Nice concluding paragraph. Hear, hear.

Another good proposal I saw which is often overlooked is one that sees student debts only increasing at the rate of inflation until the graduate is earning enough to start paying it back. Currently you get charged interest as well, for people like me who are doing a post-graduate degree this means under the current system I am going to incur and extra grand or so of debt just from interest before I’ve finished. It will also take some pressure off people who struggle to find a well paying job immediately after leaving university.

“I have often made my position on higher education funding clear. Lowering university places to allow entry to only the exceptional would allow for full funding of those students who will bring something positive to our society and do not have the financial means to subsidise themselves for three years” – a deeply problematic ‘position’ in my view.

For ‘exceptional’ read children who enjoy all of the advantages associated with selective schools, home tuition, living in a better neighbourhood, etc – as reflected in the disproportionate number of children from upper & middle class homes who find their way into the likes of Oxbridge (currently around 50% from private schools even though private schools make up only about 7% of the total number of school places).

I have one teen who started in Uni a few weeks ago – loan+course+accomm = £11,000 (per year) – and another one due to start next year.
Now even a thick bastard like me can work out that comes to an annual cost of around £22,000 for both of them, or £66,0000 in total over the 3 years – like every other long suffering parent whose income is not quite low enough to receive any state support, but way below that required to off-set these debts in any meaningful way we will just have to manage as best we can (assuming our A&E Dept is not shut down in the meantime as some are predicting).

I have heard it said that today’s students are increasingly docile because they are so preoccupied with personal debt that the big issues in our society have simply become a matter for somebody else to worry about?

Good article and of course there are aspects of the Browne report which are progressive (but many others in which it is the opposite!). Plus there are some very good alternatives – here’s one example, http://www.libdemvoice.org/opinion-a-real-student-premium-the-smart-solution-to-the-fees-conundrum-21653.html – which I think we should be exploring rather than ‘broadly welcoming’ the plan and then just fiddling around the edges with it.

Bergman:

There are elements of the Browne report which, if applied, would mean a more progressive system of university funding.

No up-front fees, and a repayment threshold of a £21,000 salary – compared to the current, unrealistic £15,000 – will be beneficial to less well-off students.

There are no ‘up front fees’ now. Raising the threshold could also be seen as a trade-off for raising the fees in the first place.

And Vince Cable’s suggestion of a tiered interest system will avoid those with the financial means (or the parents with financial means) to cover the costs from getting away with not contributing their share to the national money bank.

Cable wanted a ‘graduate contribution’. He lost. I’m not holding my breath that he’s going to win on a ‘tiered interest system’ either, especially after he declared ‘all bets are off’ regarding LibDem policy.

Part-time students would also benefit from the ideas set out in the report. It seems absurd that there is currently no help available to those having to undertake their studies whilst working, as they are often more in need of financial aid than eighteen-year-olds with parental support.

It’s an anomaly that looks like being rectified. Unfortunately it simply means that more students may take four or more years to complete a degree while they do a job, and then pay off the increased fees afterwards, in contrast to students taking the usual three years.

Oh, and then you go and ruin it all by suggesting that a reduction in the number of student places will allow a return to full grants and free tuition for those lucky enough to get in, which might not reflect any kind of broad social demographic (see the comment from the a&e charge nurse). It’s always someone else at another university who is ‘mediocre’. No-one knows what the ‘right’ number of undergraduate students should be, and assessment will sort out the ‘exceptional’[ from the ‘mediocre’ anyway.

Besides, if direct funding of universities is cut by anything approaching the 80% implied in the Browne report, none of this will matter anyway as most universities will recruit like crazy just to stay afloat.

In response to Alexander’s comment above, the proposal you mention from the report is the reality at the moment. You are right that you are paying interest on your loan, BUT this interest rate is set each year to ensure that the value of your loan increases at the same rate as the real value of money in the UK. In other words to keep it in line with inflation. To be more precise, the interest rate is set to keep the value in real terms exactly the same as the value when you borrowed the money.

This means that the total amount you pay back over the next 20-25 years will be higher numerically, but in value it will be exactly the same as the total amount you borrowed at the start. In this situation there is no personal financial benefit to paying off the loan faster than you are contractually obliged to, and no personal financial loss to having an extra year or two where you can’t make payments as you are still studying.

Someone please correct me if I’m wrong on this.

For information, I am in the same boat as you. Graduated last year, and am now in the middle of a postgraduate degree and my loan is also accruing interest.

