Avoid free-for-all over student fees

The Prime Minister wants Britain to enjoy world-class universities with a research capacity to match. He made this clear in Downing Street yesterday.

He also indicated that he supported the last Labour government's aspiration that 50 per cent of all school-leavers have the chance study for a degree. And he also supported a progressive element to funding to help young people from poorer backgrounds – he admitted it was perturbing that so few children entitled to free school meals eventually progressed to higher education.

What he could not say, because of the political

and economic under-current, is that it costs money to meet these objectives. Money to pay for the best lecturers and research programmes; money to pay for additional places and keep fees at affordable levels; money to pay for bursaries for students from under-privileged backgrounds.

Yet this is the dilemma – Whitehall is not in a position to increase spending. It is having to scale back expenditure to such a level that students face the prospect of their fees doubling when they are likely to spend even less time in the lecture hall.

No one political party has the answer. If there was a convincing and affordable plan, Lord Browne's report – a classic case of politicians playing for time – would not have been commissioned by the last Labour government.

As universities prepare for an unprecedented number of admissions next year from families anxious to avoid any hike in fees, Westminster's legislators need to consider their response carefully to avoid a political free-for-all.

Yesterday, Mr Cameron set out a framework that reaches out to the three main parties. The question, as always, is one of finance. That is why the national interest must come before the vested interests of politicians, universities, students and their families when Lord Browne's findings are discussed.