Fair Fees

As September and ergo a new year of school begins, the stories of woe from the latest range of disappointed students start to pour in. Idle speculation concerning the perturbing future of my own higher education already dominates dinnertime chit-chat. Deferrals, fees, grades, retakes, UCAS, back-up offers, personal statements...etc. etc.

Despite my displeasure and lack of interest in the subject, tt now seems inevitable that a serious public debate on what we are going to do about higher education will need to occur in the near future. Between Labour's proposals to get 50% of young people into higher education, the Liberal Democrat's plan for ending tuition fees, a record high number of university applicants and burgeoning finacial crisis required a massive cut in public spending as it's only remedy, it seems a new and coherent policy on higher education spending and administration needs to be thought through, quickly.

But for fear of sounding like Socrates who, as one fellow student earlier described as 'constantly showing that everything is wrong but never proposing anything himself', I will offer my proposed solution: means-tested tuition fees on a much bigger scale. The aim of these aforementioned proposals is to get as many elligible candidates into higher education regardless of their finacial or social background. Whilst maintaining the same extremely high quality of education that our nation's great academic institutions have always provided.

A far more developed means-tested system, in which the poorest pay what they can afford and the richest shoulder considerably more of the cost (although still remaining well within their means, and the cost being significantly less significant for them compared to the impact of the far smaller costs on the poorest candidates), seems to me to be the only solution. Not only is it fairer than the current system and indeed the proposed end of tuition fees but it could help provide a better service and force students to value their degrees far more.

Currently, every tax-payer contributes to the cost of every students degree, regardless of whether or not they benefit from the degree. Surely, it would be fairer for those who benefit most to pay the most. By increasing the amount students pay towards university fees you could both reduce the tax burden on the poorest taxpayers and shift the weight of the cost of university to student loan repayments after graduates find employment.

In conclusion, a more proportional, means-tested tuition fee system combined with an upgrade in size of the student loan operation would produce a fairer and more effective programme of educating our nation. It would produce a programme that would perfectly embody both sides of the virtuous sword that is a meritocracy; not only would it allow even more members of our society access to higher education based solely on academic merit, but it would also place the finacial burdens to those who deserve or rather merit the cost.