Agreed. But some subjects are far cheaper to teach than others. Right now top-ups don’t distinguish between subjects and institutions on financial grounds because the pricing would have to be perverse. So charging a lot for cheap to teach but less practically applicable arts subjects, and low fees for very expensive courses in sciences and medicine… just to match the supply of graduates to the demand of jobs? I don’t know, maybe…

Or how about we just give tax breaks to people who don’t go to university… (God I can’t wait to read the barrage of abuse for that idea)

Besides Phil, even with that lower rate of grad tax the PhD physicist will still earn half the salary of a mortgage broker. That’s whats obscene, not the fact that graduates earn more than non-graduates or that most students are ‘middle class’, whatever that even means anymore. According to our increasingly right wing press, a couple earning 15k each qualify as ‘middle class’, and therefore deserve to half their child benefit removed. Just so we can save, what, £10 billion? Which we used to think was a lot of money..

A thriving HE sector is to society’s benefit. The fact that individuals benefit is great.

We really have to stop thinking in terms of class. It distorts thinking and decision making. If fees were introduced to stop the middle class benefiting, then its class warfare madness with the unintended side effect of putting off plenty of working class kids whose parents don’t like debt. Absolutely crazy!

The Labour party is besotted by class and perceived middle class privilege. They really need to get a grip as class warfare really holds the country back and holds it down. People in business don’t bang on about class -it’s a complete non issue.

A graduate tax would have done the job, with perhaps a slightly lower rate for students taking strategically important subjects – engineering, science, software programming etc.

Matthew, and also to Phil’s point,

I have no background in education policy-making, I’m fairly young and green so I’m genuinely trying to understand the HE issue better and not just being obtuse. I wonder if you can help me.

I have never understood the supposed weakness of the obvious counter argument to all this; that the tax payer will get their money back. They will. If graduates do earn more, then they pay more tax back to the treasury even on the same 20% rate, and will definitely pay much more when they hit 40%. It does square off. Their degrees therefore do benefit society as a whole, especially when society needs to take their dogs to the vet, or have a tooth removed or have their computer software problems fixed, or walk across a bridge hoping it won’t collapse and kill anyone. (Ok scrap that last one..)

However, in terms of earnings? University isn’t the be all and end all, and politicians are guilty of perpetuating a myth that degrees are as necessary as having the latest shiny new iphone. There are plumbers in this country who earn more than doctors, and every airline needs plenty of well paid mechanics who don’t go to university. Or you could just look at the difference in earnings between an estate agent who takes a picture and sticks it in a window and the solicitor who spends all the time drawing up the paperwork.

Not to blow my own trumpet or anything, but I have a 2,1 from a good university. I wait tables for a living and can’t get interviews for unpaid internships.

Its also worth remembering that many of the journalists and politicians who are now arguing in favour of top up fees actually benefited from free higher education themselves back in the day. The way that looks to most people out there is basically like someone kicking away a ladder.

The interesting thing is that the way we propose it, this quasi-Equity model will be a consensual model based upon two way partnership agreements and requiring no change in any law.

That means it can operate as a complement to the existing model, rather than as an alternative. If it works, people will use it: if it doesn’t they may still use existing funding arrangements.

We are working with a Norwegian government agency in relation to prototype ‘youth enterprise’ funding arrangements based upon our partnership model (the development of which was part-funded by the Norwegian government despite the fact we are based in Scotland).

The way you avoid the Learning Account experience is to ensure that the relevant service providers have an interest in the outcome. We achieve this by configuring them as ‘managing partners’ rather than contractors with diverging interests.