http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11455394


That will be popular.

And students from middle class families. Only the super rich have £60k to stump up over three years (before living costs).
I'm not sure I'd have gone to uni if fees were that high. I certainly wouldn't have a house now as all the money I saved for the deposit would have gone on repaying my debt. (Or a half decent car for that matter.)

Politicians have really screwed up higher education.

This then means that you end up following the US model



SOURCE

With the average person going to a local university

Well, Yale isn't exactly a typical University, even in the US. You're talking about the equivalent of Oxford or Cambridge. If the UK had an entirely 'free market' system, I'd imagine they'd be incredibly expensive too. I'd be interested in what say the average cost of US college fees are. An important point to also consider is that without UKGov funding, that's the kind of price UK university fees would be because the outlay for putting the courses on is roughly the same regardless of which side of the atlantic (or indeed the Channel) you're on.

The thing that worries me is that the subsidy on University attendance is exactly the kind of thing that looks like an 'easy win' on the Spending Review. Everyone knows we send too many people to university almost for the sake of it, and to make it expensive for people to go is a no-cost (to the government) way to solve that issue AND save some money into the bargain. The problem is it's very much throwing out the baby with the bath water. It'd have to be accompanied by a decent scholarship system or the effect would be rather counter productive.

It did say



so It would put Yale into the US top universities

We need to send far fewer to university and give decent means tested grants. Free tuition for those that qualify and a graduate tax of 1% payable for life. Make it applicable to those MP's who got free education and have stripped it from the rest of us.

Agreed. Far to many people go to uni who aren't up to it.

Yes, but just limiting demand through price is indiscriminate. What you want is the really clever people to still be able to go to Uni, regardless of their (or more likely their parents) means. If you want to make the University system 'self financing' - which, I have to say, I'm not against on principal - you have to make sure you're not leaving people who could be great academics on the sidelines. So yes, make Unis pay their own way with the huge tuition fees that entails, but have a decent scholarship system to go with it. That system can have quite a high bar to stop it costing too much and that would probably in fact increase the average standard of undergrads, but much like the idea of congestion charging, you have to have the infrastructure in place that's the carrot before you bring in the stick.

True. They should limit it through entry grades.
Two E's at A-level....... Sod off.

+1

And any course that accepts grades like that should be scrapped.

Like Law at Oxford?

Well that's a load of crap. There's nothing, literally nothing to say those with poor grades at A-level can't turn themselves around at degree level. I have personally seen someone without a single GCSE convince a university admissions board that they hadn't applied themselves before and were determined to turn their life around - they got a second class degree. How anyone could deny others the opportunity to improve their lives in such a manner is beyond me.

Like all things this will work so much better by giving the universities discretion in the matter - let them decide who's serious about achieving a degree and who isn't. Much like sentencing policy, a one-size-fits-all approach will never work and always produce absurdities.

With all due respect it's called 'the real world'. We can't afford to send everyone to University nor in fact is it appropriate to do so. So we have to thin the numbers somehow. You can do that by making going to university horribly expensive. But that doesn't at all guarantee that the people who end up there will make best use of the resource. The simple fact is the best predictor of future academic performance is past academic performance. That's just a fact, whether you think it's right or not. I dunno about you, but I'm fairly certain the relevant staff at every university don't have time to interview everyone who might want to do their course, partly because on some courses thats several hundred people. So we have to have a system that objectively optimises the set of people who get to go and academic assessment is the best way we've come up with. It's the case that this system means that a very few people do get missed but it's the only practical way the system can work.

if someone didn't apply themselves before they are 18 and as a result didn't get any decent qualifications it's their fault. It's not up to anybody else to give them a second chance because we can't afford to give everyone a second chance, so doing so only for some people is inherently unfair. Especially given if they get in, it may mean somebody who didn't spend the ages 16-18 mucking about doesn't. Is that any fairer do you think? It's also why we have the OU - because someone who changes their mind can then get a degree later in life. We give people a chance to fix their own mistakes, without disadvantaging anyone else.

You only get one shot at life. If you haven't figured that out by 18, you're probably not University material anyway.

I think middle class families could be hit worse than students from poor backgrounds, traditional poor students have had a lot of help. Dad earns around £30k and I was on a basic loan (covered my fees + £3k for the year) and had little help from my parents (they've still got a mortgage and two kids at home), a friend's single Mum earned around £15K and they got a much better loan (covered their fees + ~£6k for the year) and because their Mum was on benefits they get regular hand outs from there as well...

Having a low income doesn't really mean anything for a university student, in fact in my experience students from poor backgrounds are much better off.