University Fees Reform

This is getting a lot/all of the press coverage today, and rightly so. It's a major test not of the coalition itself but of the way it works when Lib Dems oppose government measures. I'm not going to get into all of the details, rather I'd like to make a few points.

The first is that the NUS is saying that fear of debt will put off the poorest students and make higher education elitist. I can see their point but, frankly, I don't think they have any evidence of this. In fact, I think the evidence points firmly in the other direction, given that fees are at their maximum levels this year and there were too few places to meet demand. If there is funding available from the government (be it a loan or whatever) people won't be deterred from university.

The second is simply that I quite like the idea. Especially because I hope students being saddled with 30k of debts will be much more likely to demand a better standard of education from their universities. At the minute, class sizes are too big and time spent in seminars too small. This needs to change.

Thirdly, people already factor in financial costs when considering which university to apply to. It's a recognised fact that living in London is more expensive, and students there have long had a larger loan to cover their costs. People still go because of what it has to offer.

Lastly, I'm in favour of those who can being able to pay upfront. This is because not to do so would be to penalise the rich with no matching benefit to the poor, and that even if there was such a benefit, funding for universities is no place for wealth redistribution.