There never was a God given right to a university education, generations of Europeans have been convinced by socialist politicians that they not only have a right to such an education, they are entitled to it

I attended the University of St. Andrews from 1987-1991 finally escaping with a barely earned M.A. During my time there I served for a little while on the Student Representative council, where I was – in keeping with all my other student ventures prior to becoming a Christian – completely useless.

My University career coincided with the waning days of the Thatcher government – which was disliked by the majority of University Students, and absolutely detested by everyone (except me) on the St. Andrews University Student Representative Council (SRC). However, that conservative government had continued the previous liberal practice of fixing University tuition costs and then paying the cost of that tuition via grants.

In fact, at the time I served on the SRC the only members of the SRC actually paying out of pocket for their educations were myself (because I was not considered a “resident” since my parents lived in the U.S.) and a Canadian girl.

Attempts had often been made to adjust or reduce student grants by the government but whenever these attempts were made, the students immediately became incensed. For them University was not just a right, it was an entitlement, and the idea that they would have to pay for their own education as my family did, rather than having British tax payers send them to school was nothing short of evil. The government, they maintained, just wanted to give greedy rich people more money to buy new Range Rovers and go fox hunting.

The idea that the money people earned might actually be theirs was unworthy of consideration. Perhaps the most vociferous opponents of any reduction in the size of grants were the “professional” University students. They were adults who seemed to believe that their calling in life was to remain in university indefinitely rather than moving on to something else.

I was always vaguely irritated by the outrage and calls for protests that even rumors of a grant reduction provoked on the SRC. After all, it was no secret that the much higher tuition fees and direct payments of foreign students like me along with private contributions were the key to the continued solvency of the University.

What truly amazed me was that the majority of foreign students – whose families were paying tuition – joined the members of the SRC in their outrage and protests. After one meeting in which a foreign student had expressed her outrage over proposed reductions in the grants she did not receive I asked her why, if she and I both had to pay for all of our education, and I was even a British citizen, “home” students shouldn’t pay for a larger portion of their education as well? All this provoked was a speech about solidarity and not so vague inferences that something was very wrong with me and my weird views about paying for things yourself.

Curiously, it was Tony Blair’s Labor government that actually introduced the idea of students paying for their education via loans rather than grants, and which changed the system so that only poorest students would receive grants – as the U.S. system had long employed.

This system was however kyboshed in Scotland in 2000, when the Scottish government decided that Scottish students at Scottish Universities should pay no tuition at all, and that the government (read British taxpayers) should pay for their entire time at University. Similarly, in Wales, Welsh tuitions were substantially decreased. Much of Britain is still wed to the notion that University is something that other people should pay for.

The problem with such collectivist notions is of course that. as Margaret Thatcher said, “you eventually run out of other people’s money” and indeed most of the EU nations have now reached that point. The public coffers of countries like Britain are not only empty, they are massively in debt. This means that the government not only cannot pay student tuitions, it cannot continue to maintain the Universities at the current fee schedule. Therefore, a decision was made recently to raise the tuition to the equivalent of $14,000 a year – a rate still far below that of almost all US colleges, but something that has brought British students to the height of revolutionary fervor.

The real problem, that neither Britain nor the other nations of the EU can fix, is not one of economics but worldview. There never was a God given right to a university education, but generations of Europeans have been convinced by socialist politicians that they not only have a right to such an education, they are entitled to it. Worse yet, this idea has been reinforced by the fact that this entitlement was given to them for decades. Once that happens you cannot simply remove or limit the entitlement without producing moral outrage. The fact that there really isn’t even a universal “right” to University education, much less an entitlement to obtain it free of charge is immaterial.

The situation is rather like having a huge bowl of M&Ms in the living room from which small children freely helped themselves. They grew accustomed to this bowl and expected it to always be available. If the M&Ms run out one day because their parents cannot afford to refill the bowl, the wrath of those children will likely be fearsome and demands will immediately be made that the bowl be refilled regardless.

At that point in time, economic arguments made by parents will be less than convincing. The key of course, is not to put out the big bowl of “free” M&Ms in the first place, but it’s too late in the day for that. Europe’s problems are exacerbated because they had a multitude of these bowls and they are all running out at the same time and the wrath of the suddenly disentitled is much more than these governments are able or prepared to deal with.

Andy Webb is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America and is serving as Pastor of the Providence Presbyterian Church in Fayetteville, NC