Best wishes to our childrenin their continuing struggle agains CamClegg's iniquitous tuition fees

40% of the current scheme won't be paid off but that's still better, in the long-run, than 100% of it being entirely financed by the Treasury. I was lucky enough to go to uni when the fees were free but we still had to find our living costs and there were no loans at attractive rates... all done on expensive old overdrafts. Many students did nothing for the full 3 or 4 years because free education means no incentive to put in extra effort or find that well-paid job. Rich kids have always been able to call up the bank of mum and dad for top-ups whereas us working class oiks had to get jobs etc. If we still only had 10% of school leavers going to uni, maybe we could afford to pay for more of them. Now it's 40%+

The advantage of the later pay-back is that it is effectively a tax on graduates. If the fees mean more think hard about their future earnings potential rather than just bumbling into any old degree with no motivation and no game-plan beyond 'putting off having to work for a living' then it's probably a good thing

another supporter of the students who agrees that such a massive rise in fees is unfair. To leave uni with 50k+ worth of debt is just unacceptable and politicians can call it whatever they like but thats what it is debt.

and for anyone saying it just affects the poor it doesn't. Children of middle earners will also be badly affected. Only ones that won't be are those earning less than 21k and you have to question what value a degrees given them and why they've used up public money doing it.

The Tories are deliberately trying to price the less well off in our society out of universities, they want a version of Brideshead Revisited where the hoi poloi new their place.

Yes, good luck to the students, Dotnet.

I am really sorry that a university education is now seen by so many people as just something else you can buy. Unis have become businesses that have to be run like any other business, but for the benefit of whom? Certainly not the students.

Well they are going to price themselves out of existence, but thank goodness for the internet. We can all teach ourselves now. Soon, very soon, we'll be able to do online degrees - like the Open University in that you study in your own time (or you enrol in a tutorial college), but unlike the OU in that you don't have to buy a course, you'll just submit the coursework and put yourself in for the exam when you think you are ready.

But there will be even more competition for jobs, more young people on the streets and fewer people to do the most important highly skilled jobs.

Except of course, as NiceGuy says, other countries still take education very seriously indeed. So at least there will be enough Chinese doctors and Indian lawyers to look after us ...

I don't agree with the tuition fees at all, but please, let's not forget who introduced the bloody things in the first place, & increased the cap threefold during their time in government. Neither the Tories nor the Lib-Dems. That leaves us with...Labour. Somehow this always seems to be forgotten.

My youngest sister is due to start uni next year and as a parent of a child who will be going to uni in a few years, I have to admit I am very upset at the scale of the fees hike. In fact, it was one of the policies of the lib dems which prior to the election had me seriously thinking of switching my allegiance. Obviously now I'm glad I didn't.

But that said fees increases were practically unavoidable given the sheer numbers of students who were now studying. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that more students want to study but at the same time, money doesn't simply magic out of thin air. We either put taxes up for others, cut spending elsewhere or borrow the money to fund higher education. Which will it be?

The other thing to remember as well is that a drop in student numbers may not be a bad thing right now. Once upon a time you could graduate with a history degree and it would be sufficient to get you into a graduate track job with a blue chip company. Nowadays the only thing you'll be saying with your degree in "David Beckham studies" is "Would you like fries with that?"

Our economy is also failing to generate enough skilled jobs to absorb all these graduates. So those who think a degree is a guarantee to a good career are finding out the hard way that it's not. We're simply not competitive enough compared to our competition. If you want top level electronics/engineering jobs, you'd be looking at Asia. If you want skilled accountants, HR adviser's, even multilingual call centre staff, you'd look towards India, Egypt, Phillipines. There you'd get a degree educated person at a third of the cost of in the UK.

So yes, it's shitty for our kids. But this has been a long time coming and it's unfair to blame the current coalition for something when New Labour raised expectations without the ability to deliver.

yes lets hope they stay within the law this time and don't cause chaos and destroy property