- Conference
- 2025 National Higher Education Conference
- Date
- 10 October 2024
- Decision
- Carried
Conference notes and reaffirms our policy on Higher Education funding passed at our 2024 conference in the motions “Fund our universities properly” and “A new start for Higher Education”.
Conference recognises that Higher Education benefits the individuals who study in our Higher Education Institutions, and we reaffirm our commitment to access to education for everyone that can benefit from it across their lifespan. We reaffirm our belief that this is best achieved by providing free tuition for all, with maintenance grants and measures to support participation for all students, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. This should be paid for from progressive, general taxation.
We reject the idea espoused by Universities UK that the current financial problems of the sector can or should be solved by raising tuition fees on students who are already struggling financially, and pushing them further into debt.
We also reject the idea that HE Institutions (HEIs) can or should try to solve their financial problems simply by making cuts, including, crucially, cutting their workforces and raising workloads. As a union it is our duty to resist any such moves.
Conference further believes:
• Higher Education has the potential to and often does serve the needs of the collective, contributing to the development and extension of knowledge needed to solve the economic, social and environmental challenges facing humanity.
• To make the most of the opportunities requires Higher Education to be funded and organised in a planned and efficient way, with democratic input, and paid from general taxation rather than the current model of wasteful, pseudo-market competition.
• The change of Government in 2024 provides us with an important opportunity to campaign for a new funding model for our sector, one that can help the Government achieve its stated goals of growth and opportunity for all, and – of importance to our members – a ‘New Deal for Working People’. We must seize that opportunity.
Conference instructs the Service Group Executive to:
1)explore the reality of Higher Education finances to better inform our members and policy makers about the financial situation across the sector and within individual workplaces
2)campaign for adequate funding for all higher education institutions
3)publicise our union’s opposition to tuition fees and support for a publicly funded, joined up HE system
4)support all branches where members are facing job cuts and attacks on their terms and conditions as a result of management’s reaction to inadequate funding
5)develop online campaigning resources including advice on working with local authorities to highlight the value of HEIs to their local areas
6)produce a quarterly report on our campaigning work and send it to all of our members in HE so they can hold us to account
7)organise a lobby of parliament in 2025 to explain our policies to MPs and policy makers
8)approach the other unions in Higher Education and relevant student bodies to develop a joint campaign on HE funding.