Thank-you for expanding your case a little. There’s certainly more breadth or argument there, I was hoping though for more depth.

1) You cite intergenerational fairness as an issue. There are many things our parents and grandparents generation took for granted that we do not, and more so the other way around. That a tiny elite in the 1950s received a highly subsidised university education, does not create a case that it should be true for everyone for ever more. On that basis we should also be advocating subsidising mining and bringing back mortgage interest tax relief.

The real issue of fairness is surely whether or not anyone, today, who is able to go to university, and wants to, can go, do you agree?

2) You say individual debt is a problem. It is certainly true unsustainable bad debt wasted on bad investments or consumption can be a serious problem. Tuiton fees debts though are not the same as buying the contents of Miss Sixty on your credit card, it is an investment in your future. And a good one even if you think the £400k lifetime assumptions are wildly optimistic. They’d have to be out by a multiple of 10-15 for this to be a bad investment.

Further as noted previously, by expressing this line, you are deliberately stoking fears of debt. Something we frequently cite as a reason why children from low-income households who could go, don’t go. The party should surely be running campaigns in poorer neighbourhoods extoling the benefits of a university education rather than making it sound scary.

I’d see more in an argument here if it was supported by studies of real hardship as a result of fees repayment. Do you have any such studies?

3) You say tuition fees distort choices, and in his 8th December article Paul Holmes makes similar andecdotal remarks about Australia to justify this claim. This may or may not be true so again where is the FPC’s hard analysis of this problem so we may under the size and scale of it, and any measures taken to alieviate it?

4) I don’t understand your points (2), and (3), Centre Forum’s point was that scrapping fees will involve a regressive and uncessary transfer from the general population to those who are better off than most. Is that true or not? Or are you saying’s it’s true but doesn’t matter?

5) I share your concern about whether or not the pupil premium will work as well as hoped, but that in itself does not make a case for spending £2bn on scrapping tuition fees. Centre Forum’s point was that scrapping fees does not improve life chances. Did the FPC reject that finding, and if so did they provide good evidence for rejecting it?

6) You conclude that overall student debt must be a reason why access is currently skewed as it is. And in another thread you’ve said you “don’t agree that having free education does not or did not broaden higher education intake.”

But this is the problem isn’t it Neil, your view is entirely unsupported by what has actually happened and contradicted by data in the Centre Forum paper. Where is the counter-case to justify your sincere belief?

7) You partly answer that by saying on your own blog “For me this issue is not about the detail, but about sending a clear message that the Liberal Democrats believe that it is the role of the state to help each individual fulfil their own potential.”

We yes… but I have to say that worries me greatly – not the principle, who disagrees with that, but surely the point of the FPC is to care quite a lot about the detail as well? Policy based on prejudices, however popular, or populist, do not stand up to much when torn apart forensically by the opposition and media.

1 If the only objective of the policy was about getting more people from poorer households into University then your point would be stronger, but it is not. It is also about inter-generational fairness, individual debt, reducing the distortion caused by debt on choices etc.

2 There are isues around how you define ‘higher income earners’. It is true that you are more likely to go to University if your parents earn more than average and are better off than average, but that is not the same thing as most student’s coming from ‘rich’ households. The household income of the bulk of students, at the point their children go to university is not massive. (75% come from households with incomes of less than £60K) It is also typically a point at which many household incomes will be peaking (ie when both partners are in their late forties or fifties and working full time) and does not necessarily affect a fair view of the household’s ‘wealth’ over time.

3 Many parents of students are themselves first generation graduates (as I am). It is actually the case that the intake of Universities has broadened since expansion started in the sixties, but, and partly as a result, a much larger proportion of the population is ‘middle class’.

4 Yes – it may be the case that the same money could have more impact on broadening the intake if it were spent on early years, the pupil premium or similar. But actually the evidence isn’t clear that it would. There is good evidence that spending money earlier does provide a good return, but it is also fair to say that the significant increase in funding for early years, Sure Start etc. hasn’t so far demonstrated that it is creating any fundamental change yet. In reality there is a huge issue about aspirations in different families and nobody really has the whole answer yet. Personally I am very supportive of the Pupil Premium idea but I do not believe it will be a panacea. Increased spending can help achieve a lot, if used well, but I am far from convinced that simply increasing what we will already be committed to will bring the improvment you suggest.

5 That gets back to a key point for me which is that the fees decision is only part of it. We also need to look at other ways of making access broader, beyond our current ideas. There will be one or two suggestions of how we might do this in the full paper. I am personally convinced, however, that if the overall level of debt each student faces is a lot smaller, it will be a lot easier to achieve this.

