The battle to stop the imposition of the maximum allowable tuition fees in Cambridge has been a long and difficult one, and it is far from over. As of last night, student activists from Cambridge Defend Education are camped out the Senate House lawns, challenging the University's Grace on Tuition Fees which will be put to vote over the next few days.

The parliamentary vote on December 9, 2010, which tripled the fees ceiling complemented damaging cuts to the higher education budget made by the Coalition government, which sits in parliament with a questionable mandate achieved only by an unprincipled partnership. They were also the culmination of years of lobbying by Cambridge's management, along with those of other Russell Group Universities, represented by the organisation Universities UK, to be allowed to impose higher fees. In the weeks leading up to that destructive vote, which involved a betrayal of explicit election pledges by the the Liberal Democrats, Britain's young people, including students at Cambridge and elsewhere, protested courageously and vigorously to prevent the decimation of the British university system and the undermining of what is rightly regarded as every young person's right--a free or, at least, widely affordable, higher education.

Despite some superficial expressions of regret and constraint, Cambridge's management has, unsurprisingly, enthusiastically embraced the possibility of immediately extracting the full £ 9000 from future generations of students, starting in the academic year 2012-13. According to Professor Steve Young,Senior Pro-VC, writing in the most recent issue of CAM, the alumni magazine, 'onan 800 year scale, the current financial stricture will appear, we hope, no more than a minor blip' in the long run'. For a 22 year old from a modest economic background faced with paying off huge debts on a 65 year scale, it might well feel a lot less minor. Having noted strong student resistance as well as widespread senior academic support for this resistance during the symbolic 'Occupation' of the Old Schools Combination Room in late November 2010, the University administration has been as keen as any Coalition government to rush through legislation imposing the full amount with--in a nod to pressure and the fact of self-governance--seeming consultation with the Regent House. To this end, it published a Grace on February 23, 2011 inviting the imprimatur of Cambridge academics--the vast majority of whom are deeply concerned both about the cuts and the denial of an affordable education (especially given Cambridge's existing access problems) to large swathes of young Brits.

Although many dons had by this time, unfortunately and erroneously, decided that the imposition of fees were an inevitability about which nothing could be done (they were repeatedly told that voting in the full amount was the only 'fiscally responsible' thing to do), the energising influence of the student protests in late 2010 meant that the University administration's move would not go unquestioned. A group of academics, myself included, from the Cambridge Academic Campaign for Higher Education (CACHE) signed a flysheet drafted by Dr Jason Scott-Warren of the Faculty of English, calling on academics to vote against the Grace 'to let the Council know of the scale of opposition to its activities'. Bruce Beckles, an active member of the Cambridge Academic Campaign for Higher Education drafted an amendment to the University's Grace which authorised the University to make an access agreement with OFFA but also insisted that any actual fee amount would have to be accounted for through detailed and transparent fiscal reporting to the Regent House which would then take an informed vote on it. Cambridge University Students Union proposed an amendment which, although it (surprisingly) did not challenge the imposition of the full 9000, asked for financial clarity and, entirely reasonably, for bursaries to be protected (a request fully in line with the University's stated, if doubtful, commitments to guaranteeing access).

These were unexceptionable amendments. Unlike the flysheet, they did not challenge the idea of fees directly, were fully compliant with the spirit of the University's Grace and entirely in line with the University's existing procedures for self-governance. In the interests of full disclosure, I should state that I did not sign either amendment as I do not believe in raising tuition fees and thereby burdening young people with mountains of debt and narrowing acess to even lower depths than our existing shameful record although I understand the University was planning to make an agreement with OFFA which increased our state school presence while nevertheless retaining a a nationally disproportionate private school intake ratio (39%-37%).

Remarkably, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, in whose sole power it is, for some inexplicable reason, to reject Amendments if he deems them to not be 'valid' in relation to the Grace, threw both these reasonable Amendments out of court and declared that they would not be put to vote. In other words, only the University's Grace requesting to impose the maximum amount would be put to vote; any amendments, however reasonable, that require any oversight of the management's decisions, would not be permitted the impertinence (even if they were entirely pertinent) of being voted on at the same time.

The fees issue remains an important one despite the Coalition's attempt to end public higher education once and for all. In theory, if Cambridge and Oxford dons had the imagination and the political will, they could use their powers of self-governance to reject fee hikes altogether and force the Coalition government back to the table on the question of funding. (Can anyone seriously imagine these two flagship universities being allowed to go bankrupt, despite the scare-mongering and talk about 'fiscal responsibility'?). But the Vice-Chancellor's imperious dismissal of the two proposed amendments casts grave doubts over the future of self-governance itself, as well as his attitude to the hundreds of Cambridge dons who had signed these amendments. It is perhaps understandable that a new chief executive who comes from a different institution doesn't quite understand that Cambridge has and will defend a tradition of academic self-governance. (Our 345th VC should probably be reminded that a recent managerial attempt to undermine this tradition was defeated by the Regents). But Cambridge dons (who are also the University's Regents), staff and students must take this authoritarian and untenable gesture very seriously indeed and send out an unambiguous message: we run this university in the interests of students and any changes to its ethos, policies and practices must not and will not be made without due consultation and a democratic vote. Whatever their position on fees--and I would hope no academic views the imposition of such crippling levels of student debt or the decimation of the idea of the public university with equanimity--it is incumbent on every single Cambridge academic to stand up for and defend its magnificent traditions of self-governance. At this stage, the only (fiscally and ethically) responsible way to do this and to send a clear message to the new broom in the Senate House is through a resounding defeat of the University's unamended Grace: 'It Does Not Please'!