The proposal put forward in the report actually takes this one step further. It assumes that the creditor is borrowing the money from the BoE (which it is), and so is paying an interest rate on that loan. Browne’s suggestion is to add this interest rate to the ‘inflationary’ interest rate, thus passing the cost of the loan directly to the debtor (the student). This makes sense, why should non-student taxpayers foot this bill indirectly? This does change things slightly however, as it now means that the debtor is encouraged to pay the loan off as quickly as possible otherwise with every successive year the value of the loan increases relative to the amount borrowed and the debtor will eventually pay back more than the value of their initial borrowings.

I feel that this is a reasonable proposal, but, it is a nonetheless regressive step for student financing as it genuinely increases the cost of studying/borrowing.

@RichardMorris: so, a ‘Student Premium’ – like the ‘Pupil Premium’ LibDems keep waving around, but with a mortarboard I particularly liked this bit:

The basic idea is that, if you are working on a high-pressure subject like medicine, or at a top university with high standards and fees, then your student premium is safe unless your end-of-year marks are dreadful. However, if you are doing Mickey Mouse Studies at Muddlesfield, your Student Premium is at greater risk. Get a third in your first-year marks, and that £4K will change from a gift into a loan. Get a 2.2, and you will lose the top £500 of next year’s Premium.

I think that’s known as ‘payment by results’, which even the Tories aren’t (yet) stupid/mad enough to adopt. But then since the LibDem leadership have abandoned their pledge on fees, presumably Cable’s in the market for any crazy idea. Plus it suffers from the same assumption (see Comment is Free threads, passim) that the author knows exactly which courses and universities ‘deserve’ support and which are ‘Mickey Mouse’ based on no clear criteria whatsoever. Who’s going to die and make him head of Hefce in order to make this work?

redpesto,

“Plus it suffers from the same assumption (see Comment is Free threads, passim) that the author knows exactly which courses and universities ‘deserve’ support and which are ‘Mickey Mouse’ based on no clear criteria whatsoever.”

Come on. You know full well that any degree counts as a Mickey Mouse degree as long as a) it is vaguely modern-sounding or b) I haven’t personally heard of it.

[7] indeed, in fact why not bin Uni altogether, and replace it with super-dooper vocational training programmes (similar to nursing or medicine) – that way a students ‘value’ in the market place is virtually guaranteed?

Surely the coalition can see this is the only sensible route to take given the current financial climate?

@ 7, 8, 9

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that’s the perfect answer – even the author of the link confesses its worked out on the back of an envelope. I’m just saying that the notion put about that tuition fees, graduate tax, or general taxation are the only answers is wrong – and that given the relatively tight guidelines on the brief to Browne, we should cast the net a lot wider for the best solution before deciding it’s Browne or nothing.

The repayment system set out by Browne – given the likely debt levels – is really very good indeed. It’s approximately a graduate tax in practice, if not in name.

Swarbmeister: Browne’s suggestion is to add this interest rate to the ‘inflationary’ interest rate,

Except that under Browne this additional interest can never cause the real value of the loan to increase from year to year (i.e. you only pay the interest in those years where you are making loan repayments). It’s still a slight advantage to pay it off faster, but only a very slight one.

RichardMorris: we should cast the net a lot wider for the best solution before deciding it’s Browne or nothing. – but that’s what the submission and consultation process was process was for. It’s why the Russell Group got what it wanted re. higher/uncapped fees and at least one new university VC got what they wanted re. part-time student funding. It’s why the NUS put together a proposal for a graduate tax, which Browne rejected and which Cable tried to get round by calling it a ‘graduate contribution’ – also rejected. If a LibDem blogger now wants to come up with a fag-packet idea for a ‘Student Premium’, that’s their call (though I would not be surprised if such a face-saving term emerges in a future LibDem manifesto). Browne might get modified before it becomes law, but that doesn’t excuse the extent of the LibDems’ retreat, any more than the OP position is much beyond slashing student numbers to ensure the remainder get grants and free tuition (which I suspect lots of Tories are in favour of, but were overruled in favour of a raw and bloody ‘market’ instead).

“Students at universities in London said they expected to owe more than those elsewhere in the country. Those at the Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, believed they would have to repay more than £38,000 of debt after graduation”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/aug/13/university-student-debt-rise

I assume such outrageous figures will become the norm once the coalition complete their token review process?

