An excellent and timely post from Fraser Nelson on the Spectator’s Coffee House blog. His subject is the pressure on young people to get into university at any cost:
But does this £100,000 benefit stand up to scrutiny? Nelson doesn’t dispute it as such, but rather points out the complexities behind the headline figure:
In keeping with tradition, one must, at this point, offer up the usual pieties about education being about more than work and money. To be sure, learning for learning’s sake is most certainly a very wonderful and civilised thing. Indeed, it would be lovely if we could all draw deeply from the well of academic knowledge. Unfortunately, though, admittance is charged –at around £27,000 a pop. So, given what students are putting in, it’s not unreasonable for them to ask what they’ll be getting back.
In this regard, it’s high time that academic institutions provided information with something like the honesty and transparency legally required of financial institutions:
This is a welcome reform, but it should go further.
At the moment, the system of loans for tuition fees places all of the risk on (a) the students and (b) the public purse. There’s no risk at all for the university, which gets its tuition fee upfront, with no downside if it doesn’t lead to a positive outcome for the future earning power of the student in question. This must change. If universities offer the wrong courses to the wrong students then they too should suffer the consequences.