Abstract

In January 2003, the Labour government published The Future of Higher Education, its White Paper on Higher Education (HE) in England. The controversial bill included long term plans for student finance - “a new Graduate Contribution Scheme” (DfES 2003, p.76) which would abolish the upfront, annual tuition fee of £1000 and let universities set their own tuition fees for each course of up to £3000 per annum. Students would be able to defer repayment until after graduation when they would pay the money back through the tax system, linked to their ability to pay. The bill also proposed increasing the proportion of students aged 18 to 30 in HE to 50 per cent by 2010.

Mass Observation Project (MOP) correspondents at the Mass Observation Archive were asked to share their views on who should have access to HE and who should pay for it within the context of their own personal experiences of HE just prior to the bill - criticised by some as a step towards the privatisation of HE - receiving royal assent when it became the Higher Education Act 2004. My presentation will explore their perceptions of this significant shift from public to private financial sources as well as widening participation to HE in the context of contemporaneous discourses. A ‘horizontal’ analysis (Hinton, 2016) of the 166 correspondents’ writing for the MOP in response to its Spring 2004 Directive, Part 3: ‘Going to University’ (March 2004 Dir. No. 71) was made and responses were examined both holistically and categorically (May, 2015). The presentation will also reflect upon the author’s experiences of using MOP data in Higher Education research.