Recouping the vanished teaching grant by charging high is a natural impulse there is little reason to suppress
This week the Liberal Democrats forced an open retreat on the NHS. The state of play in the universities, where the party loyally rode into the valley of death for the sake of coalition unity, suggests this was wise. Their chief cavalier in the charge of fees, Vince Cable, reluctantly wore a �9,000 cap in return for worthy but obscure protections for poor graduates.
The explicit understanding, however, was that the full �9,000 would only be charged in exceptional cases. Most colleges would compete below the cap, securing value for students and bringing down average fees to the point where Whitehall's scarce funds could cover the subsidised loans that have to finance them. Well, that was the theory, but experts spotted flaws. Recouping the vanished teaching grant by charging high is a natural impulse there is little reason to suppress ? and especially not if snobby students regard discounts as the marker of an unappealing bargain-basement education. It was thus both predictable and predicted that many universities would cluster at �9,000, although it is startling how many are now doing so. Of those institutions who have shown their hands, three in four are maxing out, including former polytechnics such as the University of Central Lancashire. A worried Dr Cable yesterday conceded to an audience of vice-chancellors that he had "not seen much evidence" of the creative thinking about curbing costs the new market was supposed to spur. He threatened to withdraw unfilled places at institutions who have over-charged. His difficulty is that this threat is an idle one, as places will be filled at almost any price.
With youth unemployment at 18% and rising, the smart money is on excess demand for college places again this summer. Last year 10 candidates chased every available place through the clearing process. Snatching any places unfilled after that (and there may well be none) may help (slightly) with balancing the books, but it will not deter universities because of the tiny number of places involved. Besides, cutting back on places in some colleges without increasing them elsewhere is deeply perverse, since the whole point of higher fees was meant to be releasing the growing desire to enrol in college from the constraints of public finance.
Thank goodness Dr Cable and David Willetts managed to limit the hit the Home Office had tried to impose on income from foreign students, otherwise they would be in an even finer mess. A fine mess it remains, however. In time perhaps new providers will ? as they hope ? force overcharging institutions to mend their ways or close their doors. For the moment, fees will be tripled, and neither students nor the Treasury will have much to show for the pain.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/07/soaring-student-fees-editorial
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