The likes of Willetts claim graduates have better job prospects than non-graduates (or used to) and can expect to earn at least £100,000 more across their working lives.
Surely that figure should now be revised downwards to nearer £50,000 and even this figure will only ever be realised after a lifetime’s work at the coal face.

There is also the added bonus that an indebted population is one that is far easier to manipulate, while dissent can be easily dismissed as little more than predictable whinging from a group of privileged money grabbers?

the a&e charge nurse: believed they would have to repay more than £38,000 of debt after graduation
…
can expect to earn at least £100,000 more across their working lives

Well, assuming a working life of around 40 years, that’s an extra £2,500 a year. Mean annual salary is around £31,000 for all full time employees, so let’s say £33,000 for graduates. That means annual repayments under Browne of £1,080, which would be enough, including interest payments, to fully repay a £23,000 student debt.

Since the debt gets written off if not fully paid in 30 years, therefore, the economic choices are roughly “take out less than £23,000 in total student debt” (which for a 3-year course would mean tuition fees of £4,000 or less) or “take out as much more than £23,000 as possible” (there’s no point in taking out only £25,000, if £40,000 will get you a better university experience, given that the repayments will be identical for both). This will really mess with the “distinguish on price” idea in Browne, when it’s entirely economically rational – given that they’re not going to charge less than £4,000 – for all courses to charge £12,000 or more, and for the students to pay it.

To cim

agreed, but consider that if you are at the repayment threshold, you are likely to continue at that threshold or higher excepting for circumstances arising from serious illness/death, in which case there are clauses to allow for these eventualities. an extra 2% per annum on £20,000+ is a not inconsiderable amount above inflation. still it is far lower than commercial rates!

“No up-front fees, and a repayment threshold of a £21,000 salary – compared to the current, unrealistic £15,000 – will be beneficial to less well-off students.”

This (‘unrealistic’ in particular) is a statement I disagree with, and I really can’t see your point here at all. At what point is £15000 an unrealistic threshold? Lets take a look at some of the numbers involved.

If we assume that the salary of a recent graduate is that proposed threshold of £21,000, going by the current system the debtor will have a monthly gross income of £1750, less tax and NI (assume at £400, overestimated) leaves a net income of £1350 per month. Very reasonable by most peoples standards.

Student loan repayments are currently set that you pay back at the rate of 9% of everything earned above £15,000. In this case that is of £6000, or £540 per annum, or £45 per month.

Take this into account with the net monthly income above, which, now falls to approximately £1305. Still very reasonable by most people’s standards. This has dropped by less than 3.5%. It is also paid direct to HMRC (who pass it on to SF at the end of each year financial year) at the same time as tax i.e. before it reaches the debtor, therefore designed to not actually impact on the spending habits of the debtor directly.

If it changed to the proposed system, this person would have £45 extra per month in their bank account, but not pay any of their loan off and will have to recieve an almighty increase in salary to make any dent in their loan. The loan will also increase with interest, and under the proposed system, will increase in value putting the debtor further in debt.

Some other example values

annual gross income; monthly gross income; monthly loan repayments

£16k; £1333; £7.50
£17k; £1416; £15
£18k; £1500; £22.50;
£19k; £1583; £30
£20k; £1666 £37.50
…
£25k; £2083; £75
£40k; £3333; £187.50
£60k; £5000; £337.50

If you consider the repayments as a proportion of gross monthly income I would hasten to suggest that if you cannot afford the repayments then you are living too close to your means and should realistically seriously consider re-evaluate your living standards. This is not a failing in the repayments system but an individuals ability to budget effectively.

Taking this back to the original statement, I would say that the threshold at the moment is very reasonable, and that if raised would only cause further problems for the less well-off graduates. When combined with the proposed changes in interest charging, the raising of the threshold would mean fewer people would pay off any of their loan before it began to increase in real value, meaning either higher debts in the long run or in certain circumstances the loan not being repaid at all and being wiped, thus absorbed nationally and indirectly funded by the general public of student and non-student taxpayers.

Sirena,

I have just one comment and a quick question.

As your last two paragraphs show, you are happy to make sweeping statements about HE provision and the quality of the people who go, unsupported by any of the abundant evidence and with the conclusion that, if we followed it, we’d be the only nation in the world to conclude that the best thing for the country would be to educate fewer people.

