42,000 put off university by tuition fees rise

 
p2 Liam Burns
21 November 2012

More than 42,000 Londoners have been put off applying to university after tuition fees tripled, campaigners revealed today as they marched through central London.

The National Union of Students said university applications from people living in the capital dropped by 10 per cent following the introduction of £9,000-a-year fees.

Thousands of students were today protesting in the streets against the rise in fees, as well as unemployment and the scrapping of the Education Maintenance Allowance.

The NUS figures show the steepest decline in applications was from people living in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, where the number trying to get into university fell 18 per cent.

In Islington North, Brent North, Beckenham, Croydon South, and Bethnal Green and Bow the number of applications dropped by 17 per cent.

Liam Burns, president of the NUS said: “It would be at best naive and at worst consciously ignorant to say that fees have not played a part in this.

“We are marching to challenge the mindset of politicians. We want a different way of funding higher education, and to come back to free education as a priority.”

There were fears that today’s march could be hijacked by a protest organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts who threatened to march on Parliament without permission. About 200 students were marching from UCL in the “feeder demonstration”.

London students were joined by coach loads of people who had travelled from as far as Edinburgh. Police issued warning notices to protesters that they risked arrest if they strayed from the pre-arranged route from the university in Bloomsbury via Embankment to join the other demonstration at Westminster Bridge.

But Maria Lopez, 20, a student from Edinburgh, said: “We’ve come all the way from Edinburgh so we want to go to Parliament Square. We have no interest in causing violence.”

Scotland Yard obtained a Section 12 order banning marchers from going past the Houses of Parliament. Hundreds of police were on duty for the march and there were at least six riot vans of police parked outside the University of London student union before the march started at 11am.

Organisers expect today’s demonstration to be the biggest since 2010, when 50,000 students protested against the increase of tuition fees. That march descended into violence when a group of protesters smashed their way into the Conservative party HQ at Millbank.

The NUS today published a YouGov survey indicating that tuition fees will influence how parents vote at the next election. It showed 58 per cent of people with children under the age of 18 believe that MPs who broke their promise over tuition fees should not stand.

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