Theresa May’s review of university tuition fees in England could be just around the corner.
And there’s one question on everyone’s lips: long-term freeze or big cut?
With the average young person leaving university £50,000 in debt and interest rates up to 6.1% we wanted to know if the public thought this was fair.
So, in a week of reckoning for £9,250 university fees we took to the streets of Wimbledon to ask: Should university be free?
Yes: 81% No:19%
Free education won with an overwhelming majority in our survey. But what did Wimbledon shoppers have to say?
Nicholas Tyrrell from Melbourne was in favour of abolishing university fees.
The 29-year-old paramedic said: “People are studying to work for the public, so why are we in debt?”
Another believer in free education is Doug Mortimer from Bromley.
The 55-year-old HR advisor said: “It excludes people with disadvantages are less fortunate and therefore have less opportunities.”
Wimbledon student Kieran McGee mirrored this view.
The 17-year-old said: “Everyone’s entitled to an education.”
Samantha Rutledge, 44, suggested a compromise.
The NHS worker from Tooting said: “Maybe not scrap but reduce because students graduate with high debts and some are more expensive than others.”
But a 20-year-old tutor from Portsmouth disagreed completely with our majority.
Lauren Adams said: “If they were free it would make it too overcrowded because anyone would go. Not because they really needed or wanted to.”
On the other hand 45-year-old floor later from Carshalton Phil Wall said: “Yes, because my children have to go to university and education is the future and the fees are limiting the progress that can be made because its unaffordable to some.”
Kibriah Miah,18, an apprentice from Battersea, said: “If university fees were scrapped most students wouldn’t take their education seriously.”
Featured image courtesy of Images Money via Flickr with thanks
