Thursday 10 October 2013

Tuition fees: the solution

A simple plan to simplify student funding.

1. Charge students exactly what they paid for their secondary education.
2. Distribute the money around universities, weighting funding towards institutions without massive reserves, farmland and rent income, and towards those places which welcome students from all socio-economic sectors.

Eton College

A comprehensive school in the Midlands.

At the moment, students from the 5% who attend private schools and disproportionately swell the ranks of the Russell Group universities think they're getting a discount at university: Etonians go from £36,000 p.a. to £9000 p.a. at university. Bargainus Maximus as those of you with Classics degrees might say. No wonder they can afford postgraduate study while my students can't.

They've opted out of the free state education available to them thus far: let's hold them to that decision and redistribute the wealth. They've rejected equality: let's hold it against them. Any shortfall in funding can be made up through taxation rather than charging everyone else, because (all together now) education is a collective good rather than a private benefit. 

Now who's going to break the news to Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and the rest of the Cabinet multimillionaires.

No comments: