50 Years Ago – The row about overseas students
Students who come to the UK from abroad to study make another part of the education pot that is at boiling point. But as with the reasons for the cuts in the education system so also with the explanation of the row about overseas students. The causes have nothing to do with so-called academic freedom, or colour prejudice, or the duty to help developing countries. The cause of the dispute is within the economics of capitalism itself in one of its periodic crises.
Cuts are demanded in state expenditure by the capitalist class and in education in particular. One of the things which have been cut back on is the ‘subsidy’ to overseas students. This so-called subsidy relates to the fact that the fees paid by all students to universities and colleges of higher education do not in fact represent the true cost of the course they will be attending. The real cost will be many times higher and the balance comes from central and local government grants to the universities and colleges, together with whatever else they can squeeze from private sources. Overseas students (estimated to be about 95,000 for the academic year 1973/4) therefore apparently cost the capitalist class considerable amounts.
For example, the ‘price’ of one year of a 3-year course in science at University College London, for the academic year 1975/76 was £157. But this figure probably represents no more than 10 per cent of the true cost of providing the services and equipment available to each student on a science course at UCL. So the call grows from the politicians (the mouthpieces of the capitalist class) and others involved to make students who come here to study from abroad pay the market price.
(Socialist Standard, August 1976)