As Richard Budd (LancasterU) suggests, anyone thinking undergraduate fees are a good move for Scotland clearly hasn't been paying attention to how they've played out in England

@ChrisMayLA6

The thing I find most depressing is the naivety of people that imagine if you make students pay you won't turn them into customers, and universities into businesses.

@GeofCox

Yes, although actually I don't have a problem (in theory) with a student contribution to costs, on the economic grounds that its optimal to have those who benefit pay... but the key issue is the balance between public & private benefits... the current system is modelled on the notion that the individual captures all benefits of education & society almost none; rather its the other way round, which is why I favour a small (means-tested) UG fee, but extensive state support

@ChrisMayLA6

I wonder why you would apply that argument to education but (presumably) not to other public services - eg health.

If there is a personal benefit measurable in financial terms, then it is surely reflected in future income/wealth, and a genuinely progressive tax system would deal with it; if we're talking about benefits that cannot be expressed in material terms - say, 'personal growth', artistic excellence - what's the result of charging money for them?

Seems to me it either inhibits people that want to go to university for such reasons but have little money - selection by wealth - or you must create a means tested grants and/or loans scheme which has the same overall result as progressive taxation (graduates that remain poor never repay the loans) but with added bureaucratic costs.

@GeofCox

That's a good point; but the current NHS with prescription charges does do sort of a similar thing.... but I would accept my position on university & the NHS would be different - partly I think because while tertiary education is in a sense a top-up with other alternatives available from self-education to training & other approaches to learning, when it comes to health really once we're past nutrition & exercise the health service is a necessary 'solution' to your health issues...

@ChrisMayLA6 @GeofCox
Scotland also doesn't have prescription charges...

@HighlandLawyer @ChrisMayLA6 @GeofCox There's also supply/demand coupling as an issue.

In 1983-86, I went to uni in London. The entire university (all the colleges) had a combined student body of around 60,000.

Fast-forward to 2024, and Edinburgh (less than a tenth the population of London) had roughly 59,000 students.

So today degree-level education is an export industry, BUT I believe we also now have far more adults in tertiary ed. Why? What's driving demand? (I blame HR hiring practices.)

@cstross @ChrisMayLA6 @GeofCox
Though it is worth recalling that until the early C19th Scotland had twice as many Universities as England despite a smaller population, so the 2 countries have always had divergent views on the need for degree level education.

The modern increased requirement for degrees for entry level jobs is a valid point, but has that been driven by greater access to such education simply making it an easy metric for recruiters? Possible feedback loop in effect there.

@cstross

I'm not convinced by the common UK view that increasing fees have been driven by the expansion of university places. In France anybody that passes their 'bac' at the end of school automatically gets a uni place - and more students go, and more get degrees, than in the UK.

My daughter has just finished a 5-year university course here in France. Both her fees and living costs were paid by the state. She could get a 3-course meal at her uni every day for 1€. She could hire a bike for 1€ a YEAR. She could go from home to her uni in Strasbourg by train for 60€ - a journey further than Newcastle-London. She spent a term in Portugal, entirely funded by the state and EU (and she was doing chemistry, not languages), as well as another term in Paris, also paid.

If France can do this, why can't the UK?

@HighlandLawyer
@ChrisMayLA6