Hmm, I managed to do an HND at college, funded by the local authority.
My first year at Uni was funded by the family.
My second and third were funded by the local authority, I also needed help from Student Loans and about £5k from the bank. London is not cheap.
All told, I left Uni about 11 years ago with about £10k of debt, that I'm still paying off now.

I am with Linux User on this. I think that it should be free, BUT, I do accept that the numbers qualifying need to be considerably lower. Those above the income threshold should have to borrow, possibly through this scheme. I am in favour of supporting classics course, even though they are not useful in day to day life except if you are an academic. New Labour started the aspiration that even thick kids should go to university. They should be elitist, even if numbers attending plummet. Even with my brain damage my IQ is still way above average even allowing for the 40 point plus fall I sustained. Yet I do not think that every job needs a degree. Accountancy does not need to be a degree level. You can qualify even quicker as an A level student and not accrue the £27 000 debt that a degree imposes.

What about decent free vocational courses? We still need plumbers and programmers but the problem with loading debt on to the student is that they have to risk that they will have a career at the end. Businesses demand higher qualifications but refuse in the main to fund it because of the free rider effect. So who pays? If an employer wants a employee to be qualified then they should pay for the training. It might be an investment but why should they avoid investing in their own workforce. Another problem is that the main political parties have looked down on manual work so we have to import our plumbers from Poland yet let unemployed languish in ghettos unwilling to train them to do jobs that are needed. The unemployed are very reluctant to take a risk that training, and incurring debt will benefit them, because of the debt load.