I agree with you that the huge expansion of university places under New Labour was a bad idea. But I don't think abolishing tuition fees is the way to undo it. I think if we started where we are and abolished tuition fees, we'd get even more people going to university, and an even greater expansion of the Red Queen's race where people spend 3 or 4 of their productive years not being productive because they need to stay ahead of the competition. If you make something cheaper or free, you get more demand for it. Plus we now have a couple of generations of people who've grown up with the expectation that going to university is just what you do.
I'm not sure if there *is* a way to get back there from here, though. The only way I can think of would be something like top-down closure of universities, which is too authoritarian for my tastes, and would trigger a huge backlash claiming that it was a war on Education and that it was designed to create an illiterate and servile populace.
Completely agree that simply shifting the burden of tuition fees onto the government would make things worse. I'm less hopeless about stopping young people lose 3 years of their lives to meaningless degrees though. I don't think you do it by announcing you're closing certain universities, the government just says "Here's a bunch of stats showing that people with less than two Ds at A level/people going to these universities are actually hurting their life chances. It's a free country, they can do that if they like, but the government isn't going to encourage them to spoil their lives by funding it." Of course you still get a loud backlash, but while all the sound and fury is that you're a terrible person, most people secretly think you're right, and in the privacy of the polling booth, that's what counts.
Every university had a number limit through the '80s, '90s, '00s and up to 2014, when they were removed. A great triumph of the university sector has been convincing the nation that returning to this would be 'too authoritarian'. Neil's approach would also work, if the political will were there (which heretofore it hasn't been).
Interestingly, we have strong evidence that young people are extremely insensitive to the level of fee (at least with our type of loan and repayment system); it is almost certainly not the case that reducing the fee would increase demand. Numbers going increased steadily year-on-year since fees were introduced; there is even some evidence that uiversity is a Veblen good, where high prices are seen as a mark of quality: the small number of unis that priced under £9k when fees came in saw applications drop.
Further evidence comes from Australia. In 2020 they introduced a dramatically tiered fee structure: fees for some subjects (e.g. maths, nursing) were dropped to AUS$3700, others like IT and architecture were AUS$7,700 and subjects such as management, humanities and law raised to AUS$14,500 (these have since gone up slightly by inflation). But there is very little evidence even a dramatic change has had a very small impact on demand (the study I found suggested 1.5% of students changed their mind): https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/changing-the-cost-of-some-uni-degrees-didn-t-change-students-minds
Fun and thought-provoking argument! Though I'm not very used to seeing "higher taxes" described as an argument from the right...
Thank you!
My point would be that the 9% student loan repayments functions as a high tax, with all the usual negative consequences - and is thus bad!
I agree with you that the huge expansion of university places under New Labour was a bad idea. But I don't think abolishing tuition fees is the way to undo it. I think if we started where we are and abolished tuition fees, we'd get even more people going to university, and an even greater expansion of the Red Queen's race where people spend 3 or 4 of their productive years not being productive because they need to stay ahead of the competition. If you make something cheaper or free, you get more demand for it. Plus we now have a couple of generations of people who've grown up with the expectation that going to university is just what you do.
I'm not sure if there *is* a way to get back there from here, though. The only way I can think of would be something like top-down closure of universities, which is too authoritarian for my tastes, and would trigger a huge backlash claiming that it was a war on Education and that it was designed to create an illiterate and servile populace.
Completely agree that simply shifting the burden of tuition fees onto the government would make things worse. I'm less hopeless about stopping young people lose 3 years of their lives to meaningless degrees though. I don't think you do it by announcing you're closing certain universities, the government just says "Here's a bunch of stats showing that people with less than two Ds at A level/people going to these universities are actually hurting their life chances. It's a free country, they can do that if they like, but the government isn't going to encourage them to spoil their lives by funding it." Of course you still get a loud backlash, but while all the sound and fury is that you're a terrible person, most people secretly think you're right, and in the privacy of the polling booth, that's what counts.
Every university had a number limit through the '80s, '90s, '00s and up to 2014, when they were removed. A great triumph of the university sector has been convincing the nation that returning to this would be 'too authoritarian'. Neil's approach would also work, if the political will were there (which heretofore it hasn't been).
Interestingly, we have strong evidence that young people are extremely insensitive to the level of fee (at least with our type of loan and repayment system); it is almost certainly not the case that reducing the fee would increase demand. Numbers going increased steadily year-on-year since fees were introduced; there is even some evidence that uiversity is a Veblen good, where high prices are seen as a mark of quality: the small number of unis that priced under £9k when fees came in saw applications drop.
Further evidence comes from Australia. In 2020 they introduced a dramatically tiered fee structure: fees for some subjects (e.g. maths, nursing) were dropped to AUS$3700, others like IT and architecture were AUS$7,700 and subjects such as management, humanities and law raised to AUS$14,500 (these have since gone up slightly by inflation). But there is very little evidence even a dramatic change has had a very small impact on demand (the study I found suggested 1.5% of students changed their mind): https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/changing-the-cost-of-some-uni-degrees-didn-t-change-students-minds
https://www.uow.edu.au/student/finances/domestic-undergraduate/contribution/
There is some evidence that students respond to the level of maintenance grant/loan available.
Also, this is particularly engagingly written IMO. I don't know if that's because it was originally a speech?
Thank you! I suspect so, though I also think the argument is less rigorous, for the same reason. Now to combine them both!