EDUCATION
GAVIN KEETON: Students still face huge financial burden
Few things are more rewarding for academics than watching students graduate, as has been my privilege this week. The sight of so many talented young people and their proud parents makes one optimistic about the future. This should not blind us to the huge financial problems continuing to face most students. Zero fee increases for the past two years have helped make university education slightly more affordable to the "missing middle" and poorest students. But the underlying structural problems have not been resolved. Several universities now run at unsustainable losses and many students still struggle to pay fees. This is because an increasing burden of the costs of university education has been passed on to students in recent years. This occurred despite government funding keeping pace with inflation and rising student numbers. The seldom acknowledged problem is that the costs of university study rose much more than inflation.The reasons for this are complicated. As about 65% of al...
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