'Some Cuts Don't Heal' : University Tuition Fees 1998-2010

Currently here at the Archive we are making our way through our documents, cataloguing and storing them in professional storage boxes. It's a lengthy process but its worth it as we get to have a look through what we have, talk about documents we'd maybe forgotten about and sometimes even discover something new. This is what happened last week. Whilst sorting through a collection of newspaper cuttings regarding Bath Spa University we stumbled upon two Bath Chronicle articles about the involvement of students in protests against the introduction of tuition fees of £1,000 in October 1998.

 

Student Rally at Newton Park, 1998

 The protest was in reaction to the Teaching and Higher Education Act of 1998, which introduced the system of student loans alongside the tuition fees for students replacing the need for local authorities to 'foot the bill' for educating students. 

Incensed students protested by way of a mass walk out from classes at 11:50, Friday 30th October, in which they congregated on the green in front of Main House for a rally. They also calculated that 650 first year students would have to raise £12.6m in order to pay for their three year degree courses. This figure was then written onto a giant cheque and presented alongside other fake cheques by protesting university students at a London rally organised by the National Union of Students. 

The angry claim 'it's got nothing to do with academic ability. It's all about how much money you have' could have fallen from the lips of any student at the 2010 protests at the removal of the £3,290 cap on tuition fees, but it was said by James Warren, a Bath Spa Irish and English Studies student at the height of the 1998 protest. It's a thought that has been shared by thousands of students since, a reminder that we're not all that different to our predecessors after all. 

 

Students protest in London, 2010