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Students battle on to stop university ‘marketisation’

STUDENTS across the country will join the fight today against Tory plans to plunge young people into more debt.

Free education campaigners in dozens of institutions will be staging sit-ins and demonstrations against Universities Minister Jo Johnson’s Green Paper.

The new policy would see a lift in the tuition fee cap, currently set at £9,000 a year.

Sussex University student Callum Cant said the policy was “designed to fully marketise education.

“Uncapped tuition fee rises, public universities going bankrupt, education valued only if it makes your boss money — all of this is on the horizon.

“The Green Paper effectively ends the idea of universities behaving as a public service.”

Students at institutions as renowned as the London School of Economics, Warwick University and University College London will be walking out.

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has already suffered a £16.9 billion cut since the Tories came to power in 2010.

It faces a £1.5bn shortfall from changes to student loan payments.

The day of action is being called by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, whose national committee member Sahaya Jame said: “There is nothing left to cut and students know that the future of post-secondary education is at stake.

“Unless the marketisation of education and austerity more generally are reversed, education in this country will become unrecognisable.

“Instead of a public service, funded by the wealth in society for the good of society, we will see an education industry based on maximising profits and producing employable graduates for the job market.”

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