Generation game over tuition fees





George Lewkowicz


Your editorial on university finance (22 September) is the most reflective I have seen. I was a faculty dean in 1981 when the first serious post-war cuts came, as prescribed by Mrs Thatcher. Higher education limped along and little was done to provide a more coherent and stable funding system of finance for tertiary education. The Dearing committee of 1997-98 (by which time I was a vice-chancellor, at Ulster) was nothing more than a cross-party ploy to bury the subject in the run-up to the 1997 general election. Likewise, the forthcoming review by Peter Mandelson's department is intended to delay the issue until after the next election.

Raising the cap on the current level of university fees is not the answer for it will still further discourage applicants from poorer backgrounds. Again, as you suggest, the discussion should be about a graduate income tax.

One further point: I find something distasteful in an older generation that enjoyed the benefits of a fee-free, maintenance grant time at university, now calling for future generations to take on the responsibility of financing the bulk of their higher education. To avoid such inter-generational inequality, I propose that there should be a windfall graduate tax to be paid by all those now living who were in receipt of public monies supporting them through university: say, £5,000 for a conventional three-year first degree; £6,500 for a four-year one; £12,000 for a subsequent master's degree, and £18,000 for a doctorate. That would go some way towards assuaging future generations of undergraduates. It is high time there was a proper public debate on how higher education should be financed adequately in the future.

Trevor Smith

Lib Dem, House of Lords

The CBI has pontificated for years about the need for a skilled and educated workforce, but its actions demonstrate that it is, in fact, only interested in a cheap one. It implacably opposed a statutory minimum wage, and now it is pressurising the government to abandon its ambition for 50% of all school leavers to go on to university-level education. Maybe the CBI could be encouraged, through your columns, to explain what it has against young British people? In Germany, 80% of school-leavers go on to university level education, and in France the numbers are scarcely less. Why is the CBI intent on denying British youth an education our European neighbours take for granted – if not to produce a cheap and malleable workforce?

David Fiddimore