With this in mind, and since it’s clear that your debt has failed to furnish you with either the research skills to evaluate evidence or the critical thinking skills to enable you to realise when you’re talking outside your expertise, when are you going to hand back your degree, as by your own criteria, you’re one of the ‘mediocre’ students who should never have gone,

a&e — the ratio of state/private admissions at Oxford and Cambridge admit almost exactly mirrors the ratio of applicants.

The problem there is one of getting more state students to apply in the first place…

[14] “That means annual repayments under Browne of £1,080, which would be enough, including interest payments, to fully repay a £23,000 student debt” – well some students might be lucky enough to finish with debt of a mere £23,000, but as mentioned above some debts are ALREADY within touching distance of £40,000 – as I see it Brown is simply an exercise in rationalising the decision to adopt such scary figures (£40k) as the norm?

Maybe we could set aside a % of family allowance as a form of early payment for higher education – these deductions could start from the very first year of life (assuming your family is amongst those lucky enough to still receive it)?

“Plus it suffers from the same assumption (see Comment is Free threads, passim) that the author knows exactly which courses and universities ‘deserve’ support and which are ‘Mickey Mouse’ based on no clear criteria whatsoever”

Any universities with drop-our rates above a certain percentage?

“we’d be the only nation in the world to conclude that the best thing for the country would be to educate fewer people.”

Depends whether certain of those currently being educated at university are actually learning something worthwhile.

“…we’d be the only nation in the world to conclude that the best thing for the country would be to educate fewer people…”

Education is normally a good. Education in the form of a long and expensive degree needn’t be for everyone.

…consider a university education to be a rite of passage, rather than a privilege you earn through years of hard work…

That’s because society tells them that it’s so…By the way, Lord Browne’s suggested that more should be going, just at higher costs and, perhaps, on different courses. The U.S. experience suggests that people might take heed, regardless of how debt-burdened they’re liable to be later in life.

Richard:

Any universities with drop-our rates above a certain percentage?

Do you want to start factoring the various courses, reasons and social background of the students while you’re about it?

[15]: if raised would only cause further problems for the less well-off graduates. When combined with the proposed changes in interest charging, the raising of the threshold would mean fewer people would pay off any of their loan before it began to increase in real value, meaning either higher debts in the long run or in certain circumstances the loan not being repaid at all and being wiped, thus absorbed nationally and indirectly funded by the general public of student and non-student taxpayers.

That only applies if the average debt level is low enough that the majority of graduates will be able to pay back the loan significantly before the write-off date. This is probably just about true now, but wouldn’t be under Browne. Under Browne, the normal case would be for even the richer graduates to only pay back part of the loan, with the rest being wiped by general taxation. At that point the raised threshold is better for the less well-off, since it means they need to pay back less of their loan.

(Though, agreed: the student loan repayments are not a particularly large amount even at the current threshold)

[23] the bald fact is Uni is only going to cost MORE and it is very likely that the prospect of a £40k debt at the end of it will affect choices as to to who does or doesn’t apply to go?

I’m sure there are all manner of permutations as to how these chunky debts can be repaid, but given that we already have a great deal of inequality when it comes to those who get into our best Uni’s do we really want to risk widening the gap even more?

Oops – should say [22]

[23]: But because of the debt write-off, the level of the debt doesn’t matter to the individual student. £25,000 or £250,000 or £2,500,000 they’ll pay back exactly the same amount of money via PAYE. It’s fake money, mostly*. (And the less well-off you are post-graduation, the faker it gets) Don’t forget the extension of financial support to part-time students, and the generous grants to students with “low” family incomes (since the full grant is available at a family income of £25,000, with some grant available up to £60,000, “low” is somewhat inaccurate)

Browne, in my opinion, is a (relatively small, though larger than NUS suggest) graduate tax, combined with a massive potential increase in university funding from general taxation, and a significant increase in the level of financial support available to students. It’s a very obfuscated way of doing that, but that’s what it does. Is it obfuscated enough to sneak past the government? Probably, at least until the first round of post-Browne tuition fees are announced and the government takes another look at its budgets.

We’re still, currently, in an environment where it’s possible for most graduates to pay off their student loans – and in that environment, how big they are and how quickly they get paid off matters. Under Browne, that stops – most graduates will have a significant fraction of their loan paid off by the state under the write-off clause. At that point, how big it is becomes irrelevant, and the slower one pays it off, the better (for you, not the other taxpayers).In exchange for increasing an irrelevant number (the size of the debt) Browne decreases a more relevant number (how much comes out of your monthly pay)

*: This has always been true for some. I know a few people who work in fields where a degree is useful, but the pay is less than £15,000. They economically logically treated their student loans as free money, because they knew that they’d never have to make any significant repayments.

