Nick Clegg has defended the rise in tuition fees to a maximum of £9,000 a year as he prepared to become the villain of a large student demonstration in London.
Thousands of students are expected to march through central London on Wednesday calling for free higher education.
Speaking on LBC, the Liberal Democrat leader said he had learnt lessons from his broken pledge to abolish tuition fees, but added: “It is worth remembering the predictions were that people would not go to university, it would discourage kids from poorer backgrounds going to university, but actually what has happened is there are more people on full-time courses than ever before, more youngsters from poorer backgrounds than ever before, and more kids from ethnic minorities than ever before.”
He added: “The reason for that is because despite all the headline controversies, people have got out their pocket calculator out and worked out for themselves that in terms of what they need to pay out week in, week out from their bank account for going to university in England it is actually cheaper than it was under the old system.
“Under the old system if you were on £25,000 on a graduate job you were paying about £67 per month. Under the new system if you are on £27,000 you will be paying about a third of that or £27 a month. What you have to pay out of your bank account has gone down, not up.”
He nevertheless again expressed regret about the failure to deliver on the Liberal Democrat commitment to abolish tuition fees, saying he had learnt that “you should only make commitments on which you are sure you can deliver”.
He came under pressure to explain why students from Europe or Scots did not have to pay tuition fees in Scotland while English students did have to pay in Scotland. A caller to the Call Clegg phone-in claimed it was this kind of unfairness that was driving voters into the arms of Ukip.
Clegg said: “That is devolution. We have a different legal system, a different education system.”
He said in future, under devolved powers, Scotland should have more responsibility, by which he meant if the Scots were to have further tax-raising powers the levels of subsidy from England should be reduced. He added that Alex Salmond, the former first minister of Scotland, had surreptitiously taken away grants from Scottish students.
The National Union of Students claimed government estimates indicate the size of outstanding student debt will increase to more than £330bn by 2044.
It added: “The proportion of graduates failing to pay back student loans is increasing at such a rate that the Treasury is approaching the point at which it will get zero financial reward from the government’s policy of tripling tuition fees to £9,000 a year.”
Megan Dunn, the vice-president of the NUS, said: “Not only is a publicly funded education system achievable, it’s also necessary in the current economic and political climate. Our road map seriously challenges those who want to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that the current broken system can be fixed with tweaks and tinkering. The clear fact is that the current system we have is completely unsustainable.
“The government’s own figures show that the prospect of a huge black hole looming over the budget is very real. It’s time the government started taking this issue seriously and committed to a new deal for students.”