“Finally, do we have a policy on people who have recently graduated and are in debt? Do they have to pay back their debt? My understanding is that they do, but it seems a bit odd to say that debt ruins your life but those of you who have it already are stuck with it.”

Well, if we had a graduate tax, we could exempt from it all those who paid fees. That’s probably as fair as practically we could be.

Mat – the current repayment system is progressive to a degree – although I personally think a starting point of £15K is way too low – but because people are paying off a fixed sum it is ultimately regressive. If you earn a career average of £30K a year you will end up paying back twice as big a proportion of your income as someone who earns a career average of £60K a year.

Jo, Tom, David and others – I’ve said before that I would settle for a Graduate Tax. It is a fair way of getting those who benefit the most financially from their degree to contribute back, avoids the building up of large individual debt, would not put talented people from debt averse backgrounds applying and would not distort subject choice. Unfortunately, due to the way the policy process works, that option was not on the table. If it is possible for us to look again at a system like that I would fully support us doing so.

Tim – yes you make some valid points. We do have to be clear that ‘you get what you pay for’ and that there are vast differeces in quality and cost in different institutions already.

Other points:

Yes – children from ‘middle class’ families are still more likely to go to HE than average, but many of the people defined as ‘middle class’ in that sense are themselves from backgrounds that are not traditionally well off. the alternative proposal would have seen a household income of £60K defined as such, which is odd for a party that thought that an individual income £100K was too low to pay a higher income tax.

Yes – fees is only one part of improving access. we also have to invest in early years and schools and look at how we can raise the aspirations of all young people so that theyare more likely to think about going to HE.

I can’t for example see a coherent rebuttal in any of the above to the points Centre Forum actually made.

Fees are now in place, they work, they raise money for univsersities and they have not cut access, either generally or for those from less well off backgrounds. If you disagree, produce some numbers that are better than those from Centre Forum.

Today’s student cohorts are weighted towards the children of higher income earners. That was true before fees were introduced and will be true if they are scrapped. If you scrap fees then, and fund the gap from general taxation it is entirely correct to say that it will involve ‘middle-class’ transfers.

The issue of access depends (at these fee levels at least) almost entirely on passing exams, which in turn depends mostly on your potential, parents and effective education in early years. The Centre Forum argument then was that if any money can be found for improving university access to the disadvantaged it would be best targeted at early years through the pupil premium.

To reinforce that case look at the numbers. 9% of the current 250,000 young people that went to university for the first time in 06/07 were from ‘low participation neighbourhoods’. That’s about 20,000 people. (HESA figures)

Suppose you sincerely believed that number could be doubled by scrapping fees (and there it no evidence it would at increase at all, let alone double). The cost of that policy will be £2bn a year in 2010. that amounts to paying £100,000 per student gained, as the money is entirely untargeted, and most of it goes towards subsidising people who can and do pay.

The pupil premium on the other hand is targeted directly where it matters. £2bn or even half that would arguably make it a lot more likely that 20,000 or more young people, who didn’t realise their potential, could pass the exams to go to university.

I appreiciate all the political arguments made… we have seats that depend on students, we’re ahead in votes with students, we have more student activists who’d disappear… etc… but there are surely political benefits in whatever policy replaces this and again what are real numbers here? What is the size of the political risk? I find invoking the spectre of some kind of political holocaust in the student vote, somewhat unconvincing when neither of the other main parties is backing scrapping fees… where will these disgruntled votes actually go?

Maybe one of the opponents to the scrapping policy could make the political case that Centre Forum avoided?

We are the only Party standing up for this now and we shgould not ditch this. It would be a body blow for the Liberal Democrats.

Dave

Symbolically we need to demonstrate our commitment to education to be able to show our intention to invest in people.

The fact that this government is struggling to find the money for this stategically important and humanly necessary investment is reflection on their ability to manage the economy.

As A N Other may have said – it’s not the price of your stocks, but the knowledge and health of the people which is the true wealth of a nation.

While these things are always exagerated I have no doubt that ditching this policy would have been problematic with activist retenton/motivation and the new university seats. We are not a think tank, we are a political party. If we can’t make the case for publically funded investment in skills rather than extra personal debt for graduates in a recession then we may as well pack up shop.

I’m with Geoff Payne on thw wider tax position. Superficially this policy is already costed/funded so its retention doesn’t effect the Status Quo. However we have just aquired Susan Kramers early years plans which curiously costs a very similar ammount and is in a very similar policy area.

Only harden , bitter, wisened cynics would suggest that droping one was to pay for the other. However the early years proposals now join the list of things that need to be paid for by the £20bn planned savings before any tax cuts.

Is near uniform mediocrity really desirable to liberals? Is there a danger that the best univs will opt out of the state system?

