What you think you mean is irrelevant. It will be poorer families who suffer, as well as middle-class families. I don’t care what HEFCE have made their statistics say. Besides which, whilst there is a fairly manageable (yet now drastically failing and set to crash and burn) system of loans for undergraduates, postgraduates, mature students and other unconventional undergrad students are suffering majorly (not that I suppose the “old” system was some utopia for pg students). Only a very very few postgrads receive adequate funding, whilst the rest are struggling to survive whilst balancing 4 jobs alongside their studies (this is no exaggeration). Soon postgraduate students will be expected to pay perhaps upwards of £7000 a year, and the system will fall apart because it is not actually possible to earn that much money from a part time job, on top of the money needed for rent and living allowances. Government debate keeps the focus on UGs to avoid having to acknowledge this impending disaster.

As to the points made in your second paragraph: 1) all things are not equal, as I have already stressed – HE is facing MASSIVE CUTS and these are being evidenced in SWEEPING redundancies, research cutbacks, course closures, department closures, and even campus closures ; 2) your “greater contribution from graduates” supposes a different system than is currently in place (the NUS sponsored “Graduate Tax”). This system is bullshit too, and the careerist NUS have no respect from students because they simply don’t represent them. Nor do politicians. It might, possibly, not-withstanding inevitable cock-ups and systematic failures, be as useable as the Labour system briefly was (which is to say, useable for some; not at all useable for others). But, the Graduate Tax is far from the solution, and it is certainly not the change WE WANT.

Next, HE should change, but WHO should decide how it changes? That is the question. You suppose that our professional poliicians (i.e. bureaucrats, manipulators and criminals) should decide this, and that is exactly where you are wrong and where we differ entirely.

Leading on from this, recognising an emerging pattern, it should become clear that 1) this entity you call “universities” who might make their “own” decisions is a false construction; 2) that universities in the best analysis are not unities nor are they reducable to that detestable class of bureaucrats, manipulators and criminals otherwise known as university managers (e.g. Vice-Chancellors; i.e. those who will make spending decisions). Therefore, 3) revenue earnt from tutition fees would not go to universities per se, in order that they might make their own decisions, but instead to a destable class of morons who have inserted themselves in a position that removes power from those they supposedly represent (in this way, a university really is a microcosm of the nation). So your “neo-liberal”/”statist” dichotomy deconstructs: really they are both two sides of the same coin. The current system is awful, but at least it gives money in a (slightly) more direct way to research projects than I predict tuition fees will, quite simply because history and reality show that bureaucrats never cease to be bureaucrats.

So, I still agree with you: you are still a dumb economist and, I might add, less capable of freethought than your average rock, plank of wood, plate of blamange etc.

No I don’t mean poorer families, and the evidence from Hfece is that the introduction of tuition fees has not turned this into MORE of a middle class enclave, but less – perhaps because of the grants that cover the bottom 25%. A well designed system that Labour should be proud of …

All other things being equal, a greater contribution from graduates earning enough will increase university funding. It would also target the burden more accurately on those who benefit most directly.

Some would say that HE ought to change – why should it be immune to institutional change? Do students always think they are getting what they want? Are professors always responsive to them? I think tuition fees make them more demanding – is that terrible? Was it better when it served just 5% of the population?

It’s good to hear the statist view. DOn’t trust universities to make their own decisions. I get it.

The answer is that education should not be (further) reduced to the same logic as that which currently operations in the free market economy, because this logic is extremely detrimental to society. Likewise, the economy should not be run in this manner, but… I won’t push the point.

Besides this “overarching” point, your strange idea that “the marginally interested drop out, while funding increases for the convinced” operates on a very faulty logic, which, though I’m sure it quite probably involves advanced and complex economics, seems to presume that these operations will take place in a total vacuum.

1) Your “marginally interested” should read instead “those from poorer families”, since this is the reality this epithet disguises.

2) “Convinced”, even should we read with you and take it in the best sense, here means those who have been educated to believe in the worth and necessity of Higher Education – and it will not be the case that all those who are “convinced” will actually be able to afford attending (in otherwords, Labour have broken their promise as Sally correctly points out).

3) Funding won’t actually increase since tuition fee increases are balanced against and acting as substitutes for massive cuts across the board.

4) Beyond this the whole structure and qualitative character of HE will change, will be forced to change: this will not simply be a like for like swap of government cash for private cash.

5) The way earnt money is spent will change: more will be spent on attracting students to lucrative courses, and less will be spent on research, especially in the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, since this is not considered to create short-term profits. Money currently passed over is tightly earmarked: e.g. for research, or for a particular construction project (this system is highly faulty, but…); when money comes from tuition fees, it will not have these controls – who knows how Universities managers will choose to spend it? One thing for sure, research is definately going to lose out big-time.

In otherwords, I completely agree with your assessment: you are a dumb economist.

All best,
Wit

University funding under Labour has increased more than any other area, and they were brave enough to introduce a sensible system like tuition fees. They don’t deserve to get a knocking for this.

Cuts will see the rise of ‘easy’ universities with skeleton course structures, this in turn will mean that students miss out having more seminars and lectures, and less of an opportunity to develop the ‘soft’ skills they need after university.

Today, students at Sussex University have occupied the campus conference centre in protest over cuts to education. You can follow the action on twitter: http://bit.ly/aagGkq