Verbal

Well if they're the brightest of the bright they go to Oxford and do 'PPE' (Politics, Philosophy and Economics), not economics. This trains them to see the world in a less disconnected way. Higher education, they'll learn, is both a public good and a private benefit. The public good is easy enough to see, because without it, this country would be about on a par with Albania as an an economic powerhouse. The country benefits hugely from the training and development of a kind of intellectual gene pool. There is a strong correlation between the percentage of people who have a university education and prosperity. (The US educates a higher proportion than us; a powerful tiger economy like S Korea educates 80% of its 21 year olds to university standard). But it's precisely because higher education has been seen as both a private benefit and a public good that there has never been a popular challenge to the idea of meeting many of the costs of universities out of grants from general taxation. Like it or not, the taxes you pay as non-uni goers actually helps you - among other things by not being stuck in a country which had fallen into a 1950s rot by idiotically defying the economic laws of gravity by dismantling its (extraordinarily good) university system. One of the corollaries of 'public good' is that universities should attract the brightest talents - whatever their circumstances. In other words, universities must be about equality of opportunity. The problem is, we live in a class-ridden society, so that's not easy. Working class parents, and their offspring, tend to view money owing as debt; middle class people do not. It's why for example middle class people tend to take out large mortgages, because they see it (sometimes very foolishly) as a no-lose investment, not debt. There is no right or wrong in this. A tax to you is a debt to someone else. It's an economically rational decision to make NOT to go to university and face what looks like a mountain of debt. Seeing it as debt is rational in another way. If the wonderful world laid out for you by a middle class, well-connected upbringing leads you to a 500,000 job, paying off a uni loan is no biggy. If however you bump along at 21,000, the marginal cost is much, much higher. And in a world now where every pennny counts, that's going to look very much like a cost you want to avoid. If you think this has NO consequences for social mobility - ie that the brightest have the best educational opportunities regardless of class or income - you are very, very wrong. So trousers, all you're proving with your exasperated 'why don't people see what I see' argument, is that you're deeply middle class. End - as they say in these parts - of.

Stanley Fish's demolition of Browne in the New York Times (the comments below the article are quite telling too.) http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/the-value-of-higher-education-made-literal/

One of the most impressive features of our zoological specimen loungers is their sense of proportion. What more balanced argument could there be than that hundreds of men and women should lose their jobs because one bloke can't get to a game of football in the way he considers the most convenient? Try as I might, I can't fault the logic.

I don't know whether your experiences are 'valid' or not (whatever that means). I was saying you can't generalise to a national picture from them. Were they so poorly taught that they weren't able to punctuate?

They already do. The number of film scripts I've been handed by station staff...

Yes, extrapolating from your personal experience makes all your generalisations true.

I see the mob has migrated. The indignation is so apoplectic it's quite funny.

It seems not. The games people play.

what?

All fair enough. But if this is the case, why aren't the Tories/Libs prepared to debate why this is a good thing? The Tories smirk at the prospect at having Oxbridge to themselves once more, and the Libs whiffle on about how they will socially engineer Oxbridge into behaving differently. They won't. Oxbridge and other good universities will be the ones charging near or at the max of £9000. These will increasingly be a rich-only purgatory. Other universities lower down the food chain will charge progressively lower amounts in fees. so what you'll have is a higher education system that very accurately reflects and reinforces class privileges and depradations. Who is saying this is a good idea? No one - because it would burst their bubble.

No dear. Now shut up and do the ironing.

It's a reasonable debate to have, and you may be right. But the reality is the debts are serious, and many have to be paid back quickly and/or at high interest rates compared to what will be on offer from the student loans co. This will have an effect on social mobility.

But no one is getting into debt trousers. There won't be anyone for them to hoover up. You can't have it both ways.

Actually, what a lot of rich parents do - the capitalists among you, no doubt - is take the student loans at their ridiculously cheap rates, pocket them themselves and pay the 'up front fees' Hey presto, amazingly cheap money. This will be a growing problem now that the terms have been made increasingly favourable by the changes enforced by the Libs. Meanwhile, fewer poorer students will go to university as a result of these increases. Social mobility - which was going backwards anyway - will now be heading for the buffers.

How long is a piece of string? People I know who pay up front are all from double-income families - for example a consultant pathologist married to a senior civil servant. I'd guess their disposable income at £100,000 odd. You could generalise and say it's all the people who can afford to pay private school fees - it wouldn't be strictly true but near enough maybe.

As aintforever quite rightly says, the debts are real. Living and other costs can easily double the debt, and are by no means fully covered by student loans at the moment. These are quite serious debts, contrary to the trousers wing of the Tory Party.

Well of course. No one is holding a gun to anyone's head. But it can easily come down to a class thing. Children of working class parents will more likely than their middle class competitors be under some pressure not to go into debt.

Some pay upfront fees - the sons and daughters of people rich enough to keep their children out of debt, or those who can afford it and don't want to go into debt. Those who decide not to go for financial reasons do so not because of upfront fees, which don't exist under the present loan arrangements, but because of fear of debt.

They don't now, under the present system.

Ah another fan. I'm collecting starry eyed acolytes at a rate of knots. I think Delldays is organising the fan club. Please do PM him, not me. I don't answer plebeian requests, I'm afraid.

Sorry, trousers, if this is true, you need to go back and correct your earlier posts. The firms listed are looking for people who'd have gone to university but have been put off by higher university fees. Surely there won't be any - because as you and others have tried to argue, the increases are all in our minds, the government is being over backwards to help, they're not really fees at all, etc etc ad nauseum.

We are not elitist or condescending; we just feel sorry for you. But there is hope in your case.

There are some mental exercises you can do to improve your IQ. As you do so, you will find your politics moving inexorably to the left. I promise.

No, not theory - he said it was scientifically proven. Now what, I wonder, is the reason for your not grasping this simple point?

Would you make a habit of dragging disabled people out of their wheelchairs, whatever the provocation?