DEMOS

Assuming I had gone to University in London and taken out the maximum student loan, I would now owe over ?10,000. Now imagine that I had met my partner at university and he too had taken out a similar loan. If we decided to live together, we would have a combined debt of over ?20,000 before we even considered taking out a mortgage! Considering that the starting salary for arts graduates is significantly below this, the whole situation becomes extremely depressing. At my current projection, I will be 30 by the time I finish paying off my loan!

The debate around funding university education is tied up by its semantics - 'tax' and 'debt' can both be dirty words in the UK. On the left, a lot of people who would support the introduction of a graduate tax, for example, wouldn't support higher levels of student debt; but the effect, in terms of money coming out of your bank account every month, can be exactly the same.

I'm certainly no fan of the US undergraduate university system, but it must be accepted that massively higher fees and hence levels of debt don't lead to a corresponding massive distortion of the student population, nor does it seem to put people off arts or humanities degrees. So there is, at least, a valid case for higher fees.

I would suggest that there are two priority issues. First, there should be no up-front fees for attending university - this is the real barrier to poorer students. Second, payment should reflect a graduate's ability to pay - this avoids disproportionately hitting graduates in lower-paying but valuable jobs. Personally, I favour a graduate tax solution, but I think that a complex (there's nothing wrong with complex...) loan system could also deliver on these.

I think the question of what our attitude to debt really is is an interesting one. On the one hand, the government argues that the way in which we routinely pay for a house is how many more expensive products and services ought to be provided to individuals. On the other hand, however, the government recognises that for vast numbers of our poorest citizens, debt is already a very serious problem. For most of those with debt problems, the problem is simply that, week to week, their low income does not match their expenditure. The government's solution is education, with the express purpose of creating an aversion to debt and a determination to budget within the limits of your income (saving if possible). I am a volunteer on one such project. Although these projects achieve their immediate objectives fairly impressively, the result is to compound the debt aversion of lower socio-economic groups. Already seeking to avoid debt based on experience, their efforts, in this context, are endorsed by the state. Spending last year running a campaign to persuade larger numbers from the state sector to apply to Oxford, I spoke to countless potential applicants. In those from poorer areas, their aversion to debt was incredibly strong. So the problem comes when the state then makes going into debt the very condition of a university education, and brands as unreasonable those who are put off by this. The strategy is class-biassed - it is not the middle-class who, as Gillian suggests, are most debt averse, it is the working class. These are the people that the government explicitly wants to make debt averse. Despite ambitious targets, a strategy for widening participation based on upfront payments and costs will continue to fail. When its architects blame the irrational choices of the poor, we need to look closely at their genesis.

An interesting discussion. But this debate can end up reducing 'class' to something attitudinal (as in the 'working class tend to be more debt averse', an attitude which needs either combatting or accounting for). Combine this with Luke's point (above) that education is increasingly seen as a form of investment, though also (as The New Statesman repeatedly points out, following Andrew Adonis) a fantastic mechanism for redistribution, you can end up viewing class purely as some psychological obstacle towards producing a fair society through University education. The facts are different. We all know that the US has the highest level of inequality of any developed country, while also having a far higher and (from some perspectives) fairer intake into University education than countries like France, Britain and Germany. University education splits the US in two: 50% go to university and get rich, 50% don't go and end up making (fantastic) sandwiches for the other 50%. This is what a society looks like if it heavily prioritises a fair, very well-funded and widely available University system, as the US does and as this Government would like to.

Can anyone send me details of the Warwick study - author, publisher, etc ? I want a copy.