Grants for students from poor backgrounds have now been replaced by loans. Sorana Vieru, National Union of Students vice president, pointed out that this“basically punishes poorer students simply for being poor”, because they will rack up even higher debts that students from better off families.

This is on top of the fact that everyone knows student loans aren’t enough to cover real day-to-day living costs while studying at university, especially with the cost of accommodation as high as it is. Most students need to work while at university just to survive, which damages their quality of life and ability to study at university.

We’re basically being made to pay even more for a worse education, especially as funding and courses are cut. They justify the enormous cost of university by saying that we’ll earn it back when we graduate by getting a better job. But a report released on 1 August says that for the vast majority of jobs any extra earnings thanks to having a degree are wiped out by repayments on the loans we are forced to take out to get the degree in the first place.

Our education, quality of life, and job prospects are getting worse. We’re racking up more and more debt. And all the signs are pointing to this getting worse in the future, not better. The Tories and their capitalist cronies don’t care that this is happening – it’s all just an opportunity to make profit for them through the privatisation of education and debts.

But even if they did want to stop it, and to his credit Jeremy Corbyn says he does and seems to be offering a real alternative, but this can’t just be done with “nicer politics”. It needs radical and fundamental change away from a system that is paralysed by crisis and debt. Ultimately it needs a revolutionary struggle for socialism.

 

 

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