University places

Last one for the day - and haven't I gone on and on.

Anyway, big news today is that the government wants to ramp up tuition fees for university places. Apparently, if you're as student who takes advantage of the university system, you should effectively pay higher tax.

This seems a bit intellectually inconsistent to me.

Because the government want more people going to University so we have more educated people in the workforce, which means a stronger economy and therefore, you know, more tax.

The fact that you're earning £50,000 rather than £20,000 per year means you're already paying tons of extra tax. The government think it's worth it, so they really should pay the investment.

The thing is, both the government and everyone else knows that some university degrees get people into decent jobs fairly easily; and others are useless.

What the Conservatives don't tell you is that, often, media studies and materials sciences and all those semi-practical degree courses are the ones that earn the jobs; and the old university pure subjects, the classics, or PPE, or history, or Eng Lit, are the ones that are fundamentally useless in the jobs market.

This goes against the standard right-wing press trope that we're losing elitism in the higher education system by letting non-trad subjects in.

The reality is, the government should increase tuition fees. But, specifically, only for degrees for which there isn't demand exceeding supply in the jobs market. So all those old Tory subjects should charge more; but the people learning IT, or engineering, or modern languages, or practical subjects, should be fully subsidised by the state.

One thing that does grate, with me, is the subsidy on tuition fees for people from poor backgrounds. Because the loan only gets paid back once you are earning a decent wage. So, whether you start poor or not, you only even pay out on the loan once you're relatively wealthy. It's a stupid bribe, and a meaningless one.

Finally - one thing that needs to be maintained is the student loan. Not just for tuition fees, but also for living expenses for the duration of the university course. These shoud, again, only be paid back once the graduate is earning good money; and should be lent out at government base rate only, with no premium, and therefore no profit. If we're going to charge our students to study, we have to make sure that they aren't being gouged by the money lenders in the process.

None of these things seems to be on David Willett's agenda - which seems largely ill thought through and of the "Hey, if the students are going to have fun for three years they should pay us for the privelege" line.