New research carried out by London Economics on behalf of UCU shows that student levies could be scrapped across the UK and replaced with a levy on graduates' employers. This would reduce tuition fees paid by students living in the UK by £11 billion per cohort, and increase public education grants, funded by employer levies, accordingly. The levy works similarly to the National Insurance employer contribution and is paid based on graduates' salaries above a certain threshold. This applies only to the earnings of graduate employees and is estimated at 1.13% in England, 1.06% in Wales and 0.8% in Northern Ireland. In Scotland, the levy costs just 0.07% due to the country's current funding model.
Alternatively, the report shows that a 3 percentage point increase in corporation tax could be used to fund higher education instead of National Insurance tax or student levies. This means that only profitable companies pay into the UK university system, and the most profitable companies pay the most.
A recent poll conducted by Savanta on behalf of unions found that the majority of people think students should have less money to pay for higher education (62%) and employers should have more money to pay (53%). It is shown. Importantly, a clear majority of Labor (61%), Lib Dem (62%), Green Party (53%), Plaid Cymru (55%) and SNP (57%) voters want employers to spend more on education. compared to just 19% of Conservative voters. Voters are against it.
According to a recent House of Lords report, higher education adds more than £70 billion to the UK economy. But the government still runs a debt deficit, relying on domestic students to repay their loans over up to 40 years.
UCU said the poll shows that political parties need to come up with realistic higher education funding models ahead of the upcoming general election.
The union's 'Take Back Higher Education' campaign launches today and will fight for fundamental reform of higher education, based on fair funding models and an end to exploitative labor practices. The campaign comes as dozens of universities across the UK are under threat of redundancies, putting thousands of jobs or entire departments at risk of closing.
UCU general secretary Joe Grady said: “Higher education is one of the few areas where the UK remains a world leader, but dozens of universities are using financial instability to justify deep cuts. “Now, more than ever, it is clear that the funding model is fraudulent.” Irreparably broken. Putting higher education on a sustainable footing requires fundamental changes, not just tinkering, and our polling shows that the public supports an employer-funded education tax. It has been shown that
“Ahead of the general election, UCU is calling on all political parties to take the debt burden off young people in education and put public money into universities.” A London Economics report says future governments shows that there are clear options for paying for higher education, and that it is possible to do so at no cost to individual taxpayers. Either her 1% levy on employers' national insurance or her 3% point increase in corporation tax could replace the student fee. Higher education adds tens of billions of pounds to the UK economy and businesses benefit enormously from the highly skilled workforce this sector produces. These price increases would be a small price to pay for securing such an important public good. ”
