pay my accommodation fees. I am also, in a funny way, lucky to be a recipient of disability living allowance, which covers my living costs. This means that I will graduate with £27,000 of tuition fee debt – still an awful lot, but nothing as painful as the debt accumulated by those with maintenance loans, which can top the £50,000 mark. Having so much weight on your shoulders at the age of 21 can only slow you down. | I am incredibly fortunate, because my parents pay my accommodation fees. I am also, in a funny way, lucky to be a recipient of disability living allowance, which covers my living costs. This means that I will graduate with £27,000 of tuition fee debt – still an awful lot, but nothing as painful as the debt accumulated by those with maintenance loans, which can top the £50,000 mark. Having so much weight on your shoulders at the age of 21 can only slow you down. |
| Matters have just got worse, with the announcement in Wednesday’s budget of the scrapping of maintenance grants, which used to make life a little easier for the poorest students. The grants were provided as a non-repayable supplement to loans, thereby keeping a lid on the amount of debt that these students, who often receive no help from their family, had to acquire. They may not have levelled the playing field, but they certainly helped. Now, a university education will be most expensive for those with the fewest financial resources. I don’t think this is the kind of system any of us want to live in. | Matters have just got worse, with the announcement in Wednesday’s budget of the scrapping of maintenance grants, which used to make life a little easier for the poorest students. The grants were provided as a non-repayable supplement to loans, thereby keeping a lid on the amount of debt that these students, who often receive no help from their family, had to acquire. They may not have levelled the playing field, but they certainly helped. Now, a university education will be most expensive for those with the fewest financial resources. I don’t think this is the kind of system any of us want to live in. |
| In fact, young people continue to be hit hardest by Tory policies. While the elderly’s pensions and TV licences are protected behind the bulletproof glass of electoral calculation, we have no such armour. Housing benefit for the under-25s was abolished last year. Young people even miss out on the one glimmer of positivity in Osborne’s budget: they will be exempt from the new higher minimum wage. | In fact, young people continue to be hit hardest by Tory policies. While the elderly’s pensions and TV licences are protected behind the bulletproof glass of electoral calculation, we have no such armour. Housing benefit for the under-25s was abolished last year. Young people even miss out on the one glimmer of positivity in Osborne’s budget: they will be exempt from the new higher minimum wage. |
| All this points to a government with little regard for the future. By either making it harder for people to go to university or putting them off the idea entirely, they are not securing the highly educated workforce Britain will surely need. By pushing young people away from the first rung of the property ladder, they are not allowing us to grow up. | All this points to a government with little regard for the future. By either making it harder for people to go to university or putting them off the idea entirely, they are not securing the highly educated workforce Britain will surely need. By pushing young people away from the first rung of the property ladder, they are not allowing us to grow up. |
| I am still looking forward to the future. Hopefully, my education will begin to pay for itself and the job market will pick up. Hopefully, this government or the next will recognise the value of maintenance grants and bring them back, restoring universities to the places of diversity and opportunity they should be. | |
| But I also hope that students and young people begin to stand up for themselves. Actually voting would be a pretty good place to start; apathy has no place in today’s circumstances. More importantly, it would be great to see a resurgence of the student activism of the past. We haven’t seen a student protest since the tuition fee hike in 2011. | But I also hope that students and young people begin to stand up for themselves. Actually voting would be a pretty good place to start; apathy has no place in today’s circumstances. More importantly, it would be great to see a resurgence of the student activism of the past. We haven’t seen a student protest since the tuition fee hike in 2011. |
| Surely the targeting of the most disadvantaged and the spurning of a generation is something to shout about. | Surely the targeting of the most disadvantaged and the spurning of a generation is something to shout about. |