I wrote in an earlier post regarding top-up fees, that although an NUS poll showed that 74% of those questioned said that top-up fees would deter university applicants, there seemed to be a lack of public support for the NUS opposition to the fees. I wrote that perhaps the public thought the increase in fees was quite reasonable, and that while the fees would deter students from applying, they shouldn’t and that they probably wouldn’t in the long term.
Today I stumbled across a survey taken just after the introduction of top-up fees that suggests on the whole the public accepted the need for students to pay more. The survey by the National Centre for Social Research found that 77% of those questioned accepted top-up fees. If this was a representative poll it suggests that there was always a lack of public support for the student opposition. This is bad news for the NUS. If the fees were accepted back in 2005, they are probably part of the furniture now.
