Why don’t students protest against the european union? | thearticle

One of the most mystifying features of our political scene is the absence of student outrage towards the EU. In theory, there should be demonstrations, protests and even riots. In practice,

on polling day the student population will doubtlessly provide Remain-supporting MPs with a bedrock of support, in the same way that students overwhelmingly supported the EU cause in the

2016 referendum. Yet just consider the serious injustices that our EU membership inflicts on English, Welsh and Northern Irish students. As things stand, these students have to pay tuition

fees (up to £9,250 a year) if they go to a Scottish university, just as they have to pay the same amount if they attend a university on their home ground. Yet students from elsewhere in the

EU, attending Scottish universities, don’t have to pay them at all. So if you are a French, German or Romanian student who wins a place at, say, Glasgow or Edinburgh universities, then you

won’t have any fees to pay. But if you are born in London or Birmingham then you will get lumbered, even though you are a fellow British national and may perhaps have Scottish ancestry too. 

“We value the contribution that EU nationals make to our campuses,” as Richard Lochhead, the Scottish Higher Education Minister, said recently. Other British nationals, it seems, not so

much. This is a huge injustice for which you could, of course, hold the SNP administration to account. Holyrood allows Scottish universities to waive tuition fees for Scottish students, but

charges non-Scottish UK students the full amount. Yet the truth is that when (or if) the UK leaves the EU, then Holyrood could at least treat all non-Scots on the same equal footing. At the

moment, EU law prohibits discrimination between member states, but allows it within a member state. Leave the EU and all non-Scots could be charged the same. It is not English, Welsh and

Northern Irish students who should feel angry about this, but also Scottish young people. To make university funding affordable (it costs an extra £93 million to give EU students this free

education), Holyrood has limited the number of places at Scottish universities. Given the level of competition from bright EU students, this cap on numbers means that a good number of very

talented and qualified Scottish applicants don’t get the places they want. Instead they have to apply to non-Scottish universities, where they have to pay the full fees, or else not go to

university at all. Last year, 15,000 young Scots missed out on their free education. As Professor Sally Mapstone, the head of St Andrew’s University, told a British newspaper, it is the

SNP’s cap on places that is responsible for Scottish applicants missing out, rather than lowering entry requirements for those from poor backgrounds. There is one other reason why all

British students, north and south of the border, should feel a real sense of anger towards the EU, just as every taxpayer should. This concerns the right of every EU national to receive

student loans from the government. The British taxpayer is paying for the maintenance grants of many, and potentially all, of the 139,000 or so EU students who study here. This matters, for

the simple reason that the number of EU students who come here to study far exceeds the number of UK students who go elsewhere in the EU. This is partly because of the quality of our

universities. And it is also because of the linguistic differences: English is far more widely taught and spoken elsewhere in the EU than other languages are here. The number of UK students

who study on the continent is difficult to determine, and perhaps for a reason: it would expose a huge inequality. Put simply, not many British young people want to study at Romanian,

Latvian, Lithuanian or Slovakian universities, but a great many EU nationals, from 27 other countries, do want to study here. For the UK taxpayer, this means that we are subsidising EU

nationals, not just in the short term but, in all likelihood, for good: a great many student loans are never repaid because the recipient doesn’t earn enough to have to make repayments. But

for UK students, this means that taxpayers are giving away huge sums of money that could be given to them: withdraw from the EU and we could give that money to help our own young people,

instead of foreign nationals who probably won’t make any direct contribution to our own economy. British students should be out on the streets, demanding our immediate withdrawal from the

EU. To the barricades!