Tuition fees

Martin Luther King spoke of the 'fierce urgency of now' when fighting for freedom and warned against the 'tranquillizing drug of gradualism'. I'm bemused by the rush of this government into drastic changes in many policy areas where sudden change threatens to rip apart the consent necessary for peaceful civil society. Where is the rush to change the behaviour of bankers and international speculators whose derivatives sunk the world economy? Their banking levy rate is being adjusted downwards in case, horror of horrors, it actually raises too much money from the speculative financial sector who caused this sudden retrenchment of the state.

But let's celebrate – tuition fee reform plans will allow students to have a free university education, provided they earn less than a £21,000 salary for the next 30 years. Then the government will write the outstanding loan off, so that you can start planning for your retirement the following decade.

The doubling of student tuition (or course) fees to up to £9,000 per year will not make much difference to the 7% of privately educated students who presently make up 15% of those at university. Their parents have been paying on average of £10,000 each year for their education. The children of the very rich, whose family wealth has ballooned in the last ten years, are largely immune to high fees. The more they pay the better the chance of an 'exceptional return' on their investment. The most expensive public schools skew the result. Half of the students at Westminster School (£30,000 per year) get into Oxbridge. That's an advantage worth paying for. The golden ticket of an expensive education will give them a high chance of becoming an MP – one in three of whom were educated privately. (Nearly half of Conservative MPs were privately educated.) Privately educated students are also disproportionately represented at the higher levels in journalism, the legal profession and the military.

Of course, there is no reason why the 22 of the 29 members of the cabinet who have assets and investments worth more than £1 million should not appreciate the extra burden that increased tuition fees will place on students from middle income families who graduate into jobs earning little more than the £21,000 repayment threshold.

Once this earnings threshold is crossed, the debtor must pay back at a rate of inflation (the higher RPI measure) plus 3%. Repayments for a graduate earning an average of £30,000 per year with a total loan of £40,000 will be £70 per month. Under the Browne proposals the payment depends 'only on the income of the borrower, it is independent of the interest rate and the size of debt outstanding.' After 30 years £11,000 of the loan would be repaid. The rest of the loan would then be written off. Psychologically it will be very strange for a person of 50 to still carry a debt of £30,000 around their neck from 30 years ago. They might feel a bit ashamed that they haven't managed to pay back their debt. If only they'd become a banker...

Why should 100% of the tuition fees be charged to solely to the individual? The skills gained from the degree are not the property of the student. They are employed to achieve a greater earnings potential which is taxed at a higher rate if they earn a high salary. The company they work for gets the benefit of a skilled employee who earns a profit for them. Are we happy to be a society that has taken selfishness to a new level as if neither society nor their employers benefits from their education?

When was it decided that we can't keep 40% of a generation in higher education without them paying for it, yet we can afford to keep 100% (or more accurately 93%) of the same generation in school up to the age of 18? What does it say about a society when it won't give all it's young people access to higher education. Does it fear an educated citizenry? Maths graduates who won't waste their money buying lottery tickets. History graduates that can spot the next illegal war. Economists who know that a Robin Hood tax on city financial transactions would raise enough to provide free education and a lot more besides.

This education in individual accounting opens the door to personal 'profit and loss accounts' for citizens, tracked by your NI number, where what you are able to take out of a system (for example, in terms of health care or social security) is defined by how much you've paid in over your lifetime.

Welcome to a selfish, individualistic, highly unequal, profit and loss society. Higher education - not so much 'know thyself' as 'know thy economic worth'.