Cambridge Defend Education is embarking on a campaign against the coalition’s proposal to privatise the student loan book, despite the NUS already claiming “victory” on the issue in October.

The group has held four open meetings at King’s College where attendees listened to speeches on the issue and further plans for the campaign were discussed. CDE are hoping to work closely with other campaign groups to push the issue to the top of the national agenda. “We’ve been leafleting people across the city,” said Ani Brooker of CDE. “The privatisation of student debt is a massive issue, but something no one knows about.”

After commissioning a report from investment bank Rothschild – dubiously dubbed ‘Project Hero’ – Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander confirmed in June that all student loans taken out between 1998 and 2012 would be sold for £10 billion.

Whoever buys the student loan book would not be necessarily be obliged to provide the low rates of interest originally guaranteed to the students. This means that graduates could end up paying competitive rates of interest on their loans. According to Brooker the coalition’s plans have been “kept very quiet.”

Tom, a fourth-year linguist at Selwyn, is among many students who have never heard of the student loan book, nor the government’s proposed privatisation: “I was recently considering taking out a maintenance grant I wouldn’t necessarily need because I thought I’d never be able to borrow at these rates again. If the rate does change I will be surprised and disappointed.”

Brooker accuses the NUS of not doing enough to raise awareness on the issue: “There aren’t emails being sent out, no one is paying for a national poster campaign – things like that that require a national infrastructure have been absent.”

NUS president Toni Pearce claims to have “secured a win” on the student loan book following a meeting with David Willetts in September. After the meeting Willetts wrote Pearce an open letter promising to cap interest rates on the loans should they be privatised. Willetts’ pledge has not been codified in law. Brooker points out that he or any subsequent ministers could reverse the promise, claiming the NUS “quit while they were ahead” on the issue.

NUS were unavailable for comment but their President has stated that they will keep campaigning on the issue. However, no new action seems to have materialised, and in the absence of NUS action, other student groups are planning to join CDE to campaign on the issue.

Conrad Landin of the Cambridge Union Labour Club is keen for his organisation to get involved in campaigning against the change and is considering tabling a motion against the government’s plans. He said, “Many people in the Labour Club are very concerned by this issue and the way education is going.”

Landin also criticised the NUS’s actions on the issue, saying that its collusion with government meant that “it risked becoming marginal to a lot of students in the struggles against what the government is doing.” Landin also sees organisations such as the National Campaign against Fees and Cuts as having “stepped up to the mark” in representing students in the vacuum left by further NUS action.

Defend Education also hope to gain support from UCU – a teacher’s union that took strike action on Thursday. The Cambridge People’s Assembly Against Austerity are supporting the cause by allowing CDE to join their “day of creative disobedience” on the 5th November. CDE has appointed a committee to decide what form this “creative disobedience” will take.