This newspaper produced an issue this week that formed a wholesale attack on the Browne Report and its recommendations. Though well-meaning, such an attack was wrong. A new IFS report shows that the Browne proposals actually function almost identically to a graduate tax, and the further fees rise the more tax-like Browne becomes. Moreover, fee raising will have absolutely no negative effect on low earning graduates – indeed it might save some of them money.
Press coverage of Browne naturally focused on the removal of a tuition fee cap, and filled newspaper pages with doom and gloom pictures of an elitist US system. However hidden within a report I doubt most journalists have read, are measures designed to protect those who go on to earn less than their graduate peers. The interest rate charged, for example, is tiered according to income, so those with high earnings (above £28,000) pay a full 2.2% above inflation whilst those earning below £21,000 pay no such premium. Most students will have their debt simply written of after 30 years, freeing them from the burden of repayments they hadn’t yet made. Indeed the IFS report shows that this is a far more progressive alternative to the status quo, and protects the worst off just as effectively as a full scale tax.
The key difference between Browne and a graduate tax, is that a fee based system maintains a link between student and university. Where fees are charged, the money paid by graduates goes to the university that educated them, allowing some freedom for institutions from the whims of government. A graduate tax on the other hand, pours all money into a central pot for government distribution, placing universities wholly at the mercy of fickle policymakers.
Fee is a nasty word, and it rightly scares us into protecting those who are placed most at risk by them. However if we are going to allow more people to access university, we have to pay for it. Unlimited fees are on their own the most dangerous of beasts; but when restrained and remoulded to extract more from those most able to pay, and to relieve those most in need from the burden of debt, they can allow us to ensure top quality university education for those who follow us without confining the least fortunate to a lifetime of unbearable debt.
