I still object, largely on moral grounds, to a system which involves students taking on a lifetime debt in order to undertake a university course. I would much prefer reverting to the  system of state and local authority grants which I grew up with, even if this means that less than Tony Blair’s target of 50% of young people go to university. It is a pity that Liberal Democrats were outnumbered ten-to-one on this issue in parliament after the 2010 election, but having bitten the bullet Vince Cable and his team at BIS worked hard to take as much of the pain away as they could. The first thing that the coalition agreed upon, of course, was that tuition fees would be capped at £9000 instead of the unlimited amount proposed by Labour’s Browne report.

As this 24-minute video, Student funding from 2012 by money expert Martin Lewis, explains, the new system is better in many ways than the one inherited from Labour.  All students will be repaying less per year, if they have to repay anything at all. Part-time students will no longer have to pay tuition fees up front. Lewis also voices a few criticisms; I would add that if inflation is to be used at all in calculating repayment interest, then CPI rather than RPI be used.

But Lewis explains it all much better than I could. Enjoy.

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