Finally, do we have a policy on people who have recently graduated and are in debt? Do they have to pay back their debt? My understanding is that they do, but it seems a bit odd to say that debt ruins your life but those of you who have it already are stuck with it.

Revising our position on student finance has been in the policy circuit since the 2005 General Election concluded, Charles Kennedy set up the commission when he was still leader, if you don’t believe me then ask Stephen Williams

I have to say I really resent the false charge that somehow scrapping fees is a middle class tax break, this generation of students works longer than any previous to pay their way through uni, as a rule, they get less support from their parents than some argue blindly, have worse job prospects when they leave, and as for the oft quoted £400k extra in a lifetime you refer to, thats more than halved in the last ten years due to a saturation of the graduate jobs market http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4599267.stm

I was fairly lucky as a kid, I was in the last year in 1997 to be to apply for and get an assisted place to go to a Private school, the rest of the fees was paid for by my mother working her socks off taking a second or third job, my family urged me to acheive and encouraged me to have the ambition to get to uni, and I’ve come away as a graduate.

I want to see a country where everyone can be given a similar leg up, and can be helped on their way to be all they can be. We need to invest in education from the moment people enter education, until the second they leave it. If I had turned 11 in 2007, instead of in 1997, lord knows how the story would be different with the predicted ‘market’ in higher education we are moving toward under labour

It says something however that the conservatives helped to give me a leg up, when Labour have kept down my generation with mountains of debt they won’t clear for decades.

To Geoff Paynes, I suggest you brush up on our policy from the horses mouth: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/7618580.stm

Now, there are a couple of very rational pedantic objecions to this line, which have to be dealt with. The first is, “Why fuss with a graduate tax, when a progressive income tax would do just as well?” The sad answer is “In truth, a progressive income tax would be somewhat better. But we are never going to sell that idea to the public. We have to go for a graduate tax, because that is what is VISIBLY fair.”

The second (from MatGB) is “But Labour have already, if belatedly, put in place something that is a bit like a graduate tax, now.” Well, bully for them, but let’s not let them off for soaking us with urine and then replacing it with water. Let’s insist on a further improvement, and let’s give Labour hell for causing the problems in the first place!

Then it’s likely you would be covered by a bursary.

I was on free school meals for a good portion of my time at secondary school and would have been covered by a bursary because of my mother’s low salary. As it was I’m old enough to have got a full grant.

However, I have to say that even though I came from a pretty disadvantaged background, I always had the aspiration to go to University (or at least my Mother had it for me and well, by the time I got to 17 it was the path of least resistance).

It is a lack of aspiration and qualification that stops people from more disadvantaged backgrounds from going into higher education. My experience of mentoring young people from disadvantaged backgrounds tells me that if you haven’t got them by t lest 12/13 you’re probably too late.

It is entirely reasonable under a fee system to give people bursaries or grant dependant on their parents income. However, as I said before I favour a graduate tax which would break the link between parental income and the student.

It would also mean that those on low incomes would not have to pay the tax.

Somebody mentioned that we pay for lots of things for lots of people out of taxation but I think there’s a difference with higher education. A graduate earns an average of £400k more than someone only educated up to A Levels – certainly, because of my choice of career I will have gained even more than that. And so I don’t mind paying a bit more specifically for my degree as I’ve only been able to do what I do because of it.

Higher education does have an element of being a public good (like health, policing etc) and therefore it is fair that the taxpayer, all taxpayers, subsidise it up to a point but by far the main ‘gainer’ from a degree is the person who has it.

And as for those of you suggesting that it’s all going to be fine because this policy was already in place when we voted in the Make it Happen: you’re missing the point.

We could have saved the money we’re going to give to a whole lot of middle class parents and give it back to the low paid or spent it on something far more worthwhile like proper early years education. We can’t do everything.

At conference at Bournemouth this year, we passed the policy that would switch £20bn of tax from the lowest paid to the highest earners and polluters.

We also have a separate, costed policy to make £20bn in savings by doing things like scrapping ID cards and the NHS uber database, as well as wasteful overspends like the Number10 website revamp (yup, still bitter about that), and shift some of that money to our priorities and the rest to further cuts in tax if and when possible.

The Make It Happen policy isn’t affected by the tuition fees policy proposal as that’s all about switching taxes from one source to another.

That’s what I understood reading it all through and talking to the tax/spend wonks, anyway—have I missed something?

To Geoff Paynes comment .. Geoff I know you were very much against our plans to cut public spending, but remember some of those who talked in favour of it such as Simon Hughes made clear that it was up to 20 million and in reality was likely to be far less. I was not impressed by that argument atthe time but perhaps he has in fact called it correctly.

Will our education spokeman be now be campaigning vigerously for the abolition of student fees ????