Who do you propose pays for all this 'free' university tuition woodhill?
I believe that the current system where the graduate pays based on their future earnings is the fairest way to do it as the person who benefits with a higher salary due to a graduate job is the person that pays.
The great flaw in this system however, is that graduates that do not earn enough to repay their tuition fees, either by choice or circumstances, effectively have their educations paid for by others, so the system is not perfect.
By reducing tuition fees, they are pushing costs back on the taxpayer, as I think that even the current fees dont' cover the actual cost of providing a university education, although I am prepared to be corrected on this.
I'm not sure that 'help' with education past 18 is something that people should expect from the taxpayer TBH, perhaps with the exception of courses that benefit public services such as medical staff working in NHS hospitals. After all, its another 3 or so years of opting out of being a taxpayer, while still using public services.
In fact, I would like to see more employer funded higher education. Person gets a job with an employer aged 18 and within the next few years they study for a degree paid for by their employer, while working at the company as an undergraduate engineer or whatever the rest of the time. Fast forward a few years and the company has a qualified graduate employee with several years’ experience working for them.
But I’m straying off topic now, but it’s still the fact that the government doesn’t have enough money to pay for everything that the country wants, so anything that is effectively a tax cut, whether it be a reduction in inheritance tax on the estates of the most wealthy, or reductions in university tuition fees, needs to be paid for by cutting services elsewhere, or raising taxes elsewhere. And it is a little hard to justify cutting taxes for the most priviledged at the expense of the less well off.