Yesterday, amongst turbulent student protests and police action, parliament passed a bill to increase tuition fees potentially to £9000 a year for home and EU students from 2012. While this has been a contentious issue in Cambridge for the last few weeks, the student and faculty still remain divided.

Callum Wood, the Chairman of the Cambridge University Conservative Association welcomed the increase in fees, saying ‘it is incredibly unfair to expect hard-working families to fork out for university degrees so that the beneficiaries of that education can personally benefit from an average of £100,000 in lifetime earnings.’

In contrast, Ashley Walsh, Chairman of the Labour Club, however, responded: ‘raising fees to £6,000 and even £9,000 will frighten the poorest school-leavers.’ Speaking of the Liberal Democrats' role, he added, ‘it is nothing short of complete hypocrisy and utter betrayal that they should U-turn on a pledge.’

Interestingly, Jamie Scott, Campaigns director of the Cambridge Liberal Democrat Society, told Varsity he opposed the increase, while acknowledging ‘that the overall proposals are rather clever, and a good improvement on the status quo, in many ways.’

Mohammad Razai, a 4th year medic, however, was outraged at the proposals, saying ‘it'll undoubtedly reverse years of gradual improvement in access to higher education particularly to elite universities such as Cambridge.’

Many people have expressed concerns regarding outreach programmes, on how it would affect inclusion of students from poorer backgrounds in universities. Richard Partington, senior tutor at Churchill and Chair of the Cambridge outreach programme, told us that he personally is ‘very concerned about the proposals’. He said he couldn’t comment further, ‘the devil being in the detail’.

While the Vice-Chancellor has made no official comment regarding the recent vote, Universities UK, an association of Vice-Chancellors, of which Cambridge is a member, have welcomed the proposals. The Russell Group, which represents Oxbridge and other elite universities, supports the fee increase, calling them ‘"the only way of ensuring we maintain a world-class, fair and sustainable higher education system in England."

Dr Priyamvada Gopal, who initiated a petition which was signed by over 200 Cambridge academics in support of the Old Schools occupation and the protests against the fee increases, said:  ‘There is little doubt that the activism and actions of the last several weeks weakened the Coalition considerably resulting in a hefty quartering of their expected majority margin from 84 to a mere 21 votes.’

She further added, ‘what we have gained is a burgeoning and powerful movement to resist privatisation and growing inequality across society. If this resistance entails bringing an anti-people, pro-privatisation government down, then that is what we will all have to work towards now.’

Rob Mindell, who, along with Gabriel Latner, founded the Facebook group in opposition to the recent Old Schools occupation and protests, which has over 680 members, told Varsity:

‘It speaks volumes that at a time when students are the centre of attention in the national media, far more Cambridge students attended the Varsity rugby game than the student protests.’ He went on to add, ‘there is very little to object to in the new system of higher education and Cambridge students seem to have accepted the change.’

In amidst the raging contention, Duncan Crowe, a Cambridge alumnus now at St Andrews, remarked, “depending on how you feel about recherché topics like the action of market forces in education, psychological disincentives versus material disincentives, the robustness of debt aversion in lower-income families, the optimal speed of deficit reduction and sustainability of education being funded from taxation, the policy just passed is either slightly better or slightly worse than the status quo. Not the apocalypse.”