COLUMN: To defend free education?

From Daniel Fienberg's, "The Fien Print: London Cast," Fall '98 From Daniel Fienberg's, "The Fien Print: London Cast," Fall '98We came to England to be students. We came to England to be active observers. All things considered, we came to England to be tourists. We did not, certainly, come to England to cross picket lines, to be intellectual scabs. And yet tomorrow, the legion of American students spending either the semester or the full year in England will have to consider how we feel about a stand being made by our fellow students and whether it should keep us out of the classrooms in a show of solidarity. Now, fees for room and board are fairly substantial. A single room in one of the main first-year complexes costs roughly the same amount as a Quad single, for fairly comparable quality. But no student pays more than $5,000 for tuition. And students in need can receive additional grants. As of next near, however, the Government plans to introduce fees as part of the Teaching and Higher Education Bill currently progressing through the Houses of Parliament. This titanic bill will make students pay? œ1,000 per year. That's $1,612 according to Friday's exchange rate. And trust me, some people are mad as hell. They're not going to take this anymore. My first response was intolerance. After all, those of us at King's College are paying the same to go here as we would at Penn, while the students around us aren't paying anything. That's a little annoying. Then they complain that by the time they graduate, they could be $10,000 in debt. And the American students in the room roll their eyes because, quite honestly, what else can you do? Some of us are planning on being three or four or five times that by the time we leave the friendly confines of West Philly. The National Union of Students suggests that business and industry should be "forced to make a formal contribution to education because students, and especially their families, are already contributing enough." Remind me, first thing I need to do when I get back Stateside is to write a friendly letter to Bill Gates (copies to Ted Turner, Donald Trump and that guy at Pentium). I feel that I, and especially my family, am already contributing more than enough. It won't hurt much. Little more than a scratch. The student groups are offering no solutions at all. Or at least not any that are likely to be taken seriously. The only realistic option according to NUS is to just return to the status quo, and the Government (always with a capital "G") doesn't seem to be too thrilled by that prospect. Schools are already underfunded as is, though it's actually questionable whether or not any of the tuition money will go toward "further or higher education." However, what's at the root of all of this anxiety cannot be laughed at. England is a nation where politicos boast about the improved low unemployment rates while ignoring the fact that union membership and salaries are both equally low. The need for advanced degrees may be greater than ever in this country as a larger and larger percentage of the population is unable to live on the jobs and salaries available. Under the new tuition bill, schools like Oxford and Cambridge will not be hurt. The elite will still get their schooling. Even now, with a variety of supposedly competing colleges, a dauntingly high number of doctors and lawyers have backgrounds from those two schools. Those numbers will only go up as the smaller schools see precipitous drops in applications. Nationally, 20,000 fewer applications came in at this December's deadline. As a NUS poster observes, that's enough to fill four universities. Or to empty the same number. The number of people who are unable to enroll may be equally high, as it is clear that the government cannot afford the grants and loans which will be necessary to keep things even. There is no solid and established system of state schools and junior colleges here. While the larger schools like King's (and the rest of the University College London system) will probably manage to survive, one wonders what will happen to smaller and poorer rural schools and, more importantly, to their clientele. Thinking along those lines, suddenly the protests and indignation don't seem quite so unreasonable anymore. So what to do about classes tomorrow? It's hard to tell. The one class that the entire Penn King's English contingent has in common is a seminar taught by a non-King's professor without a single British student. Will we have to push aside sign-wavers and chanters? Hard to tell. The British seem to be in a protesting mood this week. A weekend march to overthrow a proposed Government measure outlawing fox hunting drew over 250,000 this weekend. The Guardian said that this kind of rural pride is as American as Mom and apple pie. What will it really say about British activism if a rally for an elite blood-sport shows more solidarity than a walk-out to support free higher education? Roughly two million British students are terrified to find out.