[25] “It’s fake money, mostly” – I am not sure I understand this.

Lets say the ‘redbricks’ get the figure they are asking for – say around the £7k mark – so that’s £7k for course fees, accommodation runs at the £5k plus an allowance loan of around £3k – that leaves us with a bill for £45k for the 3 years.

You say “most graduates will have a significant fraction of their loan paid off by the state under the write-off clause” – are you implying that MOST graduates can expect to earn less than £21k?

As I see it these proposals are saddling the vast majority of students with a significant debt, a debt that will take many years to clear (if you are from an ordinary family) and likely to act as a deterrent to many prospective students whose parental income is just above the threshold that would entitle them to some form of subsidy?

It was only in 1997 that Sir Ronald Dearing recommended ending universal free higher education – now, as sure as day follow night we have simply moved on to debating how humongous student debts ought to be.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, the NUS argued for a full grant for all students (and, of course, tuition fees were paid by government). The argument was that, at 18 years of age, students should be respected as individuals independent of their parents. Even if mummy and daddy earned £100,000 per year, Jo should get the full grant, the proposal went.

It is an argument that has relevance today in a different system of funding. Very few students are wealthy but some have wealthy parents. Why does the system assume that parents will contribute towards the education of a child who is regarded in all(?) other situations as an independent adult?

(I vaguely recall law cases in the 1980s where students sued parents who declined to top up the living allowance.)

University fees should be funded via general taxation like the rest of education, if this means cutting elsewhere like defence or making the rich pay more in tax, its more than worthy paying such a price imo.

[26]: are you implying that MOST graduates can expect to earn less than £21k?

No (though for those graduates the entire loan, regardless of size, is of course free money).

A graduate on £30k average earnings, assuming no career breaks, will be able to completely repay, under Browne, a student loan of about £18k. If they take out a loan of £32k (£7k fees for the hypothetical redbrick, plus £3,750 maintenance loan, for three years), then £14k gets written off. They’re no worse off financially than if they’d taken out only an £18k loan. If they go to Russell University, which charges £12k fees, then their student loan debt for a three year course will be around £47k, they’ll still only pay £18k back, and the remaining £29k gets written off. From the graduate’s point of view, that £29k was free money.

Once this graduate’s loan gets above £18k (which is inevitable, since that implies tuition fees lower than they are now), it doesn’t matter to the graduate how much bigger it gets – they still pay the same back in loan repayments. The rest of the loan was free money (for them, anyway).

A graduate on £37,500 average earnings, who takes no career breaks (and that implies that they’re going to earn quite a bit more than £37,500 later on, since that’s not a likely starting salary), could just repay the loan resulting from £7k annual fees. Again, there’s no disadvantage to them to taking out a bigger loan and going somewhere with £12k fees instead – their repayments will be exactly the same.

I’m not saying most graduates will have a 30-year average of less than £21k, but I am fairly confident that they mostly will have a 30-year average of less than £37.5k. (And, frankly, anyone on 30-year average earnings of more than £37.5k can afford a few extra pounds off their salary)

Student maintenance loan and tuition fee debt acts so unlike any other form of debt that treating it like debt stops making sense.

a deterrent to many prospective students whose parental income is just above the threshold that would entitle them to some form of subsidy?

Full grants of £3,250 will be available under Browne to anyone with an annual family income less than £25k. That’s over 50% of households. Partial grants will be available to anyone with an annual family income less than £60k, which is more than 80% of households. (I’m assuming gross income here). I don’t think people who need the money are likely to miss out in general because of their family income.

(If their family could pay but don’t, then that’s a different matter, and while I’m disappointed that Browne makes no attempt to address this problem, the changes proposed will not make it worse and might slightly alleviate it)

This article is heresy!

There is nothing positive to the Browne review!

There can BE no positive side to Tory/Yellow Tory policy!

Heresy!

etc etc

It seems a good idea to look at the review dispassionately and not assume it’s all bad – or that it couldn’t be still worse. But I agree with others who have concerns about the final points. I might be said to have a vested interest – I work at a new university, and we typically take on students with lower UCAS scores than older universities. My career has alternated rather oddly between very new and very old universities and I have always felt strongly that new universities, in my experience, do an excellent job with students who have sometimes gone to poorly performing schools, have no history of university level study in their family, and have to work many hours part time because they receive no extra top ups from their family. My own experience was very different – I was privately educated, my parents went to university, I had my parents and teachers breathing down my neck all the time to ensure I worked hard, and so got into a good university – where I didn’t do any paid work until I was a postgraduate. If I’d had fewer advantages I would probably have had a different experience. Some people from poorer/less advantaged backgrounds do brilliantly and are hugely determined and so manage to get into Oxbridge or similar. Many others don’t – but would easily have done so if their circumstances had been different. But many of those who achieve mediocre A levels flourish and develop at university (probably a new university). The state/private thing is a bit of a red herring – from my experience students at Oxbridge are pretty middle/upper middle class whichever type of school they went to and some switch from private to state for A levels – though I should add that Oxbridge colleges seem to do a good job at *trying* to attract good candidates from less traditional backgrounds.

@ 27

“It is an argument that has relevance today in a different system of funding. Very few students are wealthy but some have wealthy parents. Why does the system assume that parents will contribute towards the education of a child who is regarded in all(?) other situations as an independent adult?”

It is pretty ridiculous, building a ‘sins of your fathers’ clause into the system.

The other problem is that it can allow vicarious parents a worrying amount of control over their children’s future. I know someone who wanted to study sciences but whose parents were only prepared to fund a music degree because “you play the clarinet so beautifully.” I also know someone who convinced his daughter (for perfectly decent reasons) to not apply for a loan, saying he would pay her way himself, and then threatened to cut her off a year later when he learned that she was planning to move into a mixed-gender household.

They say parents want the best for their children, but perhaps it’s more accurate to say they want what they THINK is the best for their children. Both of the examples I give above, while real, are probably very rare, but I imagine there have been plenty of kids who have been told they can’t take a certain degree because their parents don’t understand it. Or that they can only go to a university close enough for them to live at home.

@32 Chaise Guevara:

Good examples.

From the absence of comments, I guess that some people do not understand that funding for students (however it is delivered) must allow young people to make their own choices.

As an academic in a Russell group uni I despair and worry about proposals (not least whether I will have a job). That said, there is a potential upside here in redressing the balance within unis. Currently in a good many unis hiring is essentially done in terms of the research assessment, now REF. That’s all they care about – does the candidate have publications in the ‘right’ journals, research grants and so on. Teaching doesn’t come into it. During the now passed relatively good years, vice-chancellors spent the money on grandiose building projects and a salary spiral for supposed research stars. OK – some of these people were finding cures for cancer or unravelling the mysteries of the universe; some even lowered themselves to teaching undergraduates from time to time. But many didn’t. Already students have been agitating about contact hours, size of tutorials and so on. Once they are being charged full whack, they are not going to be happy at largely subsidising research efforts and the balance between teaching and often narrowly focused research may be restored,

I think that’s a fair point – I’m not strongly opposed to the RAE/REF (apart from the impact agenda, or the way it is framed) but there is so much administrative work at university/faculty level associated with preparing for the REF – and in order to ensure you have enough good items you have to have a couple of ‘spare’ items – and it does mean that the emphasis of one’s work is in danger of being distorted. But it’s tough for young academics (or any academics) if the goalposts keep on moving. I tend to think current contact hours are generally ok because you need to do a lot of work to prepare properly for a seminar – but the size of class could certainly be an issue.

@ 33

I forgot one other thing, which is possibily a bigger issue than all the other things put together: we also have to consider the children of parents who are well off but have an anti-education attitude, and therefore won’t pay for their child to “waste their time” at university.

University should be the section of our education where you get the highest honours. That comes with some responsibilities for those who attend them to uphold a reputation of excellence or our universities will not be competitive or give us the edge to gain the best jobs.

If every student had a knee jerk reaction to rises in tuition fees and acted like those students vandalising Millbank tower which by the way the tax payer will have to pay for, then we would all be generalised as a nation of idiots.

Its utter stupidity to act like a chav in regards to rises, especially if you haven’t done your home work on why they have to rise. Sadly I think that’s the case for most of those students in London. Those students are giving British students a bad name with their poor choice of reactions and with their faces on camera it will go heavily against the reputation of the specific university they attend.

The facts are simple, ignore political parties for a second and look at the state of the economy and then when you add the parties back into the equation the Brown report is the ONLY viable option giving the state of nation debt.