Back from Europe – and how nice it was to be back, the sun is shining, nearly 70 degrees in San Francisco and yesterday we took a delightful stroll to Muir beach. So being the miserable git that I am, I’ll have a go at the English:
Plans to increase university tuition fees in the UK are being strongly opposed by the Labour left.
BBC – Short attacks student top-up fees
On the face of it the argument sounds convincing: increases in fees and reduced state subsidy of higher education lead to less people from poorer families receiving higher education.
Wrong – analyze the facts and you realize that what is being argued for amounts to campaigning against tax increases for the wealthy – something which should be an anathema for self-respecting members of the left.
Police Academy
The facts: As the Economist points out, people in the UK are snooty about education, they have seen Britain decline as a military and economic power but still cling to the idea of intellectual prowess without investing in it. Britain’s universities are in crisis, Harvard spends 4 times as much on a student’s education as Oxford and in the UK junior professors are paid the same as rookie cops.
Britain’s universities need more money – quick.
The answer for how to do this comes from Australia, where, since 1989 private funding of education through student loans has been massively increased whilst maintaining similar attendance demographics to primarily state funded higher education. The trick is that student loan repayments are dependant on future income. The Australian government can afford to put its money where its mouth is, since historically there is no better financial investment than a university education.
What this means is that people without a university education are not funding those with one, it also means that richer university educated people pay more. In effect, a tax on wealthy university educated citizens, but the UK left would rather see everyone subsidize them than look beyond the mantra of state funding which is not an option if you want to educate 5 times as many people as we used to in the 60’s.