Jayne Dowle: University should be for the brightest and best... not just those who can pay

We all want our children to do well at school, but my parental anxiety goes beyond grades. It is all about the money. When I consider how much it might cost to send my two to university, I can only think in huge

abstract numbers.

Right now, I just cannot imagine exactly how much it might cost, and how we all might pay for it. And we're a fairly middle-of-the-road, middle-income type of family, not rich, but not on the breadline.

So if we're already worrying about this a good 10 years before we have to, how many sleepless nights have those parents had? Not only have they got tuition fees going up, but the prospect of a graduate tax

looms on the horizon.

In principle, this sounds reasonable – the more you earn when you graduate, the more you are expected to pay back into the system.

Personally, I think that a graduate tax is a bad idea; it's discriminatory and I can see it turning into a bureaucratic nightmare. If we do end up with it, and if you end up with a mega-bucks job in the City thanks to your degree, then it stands to reason that you might be expected to pay more for the education that helped to get you there.

But it looks like a graduate tax might not work quite like that. Research by the University and College Union (UCU) claims that it won't just be the high-fliers who will be stung by huge bills. If the levy was set at five per cent of total earnings, nurses could end up owing the Government around 36,000, secondary school teachers 46,000 and doctors would end up with a bill for more than 70,000.

Now, is it just me, but do these sound like impossible amounts of money? I don't know any nurse who could find an extra 36,000 to give back to the Government out of her monthly salary, however long she had to pay it back. Most of them are struggling enough to find the 10,000 demanded for their tuition fees under the present system.

I understand that university education has to be paid for somehow. But if the Government goes ahead with this decision to introduce the graduate tax, then it faces a future where young people will simply not bother even thinking about university. And that will be for one reason –because they can't afford it.

The people that this will really hit are those from ordinary families, the ones who could really benefit from higher education. Not just personally, but to give our country some social mobility back.

Added to the prospect of the graduate tax is another idea being bandied around; that degree courses in the most prestigious subjects, such as medicine and law, at the most prestigious universities, will attract higher tuition fees. Excuse me, but have all ideas of equality gone totally out of the window? Again, I understand that we live in a market economy, but we also live in a democracy. What hope has a bright kid from a modest background of breaking through the ranks if we end up with a situation like this?

All it would do is create a self-perpetuating middle-class. And it would totally knock any idea of widening access to university education for six. If the Government does decide to press ahead, then they might as well scrap all those programmes which encourage working class kids to apply to Oxford, Cambridge and other top-class institutions, because they will obviously become a hypocritical waste of money. That should save George Osborne (St Paul's and Magdalen College, Oxford) a bob or two.

Don't Ministers understand this? Do they ever ask parents what they think?

Well, I'll tell them what this one thinks. I understand that times have changed, and I don't expect the free degree for my children that I benefited from. But I don't want to push my two to do their best at school, only for them to find themselves saddled with a lifetime of

debt. That said, I have come to accept the idea of a set tuition fee, as long as it is reasonable and won't deter my children from accessing the very best education our country can offer. Sorry for being cynical, but are Ministers secretly hoping that by making university so

prohibitively expensive, they will gradually end up with putting so many people off that courses will scrapped and money will be saved that way?

Rather than jeopardise the life-chances of the next generations, forget about the money for the moment. Make university harder to get into academically, and tailor the number of places available accordingly.

Widening access doesn't mean opening the doors to everyone. It means choosing our children because they are the brightest and the best, and not because of how much money they've got in